HURON – When Mark Robish takes the oath of office Monday as the newly-elected Huron mayor, the man passing him the gavel will end a 50-plus-year career of service to his community.

Gary Harrington’s entre into politics had a friendly beginning. After more than 40 years with the Department of Social Services, Harrington chose to run for Huron City Commission with one of his closest friends, the late Paul Aylward running for Mayor at that time.

“When it was getting toward the end of my time (with Social Services), I started looking around and wasn’t ready to stop,” Harrington recalled. “I had an interest in city politics, so I decided to run. All of my friends thought I was crazy!”

“(Paul and I) were best of friends. We had umpired together for something like 25 years and knew each other well,” Harrington continued. “I was sitting at a high school basketball game and I leaned forward and said, ‘Paul, I think I’m going to run for city commission.’”

“He looked at me and said, ‘Huh, I was going to do that…maybe I’ll run for mayor, then.’”

He noted that part of the draw to city politics over state or national politics when he was making his decision rested on the apolitical nature of the city board.

“I’m not real big in politics. I enjoy watching politics, but I’m not really political,” Harrington relayed. “That’s one of the things I like most about (city government). I couldn’t tell you what everyone else is - Republican, Democrat - and I don’t care. We don’t need to worry about that.”

“I think in politics, what we’ve lost is respect for each other. You can see it in national politics on TV all the time,” Harrington expressed. “That’s not respect. That’s not working toward a common goal. That’s something we do have here. We respect each other; we respect other opinions. That’s what being apolitical allows you to do.”

Looking back on his time on the commission and in the mayor’s seat, Harrington struggled to come up with something that was a real struggle to find middle ground on as a board.

“The marijuana decision was a difficult one because I’m not in favor of marijuana,” Harrington remembered. “But we were in a box where we had to make a decision because it was going to happen whether we liked it or not, so we had to set parameters, and that’s worked out fine.”

Harrington recalls during discussions on masking during the COVID-19 pandemic, a particularly contentious meeting began to get unruly, and he held up his hands and threatened to clear the room.

“My friends give me grief about that to this day,” he chuckled. “I think the instinct came from my refereeing days, and I just wanted to make sure each side had a chance to have their voices heard.”

Harrington recalled that many work sessions had occurred before the masking decision was ever made, and excellent discussion occurred each time the ordinance came up for renewal among the commission. He stated that this is how city government is supposed to work, relaying the current Dakota Avenue project as something that many are “just realizing” now, but has been discussed in commission meetings for three years.

“The highway out there, Dakota Avenue, Highway 37, is THEIR highway,” Harrington noted. “We’re able to work with them, but within their project, not dictate to them what we want to do. We are very lucky to have Brad Letcher (with South Dakota Department of Transportation) in our area because he does a great job working through what those boundaries are for us.”

Harrington says that his time on the commission before becoming mayor in 2020 allowed him to hit the ground running once he moved into the mayoral role.

“What really helped was that I got to meet the staff, the department heads,” he stated. “I’ve got to rely on the department heads to tell me the things I just don’t know.”

He also relayed a story that he was very proud of when looking back on his time as mayor and relating with city employees.

“I had a guy early on when I was mayor who I knew was retiring soon, and he stopped in to my office one day and started with, ‘Mayor, I want to tell you something…,’” Harrington recalled. “I thought, ‘Oh no, here it comes…’”

“He told me that I was the only mayor in the time he’d worked for the city that had called him by his first name,” Harrington smiled. “I just asked, ‘Well, why wouldn’t I call you by your first name?’ and he didn’t have an answer, but he was appreciative. That made an impact for me going forward.”

He stated that as a commissioner and mayor that he aimed to create trust with city employees, so they would know when they attended a city meeting and came up to talk that “those up in front” weren’t going to ambush them with things that they weren’t expecting and didn’t have an answer for.

The development of housing in the Huron area is something that Harrington is very proud of accomplishing during his time on the commission and in the mayor’s chair. He explained that the Southtown addition was started by a clean title to the property that allowed it to be purchased and developed, and that development led to the opportunity to recently purchase the Kamenz addition directly west of Southtown for future development. He also mentioned the development of Broadland Creek housing and industrial as well as the industrial park in town.

“We have to keep developing things around town in order to bring our young people back,” Harrington said. “They head off to trade school or college or get to work right after high school and we want to make sure they’re doing it here with opportunities to raise a family with an excellent school system.”

Gary also stated that he has appreciated being on various boards around town as it informed his decisions on the commission and as mayor while also giving him a perspective into the inner workings of the city.

He feels that the city’s diversity and educational opportunities should allow Huron to remain an attractive place and a trendsetter across the state.

This isn’t the end of Harrington’s interest in city government, as he expects that he’ll be tracking the actions of the commission, whether in person or on YouTube.

“I’ll still be watching,” he chuckled. “I still have interest in city government and will want to see how things are going.”

However, fitting meetings into his schedule could be complicated by his “other plans.”

“People ask me what I’m going to be doing now that I’m done, and I say, ‘you realize that I do have a wife?’” he laughed. “She’ll have something for me to do, trust me!”

He’s excited to spend more time visiting his daughter and grandchildren as well, visiting them in the Twin Cities.

“People ask if I enjoyed it, and yes, I really did,” Harrington reflected. “I’m going to miss the people, but I enjoyed it, for sure.”