Leadership is such a vast subject there are hundreds of books, movies and articles on what leadership is, what it should be, what it has done, and where it is going. History is filled with great leaders, from George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. to Eleanor Roosevelt; our great leaders have always inspired us to come together and do more.

In Albert Lea, to become a leader, you must inspire, have a plan, branch out, be visible, be open to change, command respect, have compassion and commitment, and most importantly give us a vision of something bigger and better than we currently have and expound on the good ideas already in place.

Oh, and if you are interested in serving as mayor of Albert Lea, you must express all that in five minutes.

Five minutes &045; are you kidding me? My snooze alarm is set for seven minutes. Five minutes to prove to the council that you might be a good candidate for mayor simply isn’t enough time.

I think reality TV has come to Albert Lea. In our local, fictional episode of &uot;Fear Factor,&uot; the contestant must first jump from a helicopter onto a rubber raft, as it is being pulled by a speedboat at 40 miles an hour, then the contestant must eat a basket full of worms, followed by

a five-minute interview to become the mayor.

Please tell me that when tonight’s council meeting takes place, more than five minutes will be allotted by the council to judge our mayoral candidates. Albert Lea deserves better.

What really bothers me about this whole situation is Albert Lea seems to be about the furthest thing from everyone’s mind. It seems for months it has been about individuals &045; and not Albert Lea. We have a beautiful city just waiting for the right direction and the right vision to be followed and we have been stuck talking about individuals.

Where is a five-, 10- or 20-year plan? Albert Lea deserves more than five minutes. I moved to Albert Lea less than a year ago, and I love it here. The parks, the lakes, the people, the businesses &045; this area is great and I think we should demand more than five minutes from our council to judge who might be leading this great town for the next year and a half or more.

We should not be trying to scare away possible mayoral candidates with a five-minute, stand-up-and-tell-us-why-you-want-to-be-mayor contest. If this is the way you want to judge someone, why don’t we just do rock, paper, scissors, and get on with it?

When screening people for hiring, most businesses collect applications, speak with the prospective person (usually for more than five minutes), check references and in most cases, have a second round of interviews, before this person is hired. Albert Lea deserves at least this kind of consideration for someone who will become our mayor.

Another big problem I have with this five-minute time limit is who is doing the judging?

If a council person wants to run for mayor, then it would be unethical to also be a judge, correct? How many councilmen want to be mayor? The more who run, the fewer councilmen you have to choose a mayor. We may end up with only three councilmen to decide who our next mayor is.

Albert Lea deserves the time to look at all of the candidates in a fair and non-threatening manner. Albert Lea deserves to be able to ask questions, seek information and find out who is going to be our next leader.

There is a saying by Philosopher Aristotle &045; &uot;We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.&uot;

Albert Lea deserves excellence &045; we must get in that habit.