July 13, 2026 Editor, The News-Gazette: The LexRockBV area is blessed with many small businesses, family farms and nonprofits. However, many of them struggle and fail with what is called succession planning. Our great mayor was in his third term and many of his supporters, including myself, would have loved for him to continue to be mayor for as long as he wanted to be mayor.
I have had the privilege of leading a local civic organization and have helped with succession planning with many other civic organizations and businesses in the area. Most of Lexington’s civic organizations and businesses do not have a three, two or even one deep succession plan and if they do have a succession planning process it is not working well. LexRockBV has a culture where few people want to begin leading an organization. I believe the reason for this is we do not train the next generation of leaders while solid leadership is in place to do this.
I hope all organizations and businesses learn from our great mayor’s untimely death and get their succession planning in order right away. Otherwise, without someone being willing to lead on a moment’s notice if need be, organizations and businesses will just continue to close and wither away as our population ages. And all of us will be worse off in the long run.
It does not take the leader of an organization or business to raise the issue of succession planning. Any volunteer, member or donor of a nonprofit organization can raise this issue at the next meeting and demand that succession planning be taken seriously. For businesses, any employee, vendor or customer can ask the owner or owners if the business has a succession plan in place. I hope the LexRockBV area starts sooner rather than later to get succession planning right. HERB RUBENSTEIN Lexington
