Mayor Rosenthal seeks second term

Norman Mayor and OU professor Cindy Rosenthal announced she will run for a second term as mayor of Norman Monday.

Rosenthal was elected to her first term as mayor in 2007 and currently teaches political science at OU.

“We have had terrific success and made a lot of headway on many projects, and I want to continue to work on them and see them completed,” Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal said she finds it rewarding to be a professor and mayor at the same time.

“There have been lots of long days, and I’ve worked many weekends,” Rosenthal said. “I am thankful that class and city council [have] not been in conflict with each other. Being mayor has also made me a better teacher. Working in public administration has made me a better teacher in the subject. All in all, it has been very challenging and also very interesting.”

Rosenthal said she has short-term and long-term projects she would work on if re-elected.

“We face a tight fiscal year ahead of us,” Rosenthal said. “We need to make sure we are able to carry out our vital services while also taking care of our priorities.”

She said long-term goals include working on stormwater collection, drainage and quality control, and she said she would also work on bringing Norman a modern public transit system that would connect to all cities in the Oklahoma City metro area.

Rosenthal’s first campaigning event will be a canned food drive at the Norman Holiday Parade on Dec. 12. She said there will be a collection and a small party at the Norman Train Depot between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. that day.

Expect snow Wednesday morning

Norman could see its first snow of the season Wednesday morning, a meteorologist at the National Weather Center said.

“We have forecasted a small chance of a light dusting of snow on the ground Wednesday morning,” Erin Maxwell, meteorologist at the National Weather Center, said. Maxwell said the potential for a small accumulation on grassy areas is possible, but people should expect more of a rain and snow mix rather than any significant snowfall.

“If there are any accumulations, it will only be around in the morning,” Maxwell said. “The afternoon will be warm enough to melt away anything that is around.”

Maxwell said the weather is part of a Canadian air mass that will bring cold temperatures to the state through the weekend.

The National Weather Center predicts temperatures will not reach any higher then the upper-40s through the weekend, Maxwell said.

“It’s become really cold lately because we were receiving cold fronts from the Pacific that were more like cool fronts, and now we are receiving cold fronts from Canada that actually feel like cold fronts,” Maxwell said.

She said cold fronts in the past few days are colder because they are coming directly in from Canada instead of the Pacific northwest.