A Few Minutes with the Mayor – August 2020

I got up the usual way this morning… one eye half closed and legs that wobbled with a message to stop at once, crawl back under the sheets and go back to sleep. Rejecting such temptation, I groped my way to the bathroom. Reaching the bathroom mirror, one look at the bleary-eyed creature staring back at me was enough to wake me up and get me in the shower. What a sight! Had I been at a wild or riotous party last night? No, the eyes weren’t bloodshot. The image staring back was simply old looking, as if ready for mummification. While staring at the creature that was me, an inner voice exclaimed, “Look at yourself! It’s time to pass the torch… it’s time to retire!”

Ginger Rogers once told me that Howard Hughes believed that after ten years in a job, an employee had nothing more to offer and it was time to bring in someone new. That was just one of Howard’s flawed ideas. I do believe in term limits for politicians but that’s for entirely different reasons. Notwithstanding, come December, I will have been your Mayor for ten years. It is time to move over for younger and fresher insight as municipal affairs go! If the image in the mirror could talk, it would agree.

I have enjoyed being your Mayor. The challenges were severe when I took office in a city racked by discord, fueled by mistrust, misinformation and mismanagement as regards city affairs. Today we are blessed with a city staff as professional and dedicated as any I’ve ever seen, public or private. Our department heads are the finest in all of Jackson County. Our Police, Fire, and Public Works department are models for others to emulate. If you think I tout their virtues too strongly, I have letters from citizens thanking them, year after year.

We’ve accomplished a few achievements along the way, in spite of the occasional doomsdayer or naysayer. The old Courthouse was saved and now serves as a modern City Hall and a public venue. Our Police and Fire departments are in full operation and paid for. We have an Arts Center adjacent to City Hall which in practice has created a City Center for our citizens. And lastly, we have run everything on a balanced budget, which is more than our national leaders can claim. But none of this could have been done without the support and effort provided by our City Administrator… Jeff Alvis.

Jeff’s “roots” go back to Oklahoma. I lived in Oklahoma at one time and know what that means. Oklahoma’s state motto is, “Labor Omnia Vincit” which means “Work conquers all.” Jeff Alvis is the living personification of that motto. For the better part of a decade, he saved our citizens at least $70,000 dollars per year by taking on a double workload… that of Public Works Manager and City Administrator. There is virtually nothing he does not know about Water and the management of that resource. Water is a commodity most of us take for granted, until we run out of it. Jeff’s foresight and management of our water supply will carry Jacksonville for decades to come.

When it comes to construction or building or maintenance, he knows almost every contractor, supplier, or builder in the Valley. In turn, they know he’s honest and doesn’t play games.

In more than half a century of working with others, he is as good a manager as I have ever seen. His secret is in his use of common sense… a virtue too often lacking in today’s world.

He has made my job as your Mayor that much easier. I shall miss working with him.

I shall also miss writing this column. Your new Mayor will take it over next year. Now I have a small understanding of how the famed columnist Herb Caen (Mr. San Francisco) must have felt when he retired. Blowing my own bugle in print has been quite a kick! For that I am indebted to the talented editor and publisher of this paper… Whit Parker. He has allowed me total editorial control of what I write… a freedom which I attempted to never abuse.

Finally, it has been said that often, when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else. Retirement is merely closing a door at a point in one’s life. Comes January, the next door awaits. There is a book I’ve promised to finish. It’s about a friend of mine from Hollywood’s golden cinema. But that’s after I retire!