A remarkable speech was delivered in Jefferson County just before Thanksgiving by a remarkable man – Arnold Ward 3 Councilman Phil Amato.
Now 62, Amato has served his community in a variety of volunteer activities over the last 40 years, including stints as a city councilman separated literally by decades, big-time civic club involvement and long service on the Jefferson County Library Board of Trustees and the Arnold Food Pantry.
The man does good work and plenty of it.
He also has a certain – what’s the word? – style or flair when it comes to his public service. For example, he used to ceremoniously cross goals or promises off a written list at meetings as they were fulfilled. Another Amato promise delivered!
These very public pronouncements, like the recent one, frequently are accompanied by a statement that it’s not about him – it’s about the good of the community! The number of eye-rolls in the room are a barometer of how well each disclaimer is believed.
Tons of service, tons of something else. A complicated guy.
The Nov. 17 speech at the Arnold City Council meeting was a doozy, even for Phil. He proposed an ordinance limiting any Arnold mayor to two four-year terms. By the oddest of coincidences, incumbent Mayor Ron Counts, a popular mayor and longtime volunteer himself, is about to wrap up his second four-year term and intends to run for a third in April.
However, Phil, in his familiar manner of saying this-is-not-about-Phil and then talking about the selflessness and service of Phil, made this pledge:
If the bill passed, he would not file for mayor in April!
He also outlined his concern for the health and energy of mayors, modestly noting that he had been asked to deliver eulogies for two of Arnold’s three deceased mayors, most of whom, he implied, were played out after one term from the strain.
The concern presumably includes the 70-year-old Counts, who, in another amazing coincidence, beat Amato in the mayoral race of 2009.
Amato imagines that being mayor can really take it out of you, though he doesn’t really know firsthand because it is a brass ring that has eluded him – so far.
Counts, a trim, energetic man, says he’s feeling fine and plans to continue feeling fine. He also added, possibly tongue-in-cheek, that the proposed ordinance sounded like age discrimination to him.
We ordinarily don’t take internal polls on such things, but it seemed like a good idea for this topic, so I polled a few denizens of Baby Boomer-heavy Leader World Headquarters, aka the Journalism Center for the Aged.
Taking this poll was a little sensitive because some of our people might be a little touchy about revealing – shall we say – the depth and longevity of their experience. But what the heck.
I started with our award-winning cartoonist, Judy Dixon. I will not give away her exact age, except to say she graduated from college before I was born, and I have passed full retirement age for Social Security. One more hint – Judy is about to celebrate a significant birthday with a zero at the end.
As she would doubtless want emphasized, NOT TWO ZEROES.
Not yet.
Her position, basically, is that if the citizens of Arnold still want a 70-year-old whippersnapper to be their mayor, despite his obvious shortage of life experience, they should be free to elect him.
It was a similar reaction elsewhere in the World Headquarters, which is inhabited with many Social Security-eligible employees who keep chugging along in the dead-tree business, partially because we love it, partially because we all have bills to pay and partially because …
What was the question again?
Baby Boomers once didn’t trust anyone over 30. Now quite a few of us don’t know anyone under 30, not counting grandkids. The Leader might be the only workplace in Jefferson County where a newly hired 45-year-old is referred to as “the kid.”
How old are we? We’re so old we assigned a desk in the office to the local AARP rep. We’re so old that when some of us were born, the Dead Sea was only sick. We’re so old a few of us have single-digit Social Security numbers.
I even inquired of my dog, Gracie, who we believe to be more ancient than all of us. She is a 13-year-old Lab still going strong, who, according to my science-oriented daughter, “has outlived her expected longevity by at least two standard deviations.” I’m not sure what that means in human years or in any other sense, really. But, predictably, Gracie indicated she is against all age-related limitations.
It’s uncertain whether Phil Amato has the steam or influence among his fellow wizards on the council to get his bill passed. Ron Counts is a clever guy, and invoking Amato’s bill as “unappreciative of our seniors” was genius. Obviously his brain is still functioning in high gear, so he’s probably good for another term.
Seniors vote. Some of them work at newspapers. And one or two of them like being mayor and do a good job at it.
Back down, Junior.
