Lori Arons is learning about life on the other side of the dais.
Arons, 62, of Imperial was appointed on Jan. 29 to fill the District 3 seat on the Jefferson County Council that has been vacant since November when Shannon Otto resigned.
Otto had served 11 months of her four-year term, and Arons will be the District 3 representative until after the November 2026 election, when the seat will be up for election.
Arons said she is not sure whether she’ll run for a full term and will make that decision later.
The remaining council members interviewed five applicants for the vacant seat during the open portion of the Jan. 29 meeting and then during a closed session that night voted to appoint Arons.
County Clerk Jeannie Goff then swore in Arons, who took her seat among the other council members and participated in several votes.
“It was different being up there,” said Arons, who has regularly attended County Council and Planning and Zoning Commission meetings over the past couple of years, frequently speaking out about county government operations, particularly on development issues.
She also is the founder and co-administrator of two Facebook groups, Jeffco Voters Voices for Responsible Development in Jefferson County and Involved Citizens for Responsible Growth in Jefferson County.
“I’ve tried to help people,” she said of her role as a county government watchdog. “If the county is going to approve development, we wanted it to conform to the UDO (Unified Development Order) and be in the character of the area involved. Some of the projects we spoke out about, they didn’t meet the codes.
“But we weren’t a group of no. I also spoke in favor of some developments that are good for the county.”
Now, Arons will be one of the seven council members making those decisions.
“I’ve relinquished my role as administrator of the (Facebook) groups,” she said. “I will continue to follow those groups and provide a comment from time to time.”
Arons had not previously held public office but said her dealings with county government have given her “valuable experience about what the role of county government is and what its responsibilities include.”
She said her biggest priority is to see the completion of a revised county master plan.
“It’s not necessarily something that as a council member I will have a lot of control over, but I want to see that completed as soon as possible,” she said. “It’s the roadmap to guide development in the county over the next 20 or 30 years.”
Arons said she also wants to see improvements to the audio and visual aspects of recorded meetings and better communication between county government and residents.
A native of south St. Louis, Arons graduated from Bayless High School in south St. Louis County and earned a bachelor’s degree in vocal music education with a minor in church music from Mid-America Nazarene University in Olathe, Kan., in 1983.
She then worked as a music teacher in Venice, Ill., where she met her husband of 35 years: Leonard.
Arons was then the choir director at the Fox C-6 School District’s Ridgewood Middle School for 18 years, starting in 1996, and after earning master’s degrees in educational administration (from Southwest Baptist University) and in library science (from Missouri Baptist University), she was the librarian at the Fox district’s Seckman Elementary School until her retirement in 2020.
Since then, she has worked as a substitute teacher in the Fox, Northwest R-1 and Windsor C-1 school districts.
She and Leonard, also a retired teacher, built a house in Imperial in 2001.
She said when she was first approached about applying for the District 3 vacancy, she wasn’t receptive but after a second person asked her to run, she began to think about it.
“By the time I was asked a third time, my husband told me, ‘Sometimes the position calls the person. You have to do this.’ And I put in my application.
“I’m very honored and very excited to have been chosen.”
The vote
The other four applicants for the seat included Phil Hendrickson, a former District 3 council member; Charles Huey, a private probation officer; Mark Jones, a manger for a logistics company; and Oscar Harrel, an industrial systems developer at the Boeing Co.
Per the council’s rules of procedure to fill a vacant seat, the names of each of the candidates were brought up, but none of them received at least four votes during the first round. Another round of voting failed to produce a winner.
Councilman Scott Seek (District 5, Festus) did not participate in either round of voting, citing what he called irregularities with the process, and Brian Haskins (District 1, High Ridge) did not participate in the second round.
Under the council’s rules, each council member then ranked each candidate, and Arons emerged as the winner. Neither Seek nor Haskins participated in the ranked voting.
Haskins cited a difference in the way the first two votes were taken compared with when Gene Barbagallo was selected for the vacant District 2 seat in January 2023 to succeed Renee Reuter, who was elected to the state House of Representatives.
At that time, a council member nominated one of the applicants and a vote was taken. Two votes on two different candidates did not produce the required four votes, but instead of going to the rankings, the council suspended its rules and elected Barbagallo on the third vote.
“Scott and I believe this is a violation of the charter, which requires the remaining council members to appoint someone by a majority vote,” Haskins said. “The way they did it this time, bringing up each candidate in order, you could only vote for one of the candidates, so if you voted for the first person, you were out of it for the rest of the (round). We vote on everything we do, but something this important, we don’t take a vote on who is going to be appointed? It makes no sense to me.”
However, both Haskins and Seek said their protest wasn’t meant to reflect on Arons or her qualifications.
“Absolutely not,” Haskins said. “This is about not following the charter.”
After reconvening into open session, council chair Charles Groeteke (District 4, Barnhart) announced that Arons was appointed.
“These decisions are very contentious and require a lot of deliberation,” he said. “It’s not an easy decision for any of us.”