Sunday conversation with Steve Carrington - Palmer City Councilman

Steve, when did you start on City Council and how long have you been on the council?

SC How long have I been on the council? I always have trouble counting it up. I first got on in 1996. That was a strange year where they had the two 3-year terms, a 2-year term and a 1-year term and so I went for the 1 year term and got on then served a full term after that, lost an election, got on again in 2001, and served a full term. I think I won another election but my son was born and family just seemed a much higher priority to me then so I stepped down off the council. And then I got back on four and a half, five years ago and served. I’m on my second consecutive term. I like reminding the other council people if we ever did have term limits I still wouldn’t be termed out even though I’ve served so many different terms.

So what’s an issue that’s come before the council recently that you’d like to focus on or that you think needs attention?

SC The whole policing sheriff issue that the Borough has kind of started talking about has kind of caught my interest. Our city manager made a presentation that kind of looked at if we were to do policing past our city limits border what would it look like? What would it take? And it gets a little bit complicated because we have jurisdiction within our city limits and we start going past our city limits and it becomes more complicated. But to me that lets me ask the question ‘are our city limits the appropriate size?’ We’re a very dense small town. We have a high population in a small area and I think we should be looking at growth. And it needs to be appropriate growth, it shouldn’t be gobble up everything you can. I think we should be looking at that and to me that would relieve some of the pressure for at least some of the people that are in the greater Palmer area.

So what’s going on with plastic bags concerning the Palmer City Council?

Plastic bags… That’s kind of an interesting issue I didn’t know a whole lot about until they made a presentation at a Council meeting and we did have some Q and A and some dialogue about it. It’s an issue I mean it’s got me thinking about how many plastic bags do I collect in a week, much less throughout the month, et cetera. But I’ve also got this other philosophy where I tend to be rather libertarian where I know some people would like the council just ‘hey, this is the right thing to do make a decision and go for it’. But I am not inclined to do that I want to make sure the people understand it so I, my inclination is to try to understand more about what’s happening with the plastic bags. And if it’s that important of an issue do some information to the people and then let the people say like in a regular election say in the fall if they want to ban it or not. That would tend to be my approach.

So who’s a colleague of yours that you admire that maybe brings something unique to the city Council?

I really appreciate our Mayor Edna (DeVries). I’ve known Mayor Edna DeVries for decades and decades. I remember playing football with her son when I was a teenager. One of the things she does as Mayor is she brings a sense of humor - and it’s appropriate humor - but she doesn’t hesitate to crack a joke. It helps people feel at ease. It keeps us kind of feeling a little bit more human. And since a lot of what the council does is about communication I think it’s real good that you have that interaction where people feel a little bit more at ease. This is a real person I can actually talk to.

Speaking of humor and politics: I think you are the king of the end of meeting board council comments pun dropper. You always have some sort of bad joke that you drop. Why and is there a joke book that’s sitting on your desk or what’s the inspiration for some of these wonderfully terrible jokes?

I think it was a few years back someone had criticized me that I didn’t talk enough. I’m in a public office I should be communicating more. One of the places that you can easily do it is councilman comments which is at the end. But I tend to appreciate humor and so as the meetings can kind of stretch on and on and on I can start to look at, oh, hey, I could make a pun here. To me it’s just kind of putting an exclamation point at the end of the meeting. It’s whatever I kind of see or come up with and I know poor Councilman LaFrance usually has to follow me so I kind of think he hates it but I just can’t help myself sometimes.