All Revved up With Nowhere to Go
By Josh Resnek
The mayor is bored with being the mayor.
He hates going into his office at city hall.
He is rarely there.
He dislikes having to appear before the city council, and does so only when absolutely necessary.
He’s been there and done that so many times during the past decade that it is like putting nails in his eyes to have to talk with councilors or to debate measures he simply wants passed.
At this point in his career the mayor of Everett wants initiatives, whatever they are, to be done his way or not at all.
His vision is the only vision.
His ideas are the only ideas.
He believes he owns the keys to the city – that Everett is his – that everything he’s done over the years constitutes a big owe to him from the people of the city.
“I’m owed for everything I’ve done for this city,” he has repeatedly said to his colleagues in the public forum.
He believes this.
His salary of almost $200,000 is but a pittance compared with what he believes he is owed.
So what is a big feeling guy like the mayor to do about his future? More than most of us, he understands how he is locked into his job. He has nowhere to go.
Politically he is a dead item.
He tried for the senate and lost miserably.
Being a rep doesn’t interest him, or if it does, he can’t afford to be a rep. For that matter, he can’t afford to be a senator.
Not enough salary and benefits to sustain his carefree, work-free lifestyle.
When he dreams he probably sees himself as a governor or a congressman…but those are absolute impossibilities.
He has neither the stature, the integrity, the intelligence or the work ethic to gain either of those positions in 1000 years. Politics is his life but money is his God.
Cash is his religion.
Deals are his passion.
He is unsatisfied today with being mayor.
It is, after all, tiring doing the same thing year in and year out for over a decade.
In a perfect world he’d rather be rich.
Being rich is what interests him.
Staying at the Ritz in Aruba while all his friends stay at the Holiday Inn is part of his persona.
He likes acting rich.
He likes feeling rich.
He enjoys his big salary without having to work for it. He really enjoys that.
He’d rather be untroubled by spending more than he earns, always. He wants cash and needs more cash always.
Everyone who knows him well knows this.
He has watched over or presided over real estate deals here in the city that have made developers very rich.
He has a strong jealous streak about those who are better off than he is financially.
A few of his developer friends can often come to feel the jealousy and to be affected by it in their dealings with him.
He wants what others have and frankly, he’s jealous and upset that their success and bank accounts can’t be his.
This is a difficult way to live when you’re the mayor of Everett. The mayor should be happy he is where he is and that he has what he has.
n a perfect world, he couldn’t really do much better if he tried. Locked out of a world that would give him access to higher public office, absent of a work ethic, reduced to duties he would rather not have to perform, he is a guy all revved up with nowhere to go.
He is locked inside this city where he grew up wishing he had options to go elsewhere to be bigger elsewhere to make more money, to wield more power.
It ain’t going to happen.
He’s stuck here with many of his closest supporters knowing how he feels.
They know how bored he is, how anxious he gets, how uptight his existence as the mayor is making him after a decade.
Being the mayor is a touch job if you love your position in life and cherish it.
It is made all the more difficult when you wish you could be elsewhere, with more money, more influence and more power. It is hard being at a dead end when you haven’t yet turned 50.