Scrivner offers parting lessons from eight years on council

After eight years, 3rd Ward Councilman Bob Scrivner attended his final meeting as a member of the Jefferson City Council last night.

Scrivner actually presided over his final council meeting in his role as mayor pro tempore, which required him to step in when Mayor Carrie Tergin was absent. After eight years on the council, Scrivner has been termed out.

Council members are not eligible to serve after eight years on the council and, at last night’s meeting, Scrivner saw his replacement, Erin Wiseman, get sworn in before taking what had been his seat for the better part of a decade.

But becoming a council member really was never part of Scrivner’s plan.

Scrivner was originally appointed to a vacant 3rd Ward council seat in October 2008. But, he said, he had been contacted several times before that about running for open council seats, always saying no. When a seat was vacated, he said he agreed to be interviewed and once nominated, he had to quickly decide whether to run for the seat in the next spring election.

“I really went into it kind of cold,” Scrivner said. “I didn’t have an agenda … Honestly, I never thought past the first election.”

After that first election, Scrivner never had any other opposition to his seat, which he said could be attributed to either approval of the job he had done or simple apathy.

Scrivner said he also had never really thought about running for mayor until the opportunity presented itself in fall of 2014, when he announced his intention to run after having several people ask him to consider it. He ultimately lost that contest in April 2015 when Mayor Carrie Tergin won a six-way race for the office.

“I never visualized myself running for anything,” Scrivner said.

Scrivner said though he believes Jefferson City operates as a strong council-weak mayor form of government, the mayor has the ability to set the agenda, which is why he decided to run for the job.

“I thought an opportunity to be able to set the agenda was something that I thought I might be able to do,” Scrivner said. “With that being said, I think (Tergin) has done a good job.”

Though the council is the strongest part of Jefferson City’s government, Scrivner said he learned quickly that an individual council person has almost no power alone.

“That’s one thing I’ve learned is the weakest person in Jefferson City is a city councilman,” Scrivner said. “They have no power. I don’t care how passionate you are, I don’t care how much you believe in your cause, if you can’t get five councilmen to agree with you, you are powerless.”

In his eight years on the City Council, Scrivner saw the city change a lot in terms of processes and procedures, some of which were a direct result of his efforts. He points to the city’s electronic records system as something he pushed for as early as his first term and was eventually adopted and implemented citywide.

“It took me a while to get other council people interested in it,” Scrivner said. “It wasn’t met with a lot of enthusiasm from the staff at the time.”

Scrivner said he was the first one to propose the partnership between Lincoln University and the Jefferson City Parks and Recreation Commission for the planned Wellness Center on Lafayette Street, and he helped come up with a new plan for Frog Hollow Road that helped appease neighborhood concerns during the project. He said he was proud that he had been able to help double the city’s budget for its overlay program from $600,000 per year to $1.2 million and helped to increase the budget for stormwater projects.

The one thing he was never able to accomplish, he said, was trying to put in greenway trails in more residential neighborhoods through a city and parks partnership.

“I would have preferred to see concrete poured in neighborhoods so that people could get out at night and walk in their neighborhood, not get in a car and drive to a greenway,” Scrivner said, adding it would help make the neighborhood safer, encourage neighbors to get to know each other and help encourage healthy habits. “Sooner or later you’d have your city totally interconnected … I’d been pushing neighborhood greenways for eight years and I’ve made zero progress.”

When asked what he wished he had known before becoming a city councilman, Scrivner said “probably how little I knew.” Scrivner said he had been advised he would get phone calls constantly, but he didn’t find that to be the case, noting he’d get the most calls when a contentious issue arose.

“It was never really an imposition to me,” Scrivner said. “It was always something that if I could help, I tried to help.”

Scrivner said as he served on the council, he learned how quickly some people will abandon their principles when it suits them, noting perhaps he had been naive when he first came on.

He said he was able to learn from every person who has been on the council in his eight years and really enjoyed the experience.

“I came on the council with, I think, one guiding principle,” Scrivner said. “I’ll never vote or act on an issue out of fear that I might not be re-elected. I just promised myself I wouldn’t do that.”

In leaving the council, Scrivner said his list of guiding principles has expanded to include respect and follow the process, noting if the process isn’t serving the city well then it should be changed, pointing to the city’s budget process as an example.

“Follow your process,” Scrivner said. “There’s a tremendous pressure on councilmen, especially new councilmen … The pressure initially is whatever a constituent asks for, we should try to deliver and that’s not realistic.”

His principles also include to trust staff, but verify the information; the council sets policy but does not manage the city; and to disagree without being disagreeable.

“You don’t always, in some people’s eyes, meet that,” Scrivner said.

Now that Scrivner is leaving the council, he hopes to continue to do whatever he can to help move the city forward, though he isn’t quite sure what form that will take.

“One regret I would have in going off the council now is that I’d like to be able to help (Tergin) in moving the city forward,” Scrivner said. “The folks that are there, they’ll do a good job … I do feel like I have some institutional knowledge that could be useful.”