“Listen, I'm going to thank you in advance for getting off this phone before I forget I am a mayor, forget I am a long-term civil professional, forget my grandfather is a Lee-of-the-mountain, and forget I am a Christian and cuss you clean, smooth, and completely out for canceling all the county's emergency's preparations and then calling me as the mayor of the city of Big Loft and expecting me to solve the county's problems that you created.”
Mayor Donald Lee Garner Jr's staff heard him clear down the hall …
“Yeah, that's that extra thunderclap,” an experienced staffer said to a wide-eyed intern who was just stunned at the week's turn of events. “Mayor Garner is fairly chill, but today is not that day.”
Big Loft, VA, like Tinyville, VA, had prepared well for Hurricane Mneme throwing an arm over Lofton County. The mayor had been surprised by the amount of rain from Hurricane Justicia, but the city under his leadership had not been caught unprepared even then. He had upgraded everything he could … but been completely outdone that the county supervisors, stationed right down the proverbial hall, had canceled emergency preparations because Mneme was weakening and turning back out to sea.
“Look, people – the thing is one thousand miles wide and has weakened from a Category 5 to a Category 4, meaning instead of blowing at 157 miles per hour, it is blowing at 156!” he said when he called into the board meeting.
The majority had not listened, although some of the better supervisors made it clear they did not agree with the majority decision and would be looking after their districts. To the rest, Mayor Garner had made it clear: city resources before and after were going to support the city, and since the county was not going to be providing help in preparing because it no longer recognized an impending emergency, the city was not going to strain itself helping the county with an emergency that it had declared did not exist.
14 inches of rain, 50-mile-an-hour wind gusts, and five tornadoes later, the board president tried it … and heard the mayor's response echoing from the phone and down the hall .. still professional, but the mayor had an immensely resonant baritone voice, and when he wanted it to be heard throughout City Hall, it was.
“I told you a week ago: I'm not helping you with an emergency you said didn't exist at the expense of the city, so you fill out a voucher and get the county in line behind all the city requests, and you don't call here again until you do. Is that clear?”
“What I don't understand,” the wide-eyed intern said to the experienced staffer, “is why if the mayor told him what he was and was not going to do, why the county guy called and asked anyway.”
“They don't understand no, and Mayor Garner was supposed to be just a caretaker mayor and not cause any trouble. He wasn't even planning to run, but now they have him mad enough to go on and accept being drafted to run again because the mayor is not with the foolishness and is not about to have all the work he has done since 2019 undone by the type of people that caused the designated succession line to get all the way down to him in the first place.”
“What?” said the intern.
“There's stuff I need to tell you,” the experienced staffer said with a smile, “but I'm pacing myself because you have such pretty eyes, and we need them to not fall right out of your head.”