By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

Nine months isn’t a long time when you’re talking about geological phenomena or waiting for a new tag at the DMV. But it is long enough to fully bake a baby and it’s nearly a quarter of a mayoral term of office. So now seems like a reasonable time to talk about the glacial pace with which Mayor Sam Jones appears to be birthing new ideas to move the city of Mobile forward.

Every politician deserves some kind of honeymoon period after election, but Jones’ first year is waning, and has probably outlasted many a marriage that took place around his inauguration. So it’s reasonable at this point to ask: What’s going on? Because frankly my dear, it doesn’t appear much new is happening.

Don’t get me wrong, the city’s still moving forward. We have too much momentum from Mike Dow’s 16 years at the helm to go dead calm in just nine months. And to be sure, there are plenty of people other than the mayor who push the local agenda forward, so we’re not floundering – see David Bronner and the RSA. But it’s looking more and more like we’ve got a shrinking violet in the mayor’s office.

Instead of having a highly visible, energetic leader out front selling the city, taking risks and pushing us forward, we appear to have elected a very capable bureaucrat who is absolutely content to quietly stay in the shallow end of the pool where he won’t have to make any waves, or even swim, for that matter.

Think about it, in the past nine months, what’s come out of the mayor’s office? Well, let’s see, there was a “citizens report” put together by an ad hoc advisory committee of just about every Mobilian over the age of 25. Jones is apparently pushing hard for lots and lots of police roadblocks, and he jumped right in to save the life of Spencer the pit bull a couple of weeks ago. Otherwise, most of what you hear from the mayor’s office is deafening silence.

Where are the big ideas? Where is the next “String of Pearls?” Where is the mayor on the big issues?

When ConocoPhillips recently proposed a liquefied natural gas terminal off our shores that would have had a direct impact on people living in and around this city, all we heard from Jones’ office was crickets chirping. Where does the mayor’s office stand on the various routes being considered for the construction of a high-rise bridge over downtown Mobile? We don’t know.

“Silent Sam’s” strategy served him well for years as a county commissioner, but that’s an entirely different position. The mayor is the city’s salesman and head coach rolled into one. He is the face of the city, and like it or not, the mayor is the outward face we show to the rest of the country and world. Sam seems like a nice enough guy. Maybe I’ll actually see him around town sometime and meet him. But either by personality or political strategy, he seems determined to lay low and only speak when it’s absolutely necessary.

I’ve heard from more than a few business owners who are beginning to express concern that Jones is an invisible mayor. They certainly feel he lacks Dow’s hands-on approach and desire to walk in and take the pulse of the city at street level. Quite to the contrary, I hear much of Jones’ pulse taking is conducted with great regularity in one of the city’s finest dining establishments.

Recently, a city official confided that there is a vacuum at City Hall because Jones is so unengaged in many aspects of city leadership and spends significant amounts of time traveling out-of-town. This person said the result is various division heads within the city running into each other trying to take control of what they see as a rudderless ship. It’s true what they say – nature abhors a vacuum.

Frankly it was somewhat surprising when Jones took office that he didn’t immediately make public some sort of master plan. One would expect as a county commissioner for so many years, he would have had a good idea of what he’d do once he was riding in the mayor’s bulletproof SUV.

It looked bush-league when his first bit of business was to put together some uncohesive citizens’ panel as a starting point for seminal ideas on where the city should be moving. It looked primarily like a ploy for getting the largest number of people to feel some “ownership” in Sam’s administration, so they’d be less likely to criticize. And to this day, it still doesn’t seem to have produced any real ideas. The report is probably gathering dust on the mayor’s bookcase for all we know.

Jones probably feels little media pressure to do much, as he’s not likely to catch any flak from the local daily newspaper after the Press-Register flogged for him with such gusto in editorials during the election. Incidentally kids, that’s why newspapers shouldn’t endorse candidates. The Press-Register mullahs say Sam’s their man, and he’ll have to do something pretty bad to screw up the love fest.

This column may come off a bit harsh, but I’ve been waiting nine months to see some sign we don’t just have a timid, caretaker mayor. I’m still waiting.

It’s not that Sam’s running us into a ditch, but coasting along with no apparent destination is nearly as bad. This city still has places it needs to go.

I hope Jones uses his next three-and-a-quarter years like it’s all he’s guaranteed – because it is. In the meantime, can someone please talk Mike Dow into considering a comeback?

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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