Long-serving mayor no longer has to bail out town

COLBERT --- There's no official list of the country's longest-serving mayors, but if there were one, Colbert's John Waggoner would surely be on it.

This week, Mr. Waggoner begins his 20th two-year term as mayor of this Madison County town -- his 39th year.

Mr. Waggoner, 72, said he never set out to get elected as mayor of the town of about 500 people for even one year, much less the 40 he will have served at the end of his upcoming term.

But back in 1969, when Mr. Waggoner was first elected, city council members and mayors were "turning over pretty regular" in Colbert, and a group of council members and other citizens asked Mr. Waggoner to meet with them, he said.

"That's when they jumped on me to run," he said.

The first year, Mr. Waggoner and the council members paid their taxes early so the city would have enough money to make the city payroll.

There's been a lot less controversy since then, though 40 people did come to one heated council meeting about eight or nine years ago, Mr. Waggoner said. The issue that divided the town was speed bumps, which had been installed on one street to slow down some teenage speedsters.

With so many opposed to the speed bumps, the council sold them to a neighboring town and asked the Madison County sheriff to do more traffic enforcement.

"I like keeping things on an even keel," said Mr. Waggoner, who has also seen the city's finances improve since that first year.

"We don't really have that many earth-shaking problems, really," said Mr. Waggoner's wife of 50 years, Ann. "Maybe dogs."

Mrs. Waggoner makes the mayor's job a family one -- she has worked part time in city hall for about 20 years, she said.

Tending to the city's day-to-day business keeps them close to Colbert, but that's fine, Mrs. Waggoner said.

"We're kind of homebodies. We were always tied down, but we chose that," she said.

The couple's daughters and grandchildren also live nearby. Angie Waggoner is principal of Danielsville Elementary School, and Alisa Shiflet lives nearby with her husband, Corey, and the Waggoners' two young grandsons, Austin, 6, and Peyton, 4.

The city's budget this year calls for spending just more than $300,000. And unlike Mr. Waggoner's first year, the mayor and council won't have to pay their taxes early to make budget. The city begins 2008 with a $42,000 surplus, a contingency fund built up in previous years, Mr. Waggoner said.

That includes Mr. Waggoner's salary as mayor -- $3,000. It was $150 a year when Mr. Waggoner took office in January 1969.

The mayor's job is simpler than it used to be for Mr. Waggoner. When he began, part of the job was running the city's small water system with one other city worker. One year that meant spending Christmas Eve repairing broken water pipes, he said.

Now a private company runs the water system.

Mr. Waggoner's philosophy as mayor isn't complicated.

"The main thing is just having as much common sense as you can," he said.

But the people in town have usually made it easy, he said.