Meet Arnold Mayoral Candidate Ron Counts

Patch sent all local candidates for office questionnaires in order to compile candidate profiles prior to the April election. Each candidate who returned the survey will be featured on the site.

Ron Counts, 66 (Candidate for Arnold mayor)

• Address: 1720 East Highview, Arnold, MO
• Occupation: Business Owner, Counts Auto Body
• Education: Associate of Science in Business Administration, Jefferson College
• Family: Married to Gaye for 45 years with two children and five grandchildren
• Years lived in the Fox School District: Lifelong resident
• Please provide a brief summary of your background, highlighting community involvement if applicable. 
  • Served on the Fox C-6 School Board for nine years (1993-2001) including two years as president         
  • Served on the Rock Township Ambulance Board of Directors (as Treasurer) from 2003 to 2010         
  • Board member of the St. Louis Chapter Juvenile Diabetes Foundation from 1983-1989         
  • Arnold Chamber of Commerce from 1991-2008         
  • Past president and a member of the Arnold Rotary from 1993 to current
• Please provide a brief summary of your reasons for running: I have served in this position for four years and have successfully balanced the budget with a $1 million shortfall accounting error when coming into office. Being a lifelong resident, I understand the community’s needs and appreciate their heritage and contributions made to this city. I have demonstrated leadership experience through several previous positions and want to give back to the community for the many things that they have given me.

Questions

1. What do you currently see as the biggest issue facing Arnold?  

The biggest problem I see facing our community is still the economic growth of income and jobs for our local citizens. I have employed an Economic Development Director working with local businesses to improve their business and also go out and seek new business. My commitment was, and still is, to bring meaningful employment and long lasting economic development to our City. The other biggest problem facing us is to make sure that we have the best qualified person employed as our new City Administrator. I have created a search committee that is working to establish criteria for this position. I want the April elected officials to participate in this process. Our community’s long term growth is dependent on the person selected.

2. How do you plan to ensure the best use of taxpayer dollars?  

By maintaining a balanced budget and checking department heads to ensure that they stay within their budget is the single most way of using the entrusted money properly. The City Council makes up the budget and many give and takes are the result of creating a balanced budget. I will not ever agree to a budget that is larger than our projected income. This is fiscally irresponsible.

 3. In what area does the Arnold need to improve? Are you satisfied with the way the city has been operating?

I would like to increase Police Dept. to help insure safety of our citizens, as budget will allow. We need to develop a long term plan for our Water and Sanitary sewer services. I would like to see our Council working together to move our City forward.

4. Assume you win the election. What single thing do you want to accomplish during your time as mayor? 

I have three very high priority activities that I feel must be accomplished if re-elected:

• Continue to advance economic growth through business expansions and job creation using the service of our new Economic Development Director.  
• Hire the best qualified person as the City’s Administrator through the use of a research committee.
• Continue to balance the City’s budget and also improve the infrastructure for storm water and sewage.     

5. Many in the community have expressed discourse over the manner in which the city council recently has conducted business. Specifically, community members have asked councilmembers to stop "bickering" and "do the jobs they were elected to do." How to you plan to address this moving forward as mayor?

The current city council is quite fractionalized. This is good for stimulating new ideas, but extremely bad when there is no compromise, which is our current state. As Mayor, I am hopeful that the council members will recognize their duty to serve the community at large and leave their personal issues at home. We have a fine city and wonderful city employees. As the city leader, it is extremely important to set a positive tone in all that I do. Negativity breeds more negativity and by keeping myself above this, I believe that we can weed out some of the “bickering” referred to here. This will not happen overnight, but with a continuous positive influence, it will happen.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article did not include Counts' age or the answer to Question 3 because the information was not provided by publication deadline. The article was updated Monday morning with the information.