New councilmen have fresh vision for Jacksonville
JACKSONVILLE — As a result of November’s election, the Jacksonville City Council has two new aldermen.
Danielle “Rose” Rains beat Roger Sundermeier Jr. for the Ward 5, Position 2 seat held by Les Collins, who opted not to run for re-election. Rains, at 23, is the youngest Jacksonville council member since former Mayor Gary Fletcher won a seat when he was just 18 years old.
“I was genuinely shocked with the rest of us [that I won],” Rains said. “The unlikely margins were icing on the cake and reinforced my belief — this is far greater than me.”
Rains earned 3,950 votes to Sundermeier’s 2,269.
Brian Blevins beat Lance Dulaney with 52 percent of the vote for the Ward 2, Position 1 seat that had been vacated by former Police Chief Gary Sipes. Blevins was sworn in Dec. 8, and the first council meeting for him took place Dec. 17. Rains will be sworn in on Jan. 6.
“I saw both sides of the progression and retrogression for what the city was doing,” Blevins said. “The decisions that were being made were not making things better for the people who were supporting [certain council members].
“I wanted to be the voice for the people who need it.”
Rains said she was inspired to run for the City Council as a result of her desire for a better future.
“My mother taught me my family history at a young age, and I learned that I, granddaughter of Rose Madison, am a descendent to one of our founding fathers,” she said. “Coach Todd Romaine taught me that history holds wisdom and what not to do, the power in it and the power in those who, despite every obstacle imaginable, show up to humbly claim their day.”
She said the late Cliff Happy taught her not to automatically believe one version of history just because someone wrote it or said so, but to understand all points of view.
“I hope to inspire my nation to recognize their own share of the responsibility of our civic duty,” she said. “I will work on getting fair representation, which is constitutionally our right, and seeking resolution to the ‘at large’ issue.”
She said that in Jacksonville, the council members’ positions are separated by wards, but with ‘at-large’ voting, every person votes to determine who represents the wards, even if the voter doesn’t live in that specific ward.
Blevins said he has been a quite vocal person in the community of Jacksonville in the past few years, especially being critical of Jacksonville Police Department expenditures and certain council members meeting in private in violation of open-meeting laws for the council.
Gary Fletcher was the mayor of Jacksonville from 2009 to 2018 and has known Blevins for almost 10 years.
“Brian has been very involved in this community, and anytime he sees a need, he has stepped up and filled it,” Fletcher said. “He’s just a giving person and wants to make a difference.”
In 2018, Blevins secured donations of food and money for the Boys & Girls Club of Jacksonville and its feeding programs. He also donated a 3-D printer and three 40-inch flat-screen TVs to the Martin Street Youth Center that year.
One thing Blevins would like to change during his time on the council, he said, is to modify the ordinance that Fletcher instilled that bans pit bulls. Blevins said he wants to replace the ordinance with a very strict regulation process for the dogs like the regulations that
have been implemented in cities such as Cabot and Sherwood.
“I worked very hard for about 15 years getting that in place,” Fletcher said. “So we disagree a lot at times, but Blevins has about four or five things that he is already trying to tackle.
“He is going to keep the council busy, it sounds like.”
“When we eliminate all the reasons for people not to live here,” Blevins said, “it will give them reasons why they want to live here.”
He said he would also like to create a junior city council to help engage the youth and families of the area with what is happening in Jacksonville.
“We need to win back the trust of the citizens, and the only way to do that is to listen to them and hear what they have to say,” Blevins said.
Rains graduated from North Pulaski High School in 2015 and attended college at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, with a double major in business information systems and computer science. She put a pause on her college education, half a dozen classes away from finishing, during her second AmeriCorps service year.
“I was being called to greater things and needed to make sure to make time to take of myself as well,” she said. “I look forward to finishing out the undergraduate degrees and pursing graduate school, studying economics.”
She said that by serving on the City Council, she hopes to get fair representation.
“My vision is of a community fairly represented by our leaders — leaders who are able to hold this city accountable for its responsibilities,” she said, “whether inherited from prior administrations or otherwise, and not to push things off to the next generation.
“[We need] those who will listen to their community instead of making the position about their own beliefs.”
Blevins graduated from high school in Tennessee in 1996 and moved to Jacksonville from Sumter, South Carolina, about 23 years ago. He is the former owner of the Game Store in Jacksonville; the business closed at the end of 2018. Part of his goal as an alderman is for the city to hire a full-time economic developer and a director of communications who will run the city’s social media-accounts and update its website.
“We have an outdated website, and that is our lifeline to the city,” he said. “I don’t think [some of the other councilmen] understand that is the most vital tool that we have to reach out to the city as a whole.”
Rains said that even though she is the youngest alderman, she will no longer allow herself to be challenged “by another’s willful ignorance or personal biases.”
“When I am firmly and unapologetically me, most people reflect and give me the basic human respect we all deserve,” Rains said. “We need to have a representation of diverse perspectives.
“That is not just age, but also sex, race, religion, creed and color. We need to seek to understand all points of view.”
“I am not wasting these two years,” Blevins said. “I am going to come out with guns ablaze. … I’m going to be unlike any City Council member that these citizens have seen.”