Lightsey decides to hang it up

By Jason Niblett, newseditor@laurelleadercall.com

March 15, 2009 12:51 pm

— SANDERSVILLE — Come June, Sandersville’s town hall will have a different feeling. Sure, there will be newly-elected officials who have just taken office, but it’s what will be missing that may seem a bit strange to long-time citizens. Pat Lightsey, the man who has served 12 years on the board of alderman and 16 years as mayor, has decided not to seek another term. Actually, the past two terms weren’t event supposed to happen for Lightsey. He was working in the private market eight years ago.
“I was happy as a pig running a sawmill,” Lightsey said. “That’s when Sybil (McDonald, former town clerk) told me, ‘I guess you know you’re running for mayor.’ She had the paperwork ready for me. All I had to do was sign. Then, four years ago I had enough. It was the same thing. ‘You’ve got to go one more term,’ she said, and she was going to go until now. Then she would have had her state retirement.”
The plan, however, didn’t work out that way for McDonald. She died in March 2005, just before Lightsey’s final election.
Lightsey sure has some memories over the years serving not only Sandersville’s citizens, but hundreds of students in the Jones County School District. He coached and taught many years. Two of his former students face each other as they campaign to replace Lightsey as the town’s mayor.
“The two that’s running, I taught them and coached them. They were both ball players. I’m out of this one. They are both good boys,” Lightsey said.
The man committed to a lifetime of public service also faces a unique struggle.
“I got polio the last year they had polio,” Lightsey said. “In 1956, I was in the last polio ward they had in Laurel. The vaccine had already come out. Children under five and pregnant women were getting it. They didn’t have enough.”
Lightsey said he has finally reached the time of his life when he is ready to rest.
“All these years, eight or 10 miles walking in the woods wasn’t anything, but these past three years ... I can’t do what mayors need to do. I can’t climb all those stairs at the EDA (Economic Development Authority of Jones County where mayors often hold meetings). That’s what you’ve got to do. I can’t do all that you need to do.”
Lightsey has seen his small town change over the years. He said he can remember not too many years ago when the annual budget was below $500,000. This year, it’s right at $1 million.
“We need it. We’ve got an old sewer system. We’re about to spend some money on that,” Lightsey said. “They run cameras now. You don’t even have to dig up a street anymore to check sewer lines. We’ve been real lucky so far.”
The town’s healthy budget has also helped Sandersville take an action one doesn’t see too often in Jones County.
“This is not the most important thing, but you won’t find it often,” Lightsey said.
Sandersville was able to begin cutting ad valorem taxes in 2007. Taxes went from 30.9 mills to 27 mills. In 1982, Lightsey said, he remembers when Sandersville went from having an elected marshal to a police department.
“I didn’t do it. We got the board to do it,” Lightsey said. The mayor also said the town is currently in the process of building a new public works and water building at the old Sandersville school. And speaking of that school, Lightsey still talks about his time as a coach as much as he does about his time in public office.
“We had a time then, a good time,” he said, wearing a black Northeast Jones hat. After all, he was a coach at Sandersville when NEJ first opened, consolidating the community schools.
“We had such rivalries. We had a time the first year or two. Everyone was from Glade or Sandersville or Myrick or Powers, but by the third year, they were from Northeast,” he said.

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