Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Mike Bolin speaks with fellow Commissioner Sheila Tyson during his first Jefferson County Commission committee meeting on Aug. 8.
Mike Bolin was a big man on campus during his college days at Samford University.
Bolin’s 6-foot-3 frame made him a natural for playing offensive lineman, defensive lineman and linebacker on the Pi Kappa Phi intramural football team.
But Bolin, who was sworn in on July 31 to represent District 5 on the Jefferson County Commission, knows he’s not the big man on this campus. Now that he's in office, Bolin said, he is no one special.
“I'm just an average, one-fifth member,” he said. “I can't do anything by myself. I have to have two more votes, assuming all five vote. I understand my limitations.
“It's not completely different, although a bit different, from being on the Supreme Court, where you've got nine members rather than five,” said Bolin, who spent 18 years on the Alabama Supreme Court after 16 years as a probate judge in Jefferson County. “If you're proposing an opinion on a case that's pending, if you don't get four people to concur with you, it doesn’t matter what you think; it's not gonna fly.”
Toward that end, Bolin said it is necessary for commissioners to work together. No one should have “ironclad rule” on a public forum like the County Commission.
“Ideally, we'd all five agree on everything that's put to a final vote,” Bolin said. “But we're all five of us human, made by God. We're gonna have disagreements, different points of view about certain things. As long as you do that in an agreeable fashion and don't get angry, it usually works for the betterment of whatever comes out. It certainly did on the Supreme Court. We hardly ever had hard words. We talked back and forth.”
Prior to Bolin taking office, he met with County Manager Cal Markert to get up to speed concerning the financial aspects of county government and matters that are on the horizon.
“I told him during that time [that] this takes me back to my college courses,” said Bolin, who studied finance and management at Samford. “Jefferson County is really blessed to have had two good county managers [Tony Petelos and Markert] since they went into the county manager system.”
The commissioner from Vestavia Hills is still amazed that he won July’s special election — and that he won by nearly 20 percentage points.
“The people are not necessarily fickle, but we all have limited memories,” Bolin said. “The last time I'd run a contested race was surely back in 2010. I don't think I had an opponent in 2016 for the Supreme Court.
“The only thing that I really considered would be a help to me is being my father's son and always remaining humble,” he said. “I think that's the way God wants us all to be and to try to do the right thing. I've done that over the years, at least in my judgment I had.”
Bolin inherited the committee assignments of his predecessor, Steve Ammons, who stepped down in May to become president and CEO of the Birmingham Business Alliance. The new commissioner thus chairs the information technology and economic development committees.
“Steve, I consider just a giant in the field of economic development,” the new commissioner said. “I really want to immerse myself in that to begin with. Steve is a really good guy. He’s got big shoes to fill. I’m going to do my best.
"I’ve got big feet," Bolin said of his size 11, extra wide shoe. "We’ll see how much I fill them.”
Beyond his committee assignments, Bolin said he’s always believed in public safety. That will be a focus of his term on the commission.
“Whether I’m on the public safety committee for the commission or not,” he said, “I want to go around to not only just the police chiefs but some of the police officers that are out there and ask them, ‘What do you see as our answer [to crime]?’”
