Mayor will continue to end council meetings by saying, ‘Keep it classy, Lacey.’ Here’s why
Every once in a while Lacey Mayor Andy Ryder will carve out a little time at a council meeting to talk about something that has him concerned.
Recently he pledged his support to students and parents who came to a council meeting with ongoing concerns about the North Thurston Public Schools.
And on Thursday, he ended the council meeting on a reflective note, as he talked about the recent national shooting tragedies of a Black boy who knocked on the wrong door, a woman who turned into the wrong driveway, and two cheerleaders who got into the wrong car.
Ryder said that since he became mayor, he has ended council meetings, gavel in hand, by saying, “Keep it classy, Lacey,” followed by the sound of the gavel bringing the meeting to a close.
“I say that not because it’s a cute thing to say, I say it because I mean it,” he told the council.
He said that as a reminder to the community and the council to “keep it, classy” when they deal with each other.
“We have seen tragic acts of violence and that is unacceptable in a civil society,” he said.
Now, more than ever, he said elected officials and others need to treat each other with respect. A person with a different opinion is not the enemy, Ryder said.
From there, he reiterated his support for Lacey’s equity commission, an advisory body created two years ago to address issues of equity in the city, and to help shape city policy through recommendations to the council.
“We have to do a better job of learning from people who don’t look like us, or who have a different religion or a different background,” he said. “It’s so easy to call them the ‘others’ and assign some kind of scariness to them to the point where you knock on the wrong door and you get shot in this country. That is not keeping it classy.”
Ryder said he will continue to use the expression at the end of council meetings and now at work sessions, too.
And then the meeting was over.
“You keep it classy, Lacey,” he said.
This story was originally published April 21, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
