Dexter’s Carol Jones Retiring from Role with the City

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Carol Jones outside of Joe & Rosie's in Dexter. Photo: Doug Marrin

By Doug Marrin, STN Reporter

Dexter’s Recording Secretary, Carol Jones, is retiring at the end of September. Carol’s modest role as the City’s keeper of records began just as unpretentiously as she has carried it out.

“I ran as a write-in candidate for Village Clerk in 2008,” recounts Carol. She adds, laughing, “No one else ran for the position. I got 41 votes and won.”

Dexter Mayor Shawn Keough has worked with Carol from the moment she first came on board with the village-soon-to-be-city. He appreciates the quiet stability her work has provided Dexter.

"Carol Jones has been fantastic," says Mayor Keough. "Her commitment and role in helping take and create our meeting minutes for Dexter’s local government has been tremendous. We will certainly miss her and we wish her the best in her new retirement."

Carol took on the role after retiring from National City Bank (now PNC). Little did she know at the time that she had come on board on the eve of one of the most significant changes Dexter would experience. The Village Council began exploring the pros and cons of becoming a city.

“I think the biggest highlight for me as secretary was with Dexter becoming a city,” says Carol. “Enough people recognized that we needed to do that in order for Dexter to take the next step to gain funding and grant money for future projects. I was on the cityhood committee. I was recording secretary for the Charter Commission while they put together the new City Charter. I’m proud to have been a part of all that.”

In November 2014, the Village of Dexter voted to become a city. One change in the new status was that Dexter would have to run their own elections now. Justin Breyer was hired to do that along with other clerk responsibilities as well as being Assistant City Manager.

Carol’s job remained the same. Only her title was changed from Clerk to Recording Secretary. She has always enjoyed being involved with civic life.

“I’ve always lived in the area,” says Carol. “I’ve always kept up on what was happening in the Village because that was much of the news for the area.”

She helped charter the Dexter Area Chamber of Commerce in 1993 and served there until 2008. Carol currently holds a seat on Dexter’s DDA Board. Her term expires in June 2022. She is looking to ease out of public life, spending more time with her grandkids and helping her father, Bob Mast, who turned 100 last March.

“I won’t have to sit through so many meetings,” she laughs.

Growing up on her father’s farm up out on Mast Road, going to Dexter schools, and attending St. Andrew’s United Church of Christ, Carol has seen Dexter change from the quiet, rural farming community it once was into the vibrant and progressive small town it is today. Given Carol’s roots, it would be easy to assume she pines for the olden days and how things used to be. But not so.

“I am enthusiastic about the changes Dexter has experienced over the years,” says Carol. “If we had not had the growth, we wouldn’t have a town. We would be one of the ghost towns in Michigan that people move away from.”

Carol says that even her father, born in 1921 when Warren G. Harding was the new president and who has lived his entire life a couple of miles north of Dexter on the road named for his family, sees the advantage of how Dexter has grown.

Bob’s daughter has been part of that change. In addition to her other efforts, Carol was part of the DDA in the 90s when the streetscape of Dexter was refurbished into the inviting downtown area that it now is.

Justin Breyer, who is now Dexter’s City Manager, has this to say of Carol’s retirement. “I have been working with Carol for almost seven years now, and she has been fantastic to work with. She has been (and is) very community-minded and truly cares about Dexter. “While I expect that we will continue to see her out and about in the community, she will definitely be missed as a member of the City of Dexter team.”

“I feel I’ve learned a lot about the community in my time as Clerk and Recording Secretary,” says Carol. “I have thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Thank you for all your work, and happy retirement Carol.

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