In debating with myself on whether to continue flogging what will eventually become the dead mule I’ve dubbed the Brodsky-Garrett Battle Royale, one comment from Tuesday night’s Roanoke Rapids City Council meeting puzzled me — mostly because my instincts told me it was flat out wrong.

Just a quick recap for those who might have missed the last few episodes, or who thankfully don’t have Facebook: The battle royale boils down to Ephraim Brodsky calling for Mayor Emery Doughtie’s resignation because of an alleged racist comment the mayor’s wife made on Jim Garrett’s page. Brodsky has vowed to keep up the heat every first and third Tuesday until the mayor resigns, although Doughtie emphatically says he won’t step down.

Conversely, Garrett thinks City Manager Kelly Traynham should resign or be fired, although she hasn’t made any racist comments on anyone’s page.

I don’t normally call out private citizens in my columns unless it’s to hand out attaboys or attagirls, but let’s examine an erroneous comment Garrett made before folks start taking it as gospel.

It’s sad but true: People will take the words of so-called social media influencers as fact while dismissing what the legitimate press reports. The double standard of these “social media personalities” is that they demand accountability from the working press, but hold no standards of accountability or ethics themselves.

They can post all the wild, unsubstantiated claims they want to. They post names of juveniles involved in crimes, mix opinion with what they think is news, claim to have intimate knowledge of a police investigation while my sources say they’re full of it, or just steal photos from people’s social media pages to create AI-generated illustrations for their posts.

Sometimes, they simply make guesses on the ages of city department heads, which is the topic of today’s missive. It’s also a big reason why I’m still trying to decide whether I continue reporting on the battle royale or throw it in the “in other matters” subhead at the end of a story — or in my parlance, continue flogging a mule that will eventually die.

In asking council why the city manager “hasn’t created a real working task force” to address code enforcement and other issues — ignoring that the city has already formed one — Garrett answered his own question:

“I’ll tell you why. We have the most inexperienced leaders that this city has ever had. I mean, everybody in here is under 40-years-old and we don’t have leadership like we need.”

Hmm. That sounded dubious. I’ve covered this administration for a while now and have heard folks talk about their ages. Even after Tuesday’s meeting, I overheard two staff members — one who isn’t even a department head — talking about how they’ll both soon be turning 50, joking that Garrett had actually paid them a compliment. Jim, you ol’ smooth talker, you.

Once I got stuff done for Wednesday’s edition, I decided to check with the city’s Human Resources Department to see if my hunches were right, because off the top of my head, I could only think of one department head who might be under 40.

And the survey says:

Average age of a department head: 48

Age range: 36 to 65, with the vast majority in their mid-40s to early 50s

Average tenure with the city: 15 years

Public service experience: An average of 22 years per department head, totaling 220 years of combined public service

Executive-level leadership: An estimated combined 120 years across the team

Working their way up: Seven of the 10 department heads have held multiple positions across different departments or worked their way up within the departments they now lead

More tenure than elected officials: City department heads have more average tenure and public service experience than the elected officials themselves — who only lead them in average age.

That was actually more info than I expected to get, but, alas, it still doesn't solve my internal debate on whether I continue to flog what will eventually become the dead mule I call the Brodsky-Garrett Battle Royale — Lance Martin