Pat McGee has been a mainstay of Athens for 35 years, and now he is running for city council.
After Pat McGee graduated from Ohio University in 1970, he left his home state to make a home someplace else.
He lived in France. He stayed for some time in San Francisco. He studied law at the University of Kentucky Law School in Lexington.
But in the end, Athens was home. After a decade of globetrotting, McGee returned to Athens in 1980 and has lived there ever since.
Sitting behind his large, wooden desk, McGee listed the reasons why he loves hometown: the history it holds; the natural beauty that surrounds it; and the energy the student population brings.
McGee said Athens can be attractive to both students and tourists in the vein of Ithaca, New York, and of Burlington, Vermont. But not, he said, if it stays on the present course.
“I’ve lived here for the past 35 years, and I’ve seen 35 years of stagnation,” McGee said.
McGee ran for Athens City Council to break the stagnation. He wants to see the city do more to make itself an attractive destination for both tourists and students.
Currently, McGee serves as the managing attorney at the Center for Student Legal Services on Court Street. His work with students has earned him the nickname “Set ‘em Free McGee” due to the high number of jury trial acquittals he has acquired.
“He’s very determined,” Courtney Scharenberg, office manager at the Center for Student Legal Services, said. “He likes to see that justice has been done in the eyes of the students and the state.”
It was injustice toward students in the eyes of McGee that gave him the idea to run in the first place.
“I was criticizing students in a class I taught about not taking an interest in local politics, particularly the unfair application of the party nuisance law,” McGee said. “But it occurred to me that what I was doing was backward. Instead of criticizing them, perhaps I should change the law to benefit my clients.”
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Among the student body is McGee’s son, Ian. Ian McGee has lived in Athens all his life and said his father would be more in touch with his generation than the current members of council.
“He tries to look at how issues will affect the whole population,” he said. “Most of the people in city council don’t take in the views of the younger student population like he does.”
The student population is also a reason why McGee ran as an independent. He said he was “put off” by the fact that the Democratic Party held its primary in May after most of OU’s students had already left campus.
Along with a strong advocacy for students, he supports the legalization of marijuana, a looser code enforcement and a raise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour, as long as the money stays in the city.
Keeping money in the city is important to McGee, which is why he is always on the lookout for ways to attract tourists to the Athens, he said, noting the current efforts are not cutting it.
“It needs to be more than just Homecoming and 'beer on the bricks,' ” McGee said. “We need to make Athens an attractive place to visit year-round.”
McGee has a number of ideas that have accumulated during his trips around the world. One such idea would be to close down Court Street for a few hours each day so the street could be used by restaurants and pedestrians.
He also would like to preserve that which makes Athens unique — he rues the loss of several local bookstores due to online stores such as Amazon.
McGee admitted it will be tough to put some of those ideas into practice, as he is a council member, not the mayor.
“Most of the stuff council deals with are little, day-to-day things,” McGee said. “But council should also have some visions, too.”
He said his experience as an attorney will help give the council some flexibility. And for all his talk of big ideas, he also acknowledges that the council’s most important task is to keep things running.
“We have to maintain the roads, the bridges, the police and fire departments, basically the infrastructure of Athens,” he said. “And we have to live within a reasonable budget.”
His decision to run was not an immediate one — McGee admits he would like to take it easier as he gets older. But he also feels a civic duty to serve the place that has been his home.
“I’m 63. I’m not going to be around forever to try and do good in this world,” McGee said. “I want to help the citizens of Athens.”
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