A longtime officer with the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office is the first to officially seek one of the soon-to-be-vacant seats on the Ironton City Council.

Detective Aaron Bollinger filed his petition for the November election last week.

“My thoughts are, you can either sit back and complain about things or you can actually jump in and try to do things yourself,” Bollinger said. “That’s kind of what pushed me into running for the Ironton City Council.”

A native of Ironton, Bollinger has worked for the sheriff’s office for 14 years and has been a detective for the past eight.

He said his experience there would serve him well as a councilman.

“One of the things in law enforcement that I have been able to do is I keep an open mind going into whatever case I get into,” he said. “I keep an open mind and I try to look at all sides of a story before making a determination of what the facts are and coming down to an opinion.

“That’s what I want to do (as a city councilman).”

Bollinger said one of his goals, if he’s elected, is to think for himself, even if it means disagreeing with other council members.

“Just because someone on the seat next to me is a friend and they want to vote a certain way, I’m going to vote for whatever I think is right, not what somebody else tells me they feel is right,” Bollinger said.

“I hope I’m not naïve in thinking that, but I think that’s why an Ironton City Council was put together, to have citizens that choose the best option.”

If elected, Bollinger said he would make the city’s budget a priority, all the while keeping Ironton residents in mind.

“One thing I see that we don’t want to do is to push out residents of the City of Ironton because of extremely high taxes or extremely high water bills, just to keep a city functioning” he said. “My goal is to listen to the citizens of the City of Ironton, as a citizen myself, and let’s examine all areas of spending and see how we can save money without throwing it back (on residents).”

When a previous council enacted a municipal fee after residents voted it down, Bollinger was upset.

“I think that at that point in time when the citizens vote something down that you put on the ballot, then you should try to exhaust every other effort before going ahead and doing something like that against the citizens wishes,” Bollinger said.

Bollinger said he hopes to focus on bringing industry to the city. It’s something many people are trying to do and he hopes to get a chance to try too, he said.

Bollinger is the first candidate for council to file a petition. Ironton attorney Phillip Heald has picked up a petition, but as of Friday, he had not yet filed. There are three council seats up this November election. Those are currently held by Chuck O’Leary, Kevin Waldo and Frank Murphy.