Less than a week after being elected as the eighth-grade representative at Saint Joseph School, Sam Small served as an honorary Berkeley County commissioner.
Small was sworn in Oct. 3 by Commission Vice President Eddie Gochenour and sat among two council members, the county administrator and the county office administrator. Commissioner H.D. Boyd was present via phone from a business trip in Jamaica.
After listening to the commissioners discuss hiring recommendations, salary increases, park expansions and new ambulances coming to the county, Small expressed gratitude for sitting among them.
“It’s an honor to be here,” said Small, 14. He said if someone told him two years ago that he would be at such a meeting, “It would have blown sixth-grade me’s mind.”
Small shared with the commissioners and a few members of the public in the audience that he wrote a persuasive essay in seventh grade about why Saint Joseph School needed to bring back its student council, which had ceased to exist after the COVID-19 pandemic. His writings about how the middle-schoolers should have more opportunities to express their ideas to the school administration and be part of decisions affecting them led to an election on Sept. 27 of a seven-member governing body consisting of students in grades six through eight.
After Gochenour, Boyd, Commissioner Steve Catlett and County Administrator Gary Wine discussed snow-removal bids, Small mentioned that The Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a “big winter.” While he acknowledged that might be bad news for some, Small said “hooray, because for the past few winters, we’ve been promised a good amount of snow” that never materialized.
