Metro Council stalwart Tom Owen won't seek re-election in 2016

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Democrat Tom Owen, a former Louisville Board of Aldermen member who has served on the Louisville Metro Council since its inception, said Wednesday he won’t run for re-election next year.

Owen, 76, said he has been thinking about retiring for some time, even before he had a “brief health scare” last January.

Owen represents District 8, which includes neighborhoods and small cities in the Highlands. He has won re-election handily in the largely Democratic area, and his pending retirement will likely set up competitive races for the seat.

“I do think there will be a goodly number of young people to step forward,” he said.

The news of Owen’s plan to retire was first reported by The Courier-Journal.

An avid cyclist and historian known for his walking tours of Louisville, Owen said he has been a professor of libraries at the University of Louisville since 1975. He was an alderman from 1990 to 1998 and won election as an inaugural member of the council in 2002 after voters chose to merge city and county governments.

Owen served as Metro Council president in 2010 and has pushed for re-opening the K&I railroad bridge to pedestrians and adding bicycle lanes, among a host of measures.

But in a telephone interview, Owen said he didn’t want to reminisce on his accomplishments.

“Rather than spend any kind of energy right now looking back, I want to focus on the next 13 months,” he said. “There will be time to look back.”

Kentucky State Rep. Jerry Miller, a Republican who served on the council before seeking his state House seat, said the news of Owen’s retirement is “sad for Louisville.”

“He was always pleasant to work with and while we didn’t always share options formally on issues, we could always have a respectful discussion and at the end of the day we could agree to disagree,” Miller said.