Ward 6 Councilmember Jim Perry announced Tuesday evening he plans to resign from office in the coming weeks.
“I had the dream and the goal of becoming a police officer and someday running for elective office,” Perry wrote in a statement sent Wednesday morning. “Thank you for making that happen and for making this a truly rewarding experience. I only hope you can understand my reasoning and final decision.”
Stay up to date with the latest from The Record. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter today!
Perry said he and his family had started exploring new opportunities for his life once he officially left public office. At the time, he said he believed one of the three candidates running to replace him would have reached the threshold necessary to win the seat out-right in June.
In recent weeks, however, he said he received a time-sensitive opportunity, and since none of the candidates received over 50% of the vote, he decided it was necessary to resign.
“We reached the point of having to make a decision and move forward or literally pull the plug, not knowing if or when another chance would come our way,” Perry said. “I don’t like putting this institution or constituents in this position which makes it more difficult, but it demonstrates what this opportunity means to me. It’s time for the next stage of my life.”
He said he would work with the city to find an official exit date, but that his constituents should expect that he will leave office in the coming weeks. He added the Riverside City Council would need to “give careful consideration” on how to move forward with the vacancy.
Perry, a longtime Riverside resident who raised two children in the city, has served as the Ward 6 council member for 13 years. In that time, he prioritized a range of projects to improve the quality of life within the working-class area, coordinating infrastructure improvements, revitalizing local parks, welcoming in new businesses and tackling homelessness on the Magnolia Corridor.
His biggest achievement during his tenure, according to Residents for Responsible Representation founder Sharon Mateja, was his dedication to constituent services. She said he was great at answering calls and made a habit of driving through neighborhoods regularly to look for potential issues.
“I live on a street that, in a rainy season, literally was flooding to where the water came over the curb onto sidewalks,” Mateja said in an interview with The Riverside Record. “There was someone hunched over the storm drain, pulling out all the crud that was in there that was blocking our drains, and it was Jim Perry.”
Perry will leave office with more than 30 years of public service experience. Before becoming the council member for Ward 6, Perry was a law enforcement officer with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department and Fountain Valley Police Department, retiring in 2008.
The Riverside Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet providing Riverside County with high-quality journalism free of charge. We’re able to do this because of the generous donations of supporters like you!