Eight mayors, five city administrators, six city clerks, seven police chiefs, and 52 council members — Mike Reynolds saw them all come and go during his 42-year tenure as Enumclaw’s city attorney.

But as they say, all things must come to an end, and Reynolds passed the torch to incoming attorney Brett Vinson of Weed Graafstra & Associates during the Jan. 10 city council meeting, where Reynolds was lauded for his service by elected officials and staff alike.

“He has done more than an extraordinary job,” Mayor Jan Molinaro said. “[He’s] been more than a city attorney, to being able to provide wisdom, common sense approaches to some of my stupid questions — I very much appreciate that.”

Reynolds’ route to Enumclaw was circuitous, though it seems he was always set on living in a city like it.

Growing up, his family moved all around the Pacific Northwest.

“When we were in North Bend, I was just a little child, but we lived next to a dairy [farm]. And I got to go help the dairymen, and I loved the farm part of it,” he told the Courier-Herald in an interview shortly after his last day at the city. “So I swore I’d get back to that someday.”

His first glimpse of Enumclaw came when he lived in Auburn.

“All the young people would drive through the town with their cool cars,” he recalled. “But then the guys from Enumclaw would come down — they had ‘55, ‘57 Chevys, really nice cars. And I thought, man, that must be the high-class place.”

The city stuck in his mind as he graduated from the University of Washington, joined the Navy for six years, moved to Indiana to get his law degree at Notre Dame in 1974, and travelled back to his home state to buy a home in Lake Tapps, where he lived for a few years before finally buying property in Enumclaw.

To say the farm he bought was a fixer-upper would be doing it a service.

“It was a dump. It was really bad,” Reynolds said. “[But] it was something I could afford.”

What he couldn’t afford, though, was two mortgages at once. So, he did what he would become most known for as Enumclaw’s city attorney — he made a deal.

“I leased the farm out to a hippie group at that time, under the deal that if [they] paid the amount of mortgage, I could come every weekend to work on the farm, get it all squared away,” he said. “They were characters… they had goats and everything else… I’d be there all weekend, working away, and they’d do their things and smoke their pot.

“Coming out of the Navy, it wasn’t something I was quite used to,” he admitted, laughing.

Reynolds eventually relocated to Enumclaw in 1976, the same year he was appointed city attorney by Mayor Fred Farman.

Most of his work over the next four decades was “mundane,” he said. “The stuff that people expect, but don’t appreciate,” like helping make sure the lights stay on and the toilet flushes.

Where he really found his groove, though, was making land deals, which he said is something “well beyond what a guy normally does as city attorney,” but would turn out to be lucrative for Enumclaw and its residents.

One of his most memorable deals happened when he was serving both as city attorney and general counsel for the Enumclaw School District (“this is before conflict of interest became such a major problem,” he said).

In short, the district was demolishing the junior high just west of Porter Street, and Reynolds was securing a deal between the district and a housing developer, who was looking to purchase the land.

However, a local group sued ESD over the potential deal, and looking to spare the district (and, likely, himself) the headache, he decided to approach the city with an offer — buy the land for the amount the developer would pay it for, and turn it into a park.

The mayor and council quickly agreed, and $500,000 flowed from the city’s coffers to the school district (it should be noted that half the money came from Dwight Garrett, a highly successful local businessman, consummate inventor, and celebrated philanthropist — which is why the park was eventually named after him).

Countless other land deals were spearheaded by Reynolds over the years, which partially (or wholly) resulted in the creation of the Veterans Memorial Park, Rotary Park, and the expansion of the Foothills Trail, brought in several key businesses that shaped Enumclaw’s economy, and, in general, sculpted the layout of downtown Enumclaw that locals and tourists enjoy today.

“I loved it,” he said. “It was just doing things — things you can actually see.”

These deals also made a not-insignificant amount of money for the city though land use leases — something not everyone in town appreciated.

“There were some citizens that felt I was turning the city into an entrepreneurial capitalistic [entity],” Reynolds said, noting numerous Letters to the Editors sent to the Courier-Herald over the years. “They didn’t think the city should be in the business of making money.”

They way he saw it, though, was that securing other streams of revenue for the city would mean less pressure on residents’ wallets.

“My thought was, we take money from the taxpayers to run this operation. If that gets subsidized by some other method, it saves taxpayers [money]…” Reynolds continued. “And as the city attorney, you always have your eye, as the Navy taught me, on the meatball. And that is, who is your client? What maneuver is in their best interest? Although I’m employed at-will by the mayor, when you cut it through, you’re working for the people.”

Although Reynolds is no longer representing Enumclaw, he is not hanging up his hat, as he will still be counseling small cities and entities like Wilkeson, Carbonado, and the Enumclaw Fire Department.

His decision to leave Enumclaw, he said, was a practical one.

“I just wanted more time. Everybody’s demanding more and more time, so you gotta cut somehow,” he said.

His time serving Enumclaw is the longest of any elected official or staff member in the city’s history; for his service, the city gifted him with an mid-1800s ship compass as a nod to his time in the Navy and for “navigating the city on a steady course,” City Administrator Chris Searcy said during Reynolds’ last meeting. “We wish you fair winds and following seas.”