Parenting magazines tend to state that each childbirth is a miraculous act of nature – never mind that all 6.7 billion people came into this world in about the same way – but Maggie May Jones’ birth Friday at Tacoma General Hospital truly was something to behold.

She came into the world during a symmetrical confluence of time: the eighth minute of the eighth hour of the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the millennium. And, for good measure, she weighed just over eight pounds.

“Kinda crazy, isn’t it?” said her beaming father, Dan Jones of Gig Harbor. “It wasn’t even scheduled to happen this way. But when it’s time, it’s time.”

Maggie’s mother, 38-year-old Laura, was due to give birth a few days ago. Her doctor had scheduled her for a Cesarean-section surgery if the baby wasn’t born on time.

They scheduled the C-section months in advance for Friday – because it was the last day of the work week, not because of a catchy birthday. When the time drew closer and doctor and patients alike realized the date, they joked they should schedule the surgery for 8:08 a.m.

It was just a joke.

“I actually didn’t think I’d last that long,” said Laura, a nurse at a dermatology clinic in Gig Harbor, where the family lives. “I didn’t think I would need the C-section.”

The couple went to bed Thursday night expecting to drive to Tacoma General in the morning. Maggie apparently couldn’t wait. Laura went into labor at about 2 a.m.

Dan, a Seattle firefighter, drove his wife and their 2-year-old daughter, Lucy, to the hospital.

The birth was quick and easy, Laura said. She planned on using an epidural but was told it would slow delivery by 20 minutes or so. She passed.

And at 8:08, Maggie was born.

“It was all just a weird coincidence,” Laura said. “But we were having fun with it in the delivery room.”

The nurses encouraged the couple to purchase a lottery ticket and suggested names like Octavia or Olympia (the organizers in Beijing, after all, used 8-8-08 as a marketing ploy for the opening ceremonies).

Laura is thrilled because all the attention showered on Maggie’s timely birth will make a great keepsake. And she cracked a smile when she talked about another benefit.

“We’ll never forget her birthday,” she said.

I just had a quick conversation with Ruston Councilman Dan Albertson, who is a proponent of changing to a town manager format of government. He called it “the best move we can make right now.”

The job is too much for a part-timer, he said.

“It’s everything from the development of Point Ruston to lease negotiations at the school building to supervision of employees to the multiple legal actions we’re involved with. I don’t think you can ask someone to do that for virtually nothing. They either won’t be able to devote enough time to it, or they’re going to be so grossly underpaid for the effort that they put into it that it’s unreasonable to expect them to do it.”

Sherri Forch chaired the committee to provide the Yes statement in the voter’s guide to change Ruston’s form of government.

Her argument is that, with the future of Ruston at a crossroads, the job is simply too much for one person:

“I’d like to be on the record that I supported (former mayor) Michael Transue. I wrote the (town) newsletter as a volunteer. Volunteering is alive and well down here. … But it’s the mayor’s newsletter and it has to have his approval, so I would write it and it would be two or three days before I could get to it. My point is that a citizen mayor, with a career with two teenage daughters, has to go to soccer games and chaperone school dances – in other words, he’s got a life. A citizen mayor with a life just doesn’t have the time, the energy.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to ask a citizen to be a mayor. There’s too much responsibility. With all the development going on, we need someone that’s involved 9-to-5.”

She added that a full-time administrator might not be needed 10 or 20 years in the future after developments like Point Ruston are finished. But with so much changing in the community, she said, the town needs someone full-time.

It’s not reasonable to ask a citizen to do this anymore. It’s too specialized. There’s too much too knowledge. You need a consultant for this, a consultant for that. You need an attorney to protect the mayor from missteps. The regulations are so complicated, you need a professional.

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Karen Pickett is heading the No campaign to change Ruston’s form of government. Pickett, who runs the Ruston Home blog, has been one of the most vocal critics of the current town council.

She wants to keep the current form of government, in which the mayor acts as the town’s executive and the council as its legislative body, to a town manager format. Her desires stem from checks and balances and tradition.

Some of this, for me, is based on intangibles. But when talking to folks and getting input and going over this, one of my biggest concerns is that, being a small town, small factions can take elected seats and not be responsive to all the constituents. It’s part of the nature of small towns. Having elected seats is important, and losing one of those representative seats is a wrong move. We need to keep our town as responsive to the voters as we can.

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Photographer Russ Carmack and I were out at the Yakima Training Center last weekend, and Russ came back with some fantastic photos. A few of them required some pretty nifty techniques.

We were riding along in a Humvee during training with the .50-caliber machine guns. The original plan to open up the back of the vehicle and let us stand behind the gunner was quashed by the safety guru on site (and for good reason, in retrospect). Still, that didn’t stop Russ, who used a remote control, a tripod and some duct tape to get these shots:

Click below to find out how he got them:

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We're back in Ruston today to talk about the upcoming ballot proposal to switch from a strong mayor to town manager form of government.