2015
MATT OWEN
president of Jeffersonville City Council and
captain at New Chapel EMS
Wearing many hats is a man named Matt Owen.
Owen has seen his duties at his day job with New
Chapel EMS expand to the point of becoming a cap-
tain. At the same time, he has found quite a bit of polit-
ical success serving the City of Jeffersonville.
In 2015, when he first landed on the 20 Under 40
radar, Owen was running for re-election for the first
time to secure his city council seat. He had also just
been promoted to operations commander at New Cha-
pel, transitioning out of a marketing role.
In addition to his most recent work promotion, Owen
has since won two more terms on the city council. He’s
twice been selected by his peers to serve as council
president.
“I usually tell folks that running for office the first
time is a challenge, because everything is new,” he
said. “Running for re-election, I felt, is even more
stressful. Now, the voters have a record for them to
look at. Are you working in the best interest of the
community and are you moving forward? It’s a great
relief when you come through in a re-election and you
have the support of the voters.”
Owen had even bigger political aspirations when he
ran for state representative in 2018. While it didn’t pan
out, he said he would do it all over again.
“That’s not something I regret,” he said. “It allowed
me to get to know the community a little deeper. That
was a huge positive experience, even though it didn’t
turn out the way that I hoped at that time.”
As if he weren’t busy enough, Owen has taken on
duties on the city’s redevelopment commission, where
he is secretary.
He’s proud of how far the city has come in the
last several years, pointing to projects like the
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May / June 2020
improvements of 10th and Spring streets along with the
expansion of the parks system.
The city as a whole, he noted, has undergone a major
transformation since eight years ago.
“We had a lot of momentum between 2012 and 2015,
then in 2016, it just really took off,” he said. “That’s
due in part to some of the groundwork that was laid. In
2015 with the municipal election, the voters said that
they like the things that we’re doing. We kept pushing
forward, and we’ve made some major improvements
since then.”
Owen brings a unique perspective to his elected role
by virtue of his EMS background. This is exceptionally
useful in the current environment, with the coronavirus
pandemic changing American life on a daily basis.
For the last several weeks, Owen said he’s been
crafting ways for New Chapel to approach the COVID-
19 outbreak. He believes that his expertise there can
translate into helping Jeffersonville become better pre-
pared for what the future may hold.
“It allows me to have a perspective from a respond-
er’s point of view on how the different parts of the
puzzle move,” he said. “I think
that is a benefit for the city coun-
cil side of the coin. It’s very easy
for elected officials who don’t
have that kind of exposure to get
lost in the process of emergency
response and organizing it. Being
able to see that and communicate
from an operations side does
help to bring perspective to other
council members.”