Why Should Delaware Care?
City Council presidents have the power to set meeting agendas, and therefore set the tone for how a municipal government’s core decision-making body runs. At 92 years old, Dover City Council President Fred Neil brings a unique mix of lengthy life experience and moderating presence to the often discordant body of municipal leaders in Delaware’s capitol city.
An enthused Fred Neil settles into a plush office chair inside Dover City Hall, ready to dive into his life story.
The Dover City Council president describes being fresh-out-of-college and going to work as a news reporter in 1959, using a “wet battery recorder” and “alligator clips” to send his audio through the airwaves to his Baltimore radio station’s audience.
He recalls driving around Charm City as a 20-something, chasing down interviews with Democratic and Republican presidential nominees John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, accompanied by another reporter with “one eye and a peg leg.”
Neil spent 12 years as a “newsman,” as he calls the job, before moving on to a series of other communications and public relations positions across Maryland.
Now, at 92, Neil sits atop the dais inside Dover City Hall, presiding over often-divisive local government meetings as he serves his second one-year term as the city council president.
He is among the few nonagenarians to currently hold elected office in the United States. As of 2024, Neil was recorded in the National League of Cities database as the oldest municipal elected official in the country by a margin of nine years.
U.S. Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is well-documented as being the oldest member of Congress at age 92. Grassley was born in September 1933, just two months before Neil.
Roughly two decades into his formal retirement, Neil often has to stay at city hall for meetings that run late into the night, sometimes not ending until 11 p.m.
His secret? An afternoon nap and an occasional mid-meeting candy break.
He sometimes becomes so energized after city council meetings that he can’t sleep, staying up late into the night writing opinion columns or other letters with his thoughts on city issues, Neil said.
In recent years, those columns have lambasted the state Department of Justice for not prosecuting low-level crimes and celebrated the contentious Dover Police Academy’s role in the city’s public safety force.
Neil often serves as the moderating voice between vocal, competing factions on the city council — partially because that is his job as council president, and partially because that is his natural temperament, according to people who have known him for years.
Neil’s colleagues from his time in Baltimore, and now, the two-plus decades he has spent in Delaware, all describe him as a clear-headed, effective communicator. They say it is not surprising he ended up holding elected office at 81, or that he stuck with it into his 90s — “the great 90s,” as Neil refers to them.
“The easiest thing for [Neil] would be to take the same route as a lot of people his age do; he could be playing pickleball,” Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen said.
But for Neil, city government was never the plan.
He said he refuses to become a politician. Neil maintains that he is still a newsman at heart, simply sitting on the other side of the dais.
“I’m an elected official,” Neil told Spotlight Delaware in an interview in late May. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll be a politician because that indicates something else. It means somebody has my interest and I’m going to cater to them for that interest.”
Charm City roots
Neil is a proud born-and-raised Baltimorean. He held a handful of different jobs in media, communications and sports during the 70 years he lived in Maryland.
He also is a lifelong actor, performing in musicals from “Fiddler on the Roof” to “The Will Rogers Follies.”
His theatrical inclinations come through both in the way he conducts a city council meeting and in one-on-one conversations — gesticulating wildly and peppering his speech with whimsical phrases.
“You’ve got wife No. 1 in there, and you have wife No. 2,” Neil said during an interview with Spotlight Delaware, pointing to a packet splayed out in front of him titled “Fred’s Road to 90: A short trip through a long journey.”
The 20-page document describes his various jobs, two marriages, three children and six grandchildren. Neil wrote the packet to teach his grandkids more about the twists and turns of his life.
A child of the Great Depression, Neil was expected to work in the pharmacy his parents owned by the time he was “tall enough to reach the cash register.”
Following his high school graduation in 1952, he enrolled at the University of Maryland College Park, where he studied history and journalism, with a two-year intermission to serve in the U.S. Army, before graduating in 1959.
During his later years at the University of Maryland, Neil got a job working weekends at a Washington D.C.-area radio station for $1 an hour.
By the time he finished college, Neil said, he was thrust into the radio broadcasting industry. He covered Maryland politics, and – his favorite – the Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts and Orioles.
Neil rose through the ranks of the Baltimore radio world, becoming the news and sports director of WCBM and president of the Maryland Press Club by the late 1960s.
Tom Scheurich, a longtime friend of Neil’s and a colleague in one of his later roles at the Maryland Department of Education, said he remembers listening to Neil’s distinctive voice on the radio, years before they knew each other.
“His voice had a personality that made you want to listen to him and find out more about what was so exciting and he was so excited about,” Scheurich said.
Neil eventually left the media industry behind in 1970, worried about the impending recession, and transitioned into a series of other communications-related roles, including a brief stint as press officer for Maryland politico William Donald Schaefer during his time as the mayor of Baltimore.
He also spent 20 years as the public affairs officer for the state Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, ushering in what Scheurich described as the “golden age” of the division’s work helping people with disabilities find employment.
Neil has various amusing anecdotes to share from his different jobs — like when he “became a makeup artist” for a PR gig, or was “called in” to save a failing season of the Baltimore Banners tennis team — but always returns to the lessons he learned from being a newsman.
He describes the career as having taught him how to discern peoples’ motivations, and look at all sides of an issue when it is presented to him.
“It all comes back to the news,” Neil said. “Anything that I look at is based on all of those experiences as a newsman.”
Drawn to service in Dover
Neil and his wife, Dawn, decided to leave Baltimore in 2003 and relocate to Dover, because they read in Kiplinger Magazine that Delaware was a good place to retire.
At the time, Neil said, he planned to mostly retire, while continuing a couple part-time positions with the Maryland State Pest Control Association and with his own PR firm, “Fred Neil Associates.”
Shortly after settling in Dover, however, Neil was drawn into his neighborhood homeowners’ association because he was dismayed by the lack of homeowner protection laws in Delaware compared to Maryland.
“I needed to protect my community,” he said. “I’m in a community of seniors, and I saw the landlord taking advantage of us.”
With a newfound passion for homeowners’ protections, Neil became involved with the Delaware Manufactured Home Owners Association (DMHOA) and began getting to know state lawmakers as he lobbied for legislation.
Bill Kinnick, who worked with Neil at DMHOA in the 2010s, said Neil became known as the “media-type person” at the organization, who could do technical writing and use his communication skills to effectively persuade lawmakers.
Kinnick described getting the General Assembly to create an Office of the Manufactured Housing Ombudsperson through the DOJ as a major victory for homeowner protection, borne from the communication skills Neil brought to the group.
Since stepping into the role as city councilman in 2015, when Rep. Sean Lynn (D-Dover) vacated the seat to serve in the General Assembly, Neil has continued to take an interest in homeowner rights.
He often jumps to the defense of property owners when the city council debates topics like panhandling and drug use in Dover. He also has been focused on passing a “Lemon Housing Ordinance,” which would require home inspections before a residential property is transferred from one owner to another.
Not a ‘politician‘
Nearly an hour into the May interview with Spotlight Delaware, Neil showed few signs of tiring. He continued his pithy phrases and hand gestures as he described his decision to become an elected official — not a “politician.”
Neil has served on Dover City Council since 2015. He has been chosen by his fellow council members to serve as president in both 2025 and 2026.
His current council term runs through 2029, though he is quick to say he will step down at any point if his “mental acuity” falters. He will reevaluate running for another term in 2029, he said, “presuming I’m still alive.”
Neil has presided over the city council during a particularly turbulent period in Dover. The city government has faced controversy between its police chief and local police union, a seemingly everlasting debate over a hotly contested panhandling ordinance, the firing and subsequent legal battle by its former city manager and a major budget shortfall.
When city council meetings devolve into squabbles between members, or when residents lobby personal attacks at the dais during public comment, Neil is left to manage the room.
He often lets traces of his theatrical side come through, eliciting laughs in hopes of lightening the mood in the chamber.
Before the council takes a vote on a contentious ordinance, Neil will read from a lengthy pre-written statement, explaining his vote.
Former City Council President Tim Slavin and Mayor Christiansen, also a former council president, both say Neil is the ideal person to preside over the body. He is able to synthesize different opinions and bring a moderating voice to the dais, they said.
“He’s just a really, really good communicator,” Slavin, who served on city council until 2021, said. “He’s not confrontational, but he also doesn’t shrink away from his responsibilities.”
For Neil, leading the city council, unsurprisingly, comes back to his newsman experience.
He aims to gather as many perspectives as possible to figure out his position on an issue, he said, while trying to determine whether his fellow council members are being motivated by “political aspects,” like aspiration for higher office, or a genuine concern.
“I’m a sponge,” Neil said.
He laughed that reporters now use cell phones to record interviews, and laptops to type notes. A far cry from his alligator clips and telephone mouthpiece system of his radio reporting.
Despite these changes, and the countless others Neil said he has experienced over the past 92 years, he is committed to keeping up with the times.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
