Questions and Answers

The below was recently left as a comment on my last post. After the copied post you will find my answers.

Hi Steve-

1. Will you be an independent voice more interested in representing the constituents of your ward?

2. Will you stand up and speak out if you know something being proposed is not good for your ward?

3. Will you accept campaign dollars from anyone who does business with the city? And if you do, will you vote on issues related to them?

4. What are your feelings on expanding the trolley?

5. What are your feelings on continuing to spend money on the USS Hoga project?

6. What is your plan to bring new businesses to the Ward 3 area?

7. What are your thoughts on bringing stability to the Baring Cross (off Pike) area which lies partially in your ward?

Thank you for having the courage to run for a job that is tougher than most think. And thank you for your service to our nation through your work in the military.

I look forward to reading your answers.

1. I have gone on record before stating I want to be a statesman, representing the will of the people. I DO NOT want to be a politician representing what I want.

2. If the citizens respond as such, I will speak the will of the people. I have placed on my door to door handbill 4 ways to contact me as I want to make it as easy as possible for citizens of Ward 3 to relay to me how they fell on all issues. Upon election, if I research an issue and can inform Ward 3 as to why it is good or bad and they disagree, so be the voice of the people, my ego gets checked at the door upon swearing in to the office.

3. I have had very few donations to my campaign. The closest you could say was involved with city business would be the Firefighters Union. I would be hard pressed to vote against anything this city can do to improve the quality of service provided by our first responders. Many of the comments I hear while going door to door involve increasing our fire and police departments level of service.

4. While it is an attraction to downtown no entity at this time can say where expansion should occur that makes sense. When and if some authority says it should expand X, I will ask the people of Ward 3 and vote as they wish. Until then it should be left alone. Number crunching of daily or hourly riders should continue on an annual basis.

5. We haven't progressed further on getting it here some several years after berthing it out west. I have heard only 1 comment about it while campaigning and it was not a positive one.

6. There are several state and federal programs that can provide incentives for companies to settle here. We need to push those programs to the maximum extent possible. One thing I would stress is that we need to preserve our neighborhoods to make the families supporting those new places want to locate here.

7. A step has been made in the right direction with the recent passing of funding for LOWER Baring Cross. I would hope that creates a ripple effect northward. Argenta started slowly and spread, I don't see why the same couldn't happen in Baring Cross. A "tiger team" could be set up with residents and several departments within the city, settle on a charter and move toward that goal. ALL members working on the common stabilization goal. To my knowledge the city doesn't know how those people feel or what ideas they may have for the area. On a side note with the most recent census Baring Cross might even move completely into Ward 2.

I hope this answers your questions fully, if not you can always give me a call and we can chat.

steve
"because Ward 3 matters"