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What makes you the best person to lead the city?
Experience. Not so much my political experiences, but civic involvement. I have been a volunteer, business person and civic league leader.
What should be the city’s top priority now, and how can it be achieved?
City’s top priority should be addressing our second priority, which is finding a way to make our city employees’ pay commensurate with city employees in other communities. Our employee s pay should be competitive with those of other cities.
What do you think will be the city’s most pressing issue in 10 years, and how can the city prepare for it?
We must immediately develop a strategy to address current needs, like education. If the police chief has a specific need then we need to be able to provide him with the resources to address that need. We need to have a broad base understanding among divisions of what each other’s needs are.
Should Portsmouth lobby for a light rail crossing through the Midtown Tunnel? Why?
Yes, because we don’t want to be landlocked. We are central and close to other places and need to provide a means for our citizens to get to these places. We also want to be progressive and keep up with the evolution of transportation means.
What would you do to improve conditions in Portsmouth’s neighborhoods?
Encourage more code enforcement. We need to update and stabilize the code to make sure that it is consistently enforced and upholds the standards and integrity of our neighborhoods.
Should the city and state raise more money to pay for transportation projects? If yes, how?
The state, not the city, should raise more money for transportation projects. The state should delineate the tax and how it is used.
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Need clarification
If our first priority is addressing our second priority, shouldn't that make our second priority our first priority? I've heard of politicians talking in (traffic)circles before, but this is ridiculous. It's no wonder our fair city is in trouble when our elected officials are obviously not competent. We as a city need to stand up and put the mayor out to pasture, he has served his usefulness and should not be in a position to make decisions for the taxpayers. Time and time again, the mayor provides us with evidence that he should no longer hold public office. Now, I know he has many supporters in this community and I am in no way trying to diminish what he has done in the past. However, his time has come and gone and we need to look to the future. We need someone in office who is coherent enough to make intelligent decisions. I, for one cannot support a candidate who makes such a statement, and proves his inability to make sense of a question, much less the complexities of running a city.