Candidate Q&A: Patricia Willis

What makes you the best candidate for City Council?

I have eight years of institutional knowledge and wisdom gained from wrestling with the many issues that have come before me. I have shown the ability to lower the tax rate repeatedly. I have used my legal skills to examine and improve legal documents and proposed city ordinances that have come before council. I vote only after carefully considering all the facts and opinions relating to each issue.

What should be the city's top priority now, and how can it be achieved?

Council hires the City Manager, and we have recently hired one who is committed to provide services in the most efficient and effective way possible. He has cut spending where possible, reducing taxes for mosquito control, eliminating 50 jobs from the city payroll, and ordered a hiring freeze —except for public safety positions.

What do you think will be the city's most pressing issue in 10 years, and how can the city prepare for it?

The city’s most pressing issue will be to maintain our great quality of life for those who live, work, attend school and play here. We do this by focusing economic development on new “high tech” and high paying jobs and clean industry . We must keep our city safe, our schools top rate, revitalize older areas, and maintain green spaces .

How do you respond to complaints that city leaders put developers’ interests ahead of residents’ needs?

One of my first battles with the development community was over the open space subdivision ordinance. Seeing inferior recreation facilities, I pushed to increase the per home fee developers of new housing paid for the city to provide services for these new residents. It went from $100 to $1,000. We have fought the state’s effort to eliminate cash proffers from developers to help pay for the services resulting from new construction.

Cite one vote by a majority of City Council that you disagreed with in the past year and why.

Recently the public works staff advocated for a new $4 million road to ease access to the new Wal-Mart at Edinburgh. I voted against using tax dollars for this, arguing that we should require the multi-billion dollar corporation to pay for the road that benefited it.

Should the city and state raise more money to pay for transportation projects? If yes, how?

YES! The state is responsible for most road projects, but has been giving us less money to do more work. We need new bridges on Dominion, Gilmerton and I-64, along with many other projects. Some of these will certainly have to be funded by user fees – EZPass tolls. We have benefited from working with Congressman Forbes, VDOT and other funding sources, but there is still much to do.