Residential address: West Cone Boulevard (map)
Incumbent or challenger: Challenger
Age: 38
Campaign website or blog: Facebook (link)
Endorsements: Guilford County Community PAC, NC AFL-CIO, Occupy Greensboro Media Group, Triad Central Labor Council and YES! Weekly
Occupation and employer: Sales, GameStop
Previous elective experience (including election campaigns): Candidate for Greensboro City Council in District 3, 2009; candidate for US House District 6, 2008; served as vice chair of Guilford County Young Democrats (past)
Civic and volunteer experience (including service on city
commissions and boards): Co-host, "Gigabyte Nation" online radio show; co-director, Communities United for Broadband; paid coordinator, Google Fiber initiative for Greensboro (past); member, Greensboro Human Relations Commission (past), including chair
of the Montgomery/Wells Housing Committee (past), and member of Truth and Reconciliation
Subcommittee (past)
Education (highest degree attained and name of institution): High school graduate, Paramus High School, Paramus, NJ
Party registration: Unaffiliated (nonpartisan contest)
Where were you born? Bergen County, NJ
When did you move to Greensboro? 1989 or 1990
Paid consultants working on campaign: None
Campaign manager: Self
Treasurer: Self
Do you favor or oppose reopening the White Street Landfill for household waste, beyond the small amount of sewer sludge currently accepted? Briefly explain your position.
I strongly oppose reopening the White Street Landfill. We need to find a regional solution to our waste disposal problems. What makes me more irritated is that this issue was at the forefront two years ago at election time and remains at the forefront now with little progress to a solution. There has been the idea that if we just open it up for a few years we can move to a regional solution. I don’t trust it. We do not need Band-Aids for our city’s problems; we need solutions. And the sooner we figure out how to move to a regional solution the better. We need decisive leadership in Greensboro and I will be decisive. If council cannot make up its collective mind, maybe we should hold a referendum vote of the people to decide the fate of the White Street Landfill and the surrounding neighborhoods. Either way, we need to make a decision and stop running our council like a circus.
Where do you stand on the “strong manager” form of city government and why?
As council is only a part time position, the “strong manager” form of government is the only solution to running our city. I do however think that a manager should be held accountable by council, even though he is theoretically their boss. Most of the debate and political rhetoric should be sparred over in briefing sessions. An effective city manager should also keep council informed of all city business, so council can make informed decisions. This is either not the case now or some members of the current council should receive Emmy’s for their performances.
Should the city of Greensboro place more or less emphasis on maintaining a healthy water and sewer fund to plan for future growth? Why or why not?
The city should put more emphasis on maintaining and expanding our water and sewer fund. There is an old saying in government: “If a city cannot grow, then it dies.” We continue to grow at a good clip and we should prepare ourselves for that future growth. We all like clean, drinkable water. I would also emphasize that good infrastructure of any kind brings good jobs and we should invest in a future proof city to continue to grow and remain sustainable.
The city’s tax base has remained flat for the past two years in a row, and the foreclosure crisis continues unabated. As a member of city council, how would you balance the need to fund services such as police patrol, fire protection and park maintenance that citizens care about with the reality that the revenue picture remains bleak?
It is not an easy crisis to handle, but I would say that we need to consider how to raise revenues as the cost of everything continues to inflate, but try to protect our taxpayers from taxes becoming too burdensome that we cause more foreclosures. I think we need to look at where our revenues come in at and adjust up or down tax rates accordingly to create more revenue. One of the problems with the way we have been growing through annexations over the past decade or so is that the city never seems to do the math on new tax revenues to cost of providing services. It isn’t rocket science to figure out that if the cost of services (water, sewer, fire, schools, and police) to annex a new mass of land is more than the new tax revenue being created by that annexation that someone else is going to bear the burden of those services. I am fine with annexing to grow, but only if it makes economic sense to do so and will commit to not voting for an annexation without having the raw numbers presented to myself and council to make an informed decision.
Do you believe that city staff deserves council support to implement a program to spend federal grant money to improve the energy efficiency of residences and businesses, or does this program warrant additional oversight from council? Briefly explain your position.
I believe that if we were awarded funds from the federal government to implement an energy efficiency program then we need to do just that. The city manager should oversee council’s receipt of funds; funds which have to be specifically used for the purpose for which they were granted. If we are all saving money on energy costs because of this, then we are “all saving money.” Our city staff is worked to the bone and should absolutely have council’s support.
How would you assess the value and effectiveness of Greensboro’s Rental Unit Certificate of Occupancy program, which is now prohibited by state law?
RUCO was a model for the rest of the country to use. This program helped us drive out slumlords and drive up property values. It wasn’t all that costly to run and it is a shame that the local real-estate developers and landlords went to Raleigh to fight to have RUCO and other programs like it banned. All so they didn’t have to make necessary repairs to the properties they own, just to meet the minimum safety standards for a habitable property. It seems to me that safe housing shouldn’t be a luxury only if you can afford it; it should be a guarantee when you rent in this city. As your next District 3 councilman, I will go to Raleigh and try and get this horrible intrusion into our local government changed or repealed.
How should the impasse over management and operation of the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market be resolved?
This whole mess at the farmers market is a shame. I take no greater pleasure than going to the curb market and picking up locally grown, fresh fruits and vegetables and meats and fish. It helps our local economy and it is fresher and healthier for you. As the parks and recreation department has oversight of the farmers curb market, they need to bring both sides to the table, negotiate a solution and then present it to council with both sides being happy in the end. No one will get everything they want and no one should walk away empty handed, but we should be able to work out a solution.
What, if anything, should be done to resolve racial tensions, and to enhance professionalism, integrity and fairness within the Greensboro Police Department?
First off, we need more officers on the beat. I campaigned on this issue last election and my opponent said we didn’t need more officers. Right after the last election, outgoing police chief Tim Bellamy said we needed another district and more officers. The stress and pressure put on an overworked police department takes its tolls on morale, professionalism and creates incidents that should and could otherwise be avoided.
Being understaffed also creates a whack-a-mole solution to our problems. This doesn’t work. We more resources to New Irving Park because of a rash of break-ins and the criminals move to Kirkwood or another part of the city. We move resources to that problem and they go back to New Irving Park. We need a fully-staffed GPD to be fully protected from the harms to our city that will continue to make the front page and taint our city’s appearance and reputation.
I understand that the GPD and most police departments have an internal affairs department (ours is grossly understaffed), but an external review of improprieties within the GPD would be more effective in rooting out a few possible bad seeds and repairing the image and trust of the department. Any operation that is up and running and investigating itself is likely to find in favor of its own over another 99 out of 100 times. I believe we need to investigate going down this path.
What would you change about Greensboro’s land use patterns if the decision were yours to make? Please answer the question in terms of places people live, work and shop, in terms of the modes of transportation people use to get from point to point and the vitality of neighborhoods and commercial corridors?
The way we have developed Greensboro over decades has moved the service industry workers and blue collar workers out to the suburbs of our city and the executives more towards our inner city. It is nice that we have high-end living in downtown, but the reversal of how logic would hold up has pushed the worker bees out of the hive and moved several queen bees in. This creates transportation costs and nightmares for those who already have less means to afford to commute. Firefighters and teachers are being pushed further from their work destinations and CEOs and executives closer to the core. We need to address this for future growth and try and reverse this pattern to something that makes sense.
I would also be more attentive to annexations. We have grown through sprawl over the past 20 years and the numbers don’t always add up. If we are to annex land, it should be connected to our city (no islands outside the limits to call our own) and it should make fiscal sense as I said above. The cost of services to annex into our city should never outweigh the tax revenue brought back in to the city by the annexation.
What is Greensboro’s greatest asset? What is Greensboro’s most pressing problem?
Our colleges are our greatest asset. We are and have been a college town for a very long time. As much as the developers and the folks at DGI don’t want us to be a college town, we are simply just that. We do a horrible job at retaining the brain power who graduate from our schools here in Greensboro up and leave for a lack of jobs and go to markets better set up to serve them. We all saw how many people from all walks of life jumped on the Google Fiber train that I took the lead on. It was and is a clear sign of which direction the people of this city want to go in. They want high-tech jobs and opportunities to grow and develop new concepts and ideas, ideas that are born, nurtured and fostered out of our colleges and universities.
Our most pressing problems are the White Street landfill and creating a viable Greensboro for job recruitment. That said, I would like to address a problem created by my opponent. With the addition of my opponent’s teen curfew to our ordinances, we are sending a negative message to our youth. Teens were not the cause of any of the incidents at nightclubs throughout our city, and I challenge anyone to show me concrete evidence that they were. We should be encouraging folks to visit our great mix of restaurants and businesses downtown, no matter what their age is, without them having to look at a watch to see if they may get in trouble for spending their money at our businesses or being social at the many attractions downtown has to offer. It was an awfully big government move, by a supposedly small-government guy.
Articles about this candidate:
2011 general election voter guide (link)
Taxes and spending: Where Greensboro City Council candidates stand (link)
Candidate profile: Jay Ovittore (link)
City council candidate snubs real estate interest questionnaires (link)
