candidate for
It is important to address blight and dilapidated structures in our city because eliminating blight and dilapidated structures can help with reducing crime and gun violence, which is another community priority. Blight and dilapidated buildings are a symptom of poverty much like crime and gun violence is a symptom of poverty. First, I believe we should work to prevent structures from becoming dilapidated in the first place. One vision I have is what I call “Build up my Block” program. This could be a pilot program where the city can help with funding and facilitating a city street or subdivision block of homeowners banding together to help each other improve their property or exterior of their homes, with help from volunteers and non-profit organizations. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Second, it is expensive for the city to demolish blighted and dilapidated structures in the city, and I am certain we don't have the funds to demolish all dilapidated properties. It is a long and expensive process because private property owners have rights, and those rights have to be protected and it leads to a lengthy legal process. Our city has a Land Bank Authority that acquires and demolishes tax-delinquent and inner-city properties with the goal of re-purposing the properties for economic use or housing. We should continue to support and expand the efforts of the Land Bank Authority and our Community Housing Development Organization to turn more and more dilapidated structures and tax-delinquent properties into new housing. It is a slow process but it starts one property at a time.
Good, affordable and safe housing is a necessity for a thriving city to prosper and grow. We also need to change the downward trend of our city home ownership rate. We need to turn that ship around and begin implementing policies to help increase home ownership. We should work towards having a vibrant housing market providing housing options to young people, families, and retirees. The supply of new housing will be driven primarily by market conditions, but sensible city policies can help create more affordable housing for residents. It's my understanding new housing starts have become expensive because of pandemic related supply issues driving up the prices of building materials. I haven't seen local numbers indicating the extent of our housing shortage, but any shortage would lead to a problem in affordability with increasing prices for homes on the selling market pricing out some home buyers and thus leading to skyrocketing rental prices because of increased demand. I have seen national data showing permits for housing starts have outpaced household growth since 2019. I believe the trend will continue and eventually the supply of housing will outstrip the demand, thereby bringing home prices down, but not necessarily bringing rental prices down. However, as a city we can look to our permitting process to examine ways we may ease up on strict building codes or streamline the process to make it faster for developers to build new housing. So if rent prices do not come down for renters, where does that leave our renters? I believe we should explore a city rent stabilization ordinance. It would automatically expire after a reasonable number of years and bring temporary relief to renters that need rent prices to be capped off and to slow the growth of rent increases. We can do this in a way without hurting property owners ability to make profit or limiting their property rights. Many other cities have done this and we should explore it as well to help families currently struggling with paying rent. Overall, we should continue to support and expand the work of our local Community Housing Development Organization to build more affordable housing throughout our city. We should provide incentives for our city employees to buy their home within the city, so our employees can live and work in Hopkinsville. I do not mind exploring any policy we can implement to increase affordable housing.
Our economy is thriving but we have to do better and we have to do more. I applaud our local leaders' current efforts encouraging economic development and job growth. Our city has a successful local hospital, our region is home to many industrial companies manufacturing products that are exported out of our region, we have an excellent community college, and we have a capable workforce. We have done well and should continue those efforts. If we wish to attract more businesses such as retail, dining, and hospitality to our city, we have to increase our median household and per capita income. And those economic efforts have to have an eye towards increasing our median household income. Additionally, it is important we develop our local economy with an eye towards industries that will grow and prosper far into the 21st century. I will focus our city on increasing our efforts in promoting and supporting our locally owned businesses, just as we work in recruiting outside businesses to our city. Our locally-owned business owners are our family, friends, and neighbors and we should certainly support them. We should ensure we help lift ALL businesses. Our city recently approved a $1.5 million dollar grant to Rural King to build a new store and develop the Bradford Square Mall. Our city should establish a similar grant program for our locally-owned businesses to help them expand. I believe our locally-owned businesses should have access to similar resources we provide to outside businesses we recruit. This only seems fair and equitable. We should work with our state and federal partners to establish a locally operated Small Business Development Center that can provide entrepreneurship training, hands on professional services such as marketing, accounting, or financial planning services for our locally-owned businesses to grow and expand. Let's also not forget about our entrepreneurs and start-ups. A Small Business Development Center should also provide extensive training for our entrepreneurs and start ups. Our city can support these efforts by partnering to create a venture fund or a small business incubator to encourage new business start ups. Our city will grow and prosper if we help lift up our locally-owned businesses to grow, expand, add more jobs, increase wages, and continue to be the backbone of our community. This is why I want our city to focus on expanding our locally-owned businesses.
A future free from gun violence is possible and it should be one worth fighting for. As a city council member I will always make the safety and well-being of residents my number one priority, exceeding all other priorities. I know the importance of this issue because unfortunately I've had personal experience with being an innocent by-stander caught in the cross-fire of gang related shootings as a young man. I sometimes feel like we all have a gun pointed at us and statistics bear it out. In the US it's estimated we currently have over 400 million guns. That is more guns than people in our country! How can we keep our community safe from gun violence when we have more guns than people? Now before discussing priorities for reducing gun violence, lets first discuss the largest victims of gun violence. The largest number of victims of gun violence in the US are those that commit suicide. Yes you read that correctly. I know city residents are more concerned with their own safety; however, we should concern ourselves just as much with gun related suicide as with assault, robbery and homicide involving a gun. Assault, homicide, and any violent drug related crime involving firearms is a symptom of poverty in a community. Significant blight and dilapidated structures in a city also contribute to crime and gun violence. Dilapidated building help hide illegal activities and illegal guns. Thus, over the long-term if we wish to reduce gun violence in our city we have to reduce poverty and blight. In the short-term as a community we have to prioritize keeping guns out of the hands of folks that should not have guns, such as convicted felons, spousal abusers, persons with severe mental illness, and persons under 21 years of age. The majority of gun owners are obviously responsible gun owners. It's a small percentage of persons with bad intent and with access to a gun that we need to prevent from possessing a gun. How we can do this is something that involves a community wide effort. I am not a law enforcement or criminal justice expert, but I will rely upon their advice to make prudent decisions. Maybe some restrictive laws targeted at preventing criminals and violent individuals is a start. More police officers and increased community policing may help. But I know something has to be done now. This is truly a difficult issue and one that as a community we need to collaborate as residents with police, our justice system, our community leaders, our churches and community organizations. When I think of that 16-year-old young man with two guns, who allegedly shot and killed Alijah Watts, I ask myself why wasn't there a responsible adult in his life to take those guns from him? Ask yourself, if you were his parent or guardian would you have taken action and taken those guns? If you answered yes, then there is yet hope for our community. If you answered no, then I fear we may be losing hope.
Our downtown is the heart of our city and is important we maintain and revitalize it. However, before I share my thoughts on revitalizing downtown, we must also give focus to maintaining and revitalizing another business area, all of Fort Campbell Blvd! This important area starting at the intersection of Walnut Street and extending all the way to the Eagle Way Bypass also can benefit from revitalization. If downtown Hopkinsville is the “heart of our city”, then Fort Campbell Boulevard is “the backbone of our city” and I believe both areas should have equal focus on revitalization. I will certainly work with downtown leaders, developers, city, state, and federal economic development agencies to implement our current vision for revitalizing downtown. It is my belief we are on the right track. I will work with our local leaders to help find private, state and federal funds that can be used to help our revitalization efforts. In terms of a focus, I believe we need to continue to bring more residential housing, eating establishments and retail stores downtown. Downtown can be a pedestrian friendly community attracting more residents to live, work, and shop. It remains important for existing residents, business owners, and property owners downtown to be more extraordinarily involved in this process. I want to emphasize I will work to chase down whatever state, federal, and private investment we can bring to bear on downtown revitalization because we can't do it alone with just local city funding.
I believe we have a local economic problem of “brain drain”. This is when we lose skilled, intellectual, and technical residents and professionals to other regions of our state or country. It starts with our young people who leave for college but don't come back because of a lack of opportunities and continues throughout from workers aged 25-60. This is evident from our population figures which show we have not grown our population. This is why it's important we grow our economy into industries that will grow far into the 21st century, so more of our young people decide to stay in Hopkinsville and we can attract more skilled and technical professionals to our city.
