Candidate for
Mayor; Village of Glendale

The dedication of an historic marker for the former Glendale Eckstein School has been my most satisfying accomplishment during the past four years on Village Council. Recall that Eckstein operated as a school for Glendale's African-American children during the time of segregation in America. That day is long gone, but after recently purchasing the school building from the Princeton School District, Glendale wanted to develop a commemorative marker for the site.

I headed a Council committee which incorporated the words of former Eckstein students as the text for a commemorative plaque. When the dedication ceremony was held in May, more than 60 former Eckstein students attended as well as about 100 other citizens of the community. Four Eckstein students presented remarks of what it was like to attend Eckstein and how that school experience had affected their lives.

I believe this commemorative plaque program pulled the white and black residents of Glendale closer together and helped build a stronger bridge between the diverse segments of our community.

A second major contribution I made as a Council member had to do with the recent renovation of Village Square. From my business experience I was well aware that too often people don't realize what is being created until a project is done. I made major efforts to involve residents in design reviews of the project. When concern was expressed about how extending the center island northward would affect traffic patterns in the square, I asked the Mayor and Police Chief to temporarily install red traffic cones so that the traffic patterns could be observed. The initial specification for the pavers used to resurface the square sidewalks called for cement pavers shaped like bricks. A friend and I traveled to the City of Montgomery to inspect pavers Montgomery had installed 10 years earlier. To our surprise, the cement pavers were being removed and replaced with kiln fired bricks because the original pavers had deteriorated and become unattractive. With this knowledge the specification for the Glendale Square was changed to kiln fired bricks.

I have championed redevelopment of the Glendale Fire Department into a highly rated and cost effective protection service. The Insurance Services Organization, an association that ranks fire department performance across the country, recently rated Glendale's fire department as being in the top 2 or 3 percent in the state. Glendale Fire Department has responded to every emergency fire call in the Village in the last two and half years with an average response time of less than five minutes. The cost to the village is less than other villages are paying for fire protection in similar circumstances.

Finally, I have made the Glendale budget much more comprehensible for elected officials. Our 30 year old accounting software provides accurate numbers, but in a format that prevents seeing the forest because of all the trees. After months of effort I developed a spreadsheet which summarizes this information and provides an overview of monthly revenue and spending. This summary makes it much easier to track and project important trends in Village finances. In September I used this information to make an analysis which projected that if nothing is changed, the Glendale General Fund would be depleted by end 2012 and expenditures during the first quarter of 2013 could not be paid. Because of this analysis, Council members decided to retain approximately $1,000,000 of inheritance tax receipts in the General Fund to cover the shortfall.

Financial acumen will be required in the time ahead to guide Glendale toward the right combination of service cuts or tax revenue increases.