PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Eleven people, including two incumbents, are running to serve on Portsmouth City Council. However, only three seats are available.
The candidates have criss-crossed the city making their campaign pitches at several forums. 13News Now recently caught up with all 11 at a forum held by the Port Norfolk Civic League. Here's how each answered a key question by the moderator:
Sharon Anderson, business owner
What are your three top priorities if elected and why?
The first thing that I would advocate for if elected would be the mental health field workers. We have some people here in the city of Portsmouth who cannot advocate for themselves. So they need help, and that's one thing that I would do. Number two, would be to bring civility to the council – civility in that we learn to work with each other because the image in Portsmouth is not good. And of course, number three is to bring businesses here to help us lower our taxes because that's important to you.
Bruce LaLonde, Ret. Navy Captain
What are your three top priorities if elected and why?
In my case it's not about what I'm going to do, it's about what I've done as Chairman of the Board of Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority, I was able to reduce homicide crime down from 25 percent down to five percent in housing; that took a tremendous amount of work and I will continue to drive that when I get to council about crime. Second thing, I'm on the Board of Bon Secours because you ladies can't get a mammography here in the city of Portsmouth. A baby can't be born in the city of Portsmouth. We don't have a doc in the box in the city of Portsmouth. I'm on the board to get medical care for the city of Portsmouth. The third thing that I'm talking about – it's about the money, alright. Bottom line: all that stuff takes money. I want to know where it's at; I want to make sure that it's spent efficiently. You're a billion-dollar company that's gone through six CFOs and you don't have city auditor. You deserve better than that, so before we start paying money about education and all this stuff, I want to make sure you're getting value for your dollar because you deserve it.
Mia Phillips, Owner, Phillips Construction
Phillips did not attend the Port Norfolk forum. In a separate interview, she speaks about attracting businesses to the city.
They built out the boardwalk and you would think that it was to come with something special or hot or something attractive or more activity – but there's no activity. There's no draw to make you want to come down to the boardwalk, so it needs to have more activities in Portsmouth and to woo the business that even left. Why did you leave? Why do you leave Portsmouth? What do you need from us to make you come back? What are you looking for? What didn't you get from us that made you leave but as a matter of fact, you've never been to Portsmouth. What could bring you over to Portsmouth? What are you looking for? Did you know that we have buildings that are vacant – that you could do a build-out and then we actually offer tax rebates? We do the same for houses. A lot of people don't know that houses that are blighted that are boarded up – a lot of people don't know that we offer a 10-year tax rebate where your taxes are reduced for ten years.
Incumbent De'Andre Barnes, business owner
What are your priorities for infrastructure development and maintenance for the infrastructure in our city?
Of course, we have a public utilities problem but all of this comes back to making sure that we have the resources and that's where our taxes go. And what we got to also do to fix our infrastructure we got to bring in income and we've done some great things to make sure we're bringing in income but we also have to make sure we bring in smart businesses in the city. I hear people up here talking about bringing businesses here. What we do in the city is we tend to bring in a lot of car washes, storage facilities, and oil places but what we need to do is bring quality jobs and when you bring those quality jobs, the money that comes from that and goes to our citizens – that brings in good tax revenue – which allows us to fix our public utility system because we're in a shape that it needs to be fixed.
Incumbent Dr. Mark Whitaker, Pastor, New Bethel Baptist Church
What specific policies do you intend to introduce or support in this upcoming year?
I think that the city, the citizens need to be very conscious of the fact that this city has a tremendous issue with poverty. And it doesn't matter how much revenue we're bringing in if we're not reaching the most vulnerable of our population. Therefore, the policies that I will continue to support – that I've always supported, number one is education because I believe that that is a significant foundation that our students need. I'm pleased to report that we did vote to approve career and technical education. As a former college professor, I realize that all students have no desire to go to college, there's no shame in not going to college but we should at least provide them a safety net that they can get credentialized, so I will continue to support education and equity.
Dr. William Dodson, Jr, Endodontist
What are your three top priorities if elected and why?
We don't have a culture in this city for measurement and transparency. It hasn't been there for many many many years. They use to have a board up at the city council meetings that talked about their goals. That's been gone for years now. If you're going to run business you have to know where you're going and right now there's no set of priorities the council looks at to says these are the things that we need to do for the city. They haven't agreed on it in years. There's been nothing but a big fight up there. So the first thing I would say is measurement and accountability. If you can't measure it, you can't fix it. We need people with numbers Have you seen the police chief's quarterly report? If you haven't been there, please go to his quarterly report. He puts out the numbers of the crimes What we're doing about these things--finding someone around here that does that.
The second is we need to address, in order to get at economic prosperity, we need to get the crime down. Right now, we're only about 60 percent standing. The first thing we need to do is immediately staff up. They say you can't police your way out of crime but you can't get out of crime without a police force. That's one of the first things we have to do.
The last one is economic development.
Kelvin Turner, Pastor, Zion Baptist Church
What are your three top priorities if elected and why?
The major priority I have is to bring a positive image to the city of Portsmouth. And there are three components of that is, is number one, we have to deal with education. I believe the greatest arsenal we have – the greatest weapon to combat crime, violence, and poverty is education. Secondly, public safety. I think we should bring a crime czar in to support the police department and the sheriff to work with community partners to provide the programs to work with kids early enough in life – stay with them long enough to make a difference, so they become productive citizens. And then number 3, to work on the economic opportunities. I think we have to make the environment friendly for those who are entrepreneurs – to make those who live in Portsmouth to spend money in Portsmouth and those who work here to spend money in Portsmouth and those who don't live or work here to spend money in Portsmouth.
Kathryn "Kitty" Bryant, children's ministry director
What are your three top priorities if elected and why?
I would like to start with my first priority is to steady the course. We have heard a lot of negativity in campaigning and really what I would like to do is to bring positive energy back to city council and move us forward in a way that is optimistic and to build on the strengths that we already have. There are many wonderful things that we have going on in Portsmouth and I want to shift that energy to positive thinking and collaborative leadership. We definitely need to address crime. Looking forward to supporting the Portsmouth United initiative, which is a community-wide effort to address crime and do it in a way that is broad, far-reaching, and meaningful. Lastly, I would like support more programs for our youth through parks and recreation-- being creative about how we can reach youth across our city, something like opening up our schools for things like open gyms – more rec programming or being more creative by bringing in volunteer folks who are already doing work with youth and putting them together and creating bridges by putting them together.
Malinda Johnson, Ret Marine Corp and Army
What are your three top priorities if elected and why?
My three priorities are the three D's that I tell everyone to go by and that's a new decision maker, someone who's going to be there. I've been trained as an interrogator and a mediator – so someone that can work with others. I've worked with people in other countries, I think I work with my constituents here.
The next one is diversity. Diversity equals success. We have business members here who've been here for over 40 years and they have problems getting their simple legislation through the city council. They deserve someone who can help the with that.
The big one is integrity. We are adults. The citizens deserve the ability of someone who can sit down and listen to the other person and still finish the conversation with integrity and kindness.
Davy Smith III, business owner
What are your three top priorities if elected and why?
The first one is public safety. I think about juvenile delinquency and mental health. The majority of the stuff we see going on right now, it's just not adults. You see these younger people committing crimes now. The second thing, housing – energy-efficient affordable housing. Some of these houses can be retrofitted, updated and some things, we know need to be torn down so we can start over. The third thing, economic development. We got to stir this development. We've got to get more industries in here. Then we got to think about the small business owner too because they have to benefit as well.
Yolanda Edmonds Thomas, school board member
What are your three top priorities if elected and why?
Number one, create clean and safe neighborhoods. Number two, invest in public education and number three, economic development.
Let me expound on create clean and safe neighborhoods. I have a five-point plan because as we know crime is usually the root cause of other issues – so the five-point plan, that I've acknowledged on my website – you address crime by preventing crime detecting crime, and responding to crime. So my five-point plan: one, includes opening community precincts and social services outreach in high-crime, high-need areas. We need to reach and have community police right where we need them. I also want to reduce low-visibility areas. We know in our neighborhoods, we need to enforce code to get rid of some of that overgrown vegetation – some of that low visibility areas. Number three, I want to make sure that we modernize and build an aquatic center in our city center. We can do so much more than what's currently there at the sportsplex.