These are the issues I focused on during my campaign for City Council.  As an At Large Member of the Kettering City Council these issues continue to be an important place to focus our efforts to make Kettering the best place to live, work, and play in the region.

I wanted to help strengthen our neighborhoods, particularly in areas that have seen decline in recent years.  The solution is not just enforcing property maintenance codes.  Reviving a sense of community is even more important.

We do need to fix code violations, but we need to focus on fixing those that have the most impact on our neighborhoods, and help residents find solutions rather than just handing out warnings and citations.  We need to work with neighborhood groups where they exist and start new ones where they don’t in order to help residents assist their neighbors in solving these and other issues.  Working together is the best way to build a community and that starts one street at a time.

I wanted to help support our Safety Services. In addition to a very talented and experienced full time Police and Fire Department we have the benefit of a dedicated group of volunteer firefighters. I feel particularly close to our volunteers because my father was a volunteer for the Kettering Fire Department when I was growing up.  Policies in place are discouraging our volunteer force and nearly a third of our volunteers have left in recent years.  We have recently introduced a new part-paid utilization and compensation structure that will help stop the loss of this very cost effective force multiplier.

As a citizen-soldier in the National Guard, I have a great deal of respect and empathy for our Police and Firefighters and their willingness to put themselves in harms way in order to help keep our families safe.  We owe these men and women the best training and equipment that our City can provide.  As a guardsman I have been trained on the Department of Homeland Security’s National Incident Management System and when I was in Iraq I helped train Iraqi Police and Security Forces.  Montgomery County’s top law enforcement officer, Sheriff Phil Plummer, recognized my experience in this area and endorsed me as a candidate for City Council.

I wanted to bring my business experience to the Council in order to positively impact the business environment in Kettering and at the same time, provide oversight of the business practices within our city government.

I ran the operations of our family owned Distribution Company and in 2007 I earned a Masters of Business Administration from Wright State University.  As part of the management team of a business with over 100 employees, I became familiar with the challenges that companies face on a daily basis and what our city can do to help.

I am using my experience as a business person, and MBA graduate, to help provide oversight of the city’s internal business practices.  Over the past two years I have seen our City Manager demonstrate his commitment to saving money and increasing the staff’s productivity.  I believe we are doing well in this area, but I will continue to pay close attention to our City’s expenditures to make sure they are reasonable and in the best interest of our residents.

Why did I run for Council? I have a vested interest in making our city the best possible place to live, work and play.  After graduating from West Point and serving in the active duty Army, my wife, Emily, and I could have settled down anywhere.  We chose to come back home to Kettering because we wanted to be close to family and have an opportunity to make an impact on our community.  Our three children attend Kettering City Schools, and when they graduate I hope they will be able to find great opportunities for employment and good neighborhoods that will make them want to choose to live here in Kettering.