The following are the closing statements offered by each Jefferson City Council candidate at last week’s public candidate forum:
April Taylor-Johnson
candidate Ward 3
“I am April Tyler Johnson. And I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight to listen to us speak. When elected I plan to keep Jefferson a family friendly town is my priority. I’m committed to our families. I’m committed to our youth. I was in brooches on yesterday.
That’s my favorite place besides home. And I was a line behind officer Mary. And a young boy came up. He was with his father. He was terrified of her.
He was almost holding his dad’s like, he was afraid of her and her uniform. But as Mary does, she smiled at the young boy.
She started a conversation with him. She engaged the youth. He was no longer scared of her when he got done. He walked away with the smile.
At that moment, I do feel like many churches like when we engage our citizens, we change lives. And that’s the Jefferson that I want us to be. We are Jefferson. We are one. We are fresh. If you live in ward three, remember to vote for April. Tyler Johnson.”
Will Thomas
candidate Ward 2
“One of the things my wife and I was so impressed with, when we’re getting ready to move to Jefferson was when I got a Jimplecute and there was an ad in there about the mayor.
And it should have been a slogan. I’m not sure if it was it was it really says ‘the business of Jefferson is business.’
I like that. And you know, that statement to me was like, all inclusive.
I thought about my life when I was growing up here in Jefferson.
And back, I say I liked it.
Now, imagine having a city councilman, who has the same mindset that the business of ward two is business.
There’s only a few businesses in Ward Two. So I have to ask, what are we doing to build these businesses?
Well, I’ll tell you, one of the things I want to do is those quarterly meetings, I wanted to have a meeting with those innovative, smart people that I’ve talked about so much in Ward Two.
And I’ll be hosting engagement opportunities, and bringing the citizens of that ward together so that we can bring them to the microphone and let them have a voice.
When I become a city counselor for Ward Two, I don’t want to sit back and just be a Noun.
A person that’s there. I want to be a Verb. I want to be that man of action. This is what I’ve always done is going to benefit our town from the way that I do things.
But it can only happen one way. So y’all go out and vote for me. “
James Parsons
candidate Ward 2
“Well, I’ve heard a lot of good ideas come out This dispersion tonight, I think we also need to maybe possibly keep in mind that some of the some of these ideas, they’re great.
But to what extent can the city of Jefferson actually act on some of these things, we need to, we need to we need to keep a perspective on that, that we have limitations on what the city can do city can’t solve all the problems in our community. Bottom line, we neither had the money nor the authority.
As far as you know, economic development, I think I have a pretty good resume on economic development here as I was responsible for bringing SEPCO in 20 jobs to our community there don’t get me wrong, I’m not taking all the credit for that. It was it was a business deal.
But it happened to benefit the city, I put my money where my mouth is. But in all honesty, without the support of people like former mayor brother haggard, and and former council person, Vic borough that might not have happened and other people, I’m not cutting anybody out of the credit that they deserve for that deal.
And I’ll say that going forward, what I would like to see done, as I mentioned earlier in the discussion was to focus on infrastructure repairs.
Like I said, economic development, we need we need to foster more tourism, figure out ways to be more creative, because everybody, all these towns want to have tourism. Honestly, we need a we need a bigger hotel, you know, a lot of people come most B&B is really, they’re not set up to, for people to bring their families, their children, we need a big, we need to try to attract a larger hotel here with conference center, something like a Hampton Inn or a Holiday Inn Express.
Next, we also need to devote some, some effort to zoning. So that you know, so that everybody knows if they want to build something that hey, you can either build it here or you can’t build it here. We need to we need to a lot better define our zoning situation.
And as far as financial transparency goes, before long before I got on this council, I wanted the city to start publishing their check registers and their financial statements. Were in the process of upgrading or replacing, or we’re talking about replacing our, our, our city website.
Because it’s burdensome, everything, everything that gets posted, the City Secretary has to actually type it out. We can’t just upload a PDF and it work right. So there’s a lot of things for us to work on as a community as an as a city council.”
Hollis Shadden
candidate Ward 1
“Jefferson is a wonderful place to live. It’s a wonderful place to retire, although I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.
I would like to see direction. It’s also a wonderful place for our kids, our grandkids and their kids to live.
I want to keep Jefferson’s charm. Better sewer system, better drainage, better roads and the transparency that everybody has talked about. I’m 100% behind transparency.”
Michelle Fox-Davis
candidate Ward 1
“Again, my name is Michelle Fox Davis and I’m running for Alderman Ward one. I love Jefferson. I’ve been coming here for over 26 years, and I’ve made it my home for the last 10. It’s a beautiful town. My kids grew up here, for the most part, running the streets, bicycles, parks, and I was comfortable with that it’s safe. It’s a safe little town.
I do believe that we need to come together and work together as a community. And you know, just unify, just bring our concerns.
I want to hear your concerns. I want to know, I want to be here your voice. I believe that we all need one.”