Ask Questions of the Candidates for Wilmington City Council President
The next in Allan Loudell’s series of candidate debates is with the Democratic candidates for Wilmington City Council President: Norman Griffiths and Theo Gregory.
The debate is on WDEL on Monday, 18 August 2008 from 6 to 7PM. For those of you outside of the area, the programs are streamed here.
Allan has put out another call for questions that you would like to hear asked of the candidates so you can better understand their policy positions. In the previous debates, Allan has used some questions from us, so this is your chance to hear questions that might mean something to you asked (and Allan doesn’t let them run away from the questions, either).
So post your questions below, and be sure to listen on Monday!
Ask the candidates if they will “open the public comment” period to the public, by televising those comments?
some background: Ted Blunt shut down chan 22 to the public’s ability to hold meetings, forums etc and having those events televised. He refused to open the public commentary portion of the meetings, and the cameras only come on when he is seated and the gavel banged!
If citizens have an issue and take the time to go downtown and prepare their 3 minute statements, why should fellow citizens not be privvy to their comments?
When Chan 22 was created it was done so to have the public fully informed on city matters. Prior to Blunt we the citizens were able to hold meeting and forums on issues we wanted the elected to work on….until Blunt shut it all down.
We have many many times appeared in the public commentary to voice our outrage that our fellow citizens are denied the right to hear what other citizens have to say, or want to inform their fellow citizens of.
Dwight Davis filed a complaint and the first time the Committe on Cable TV met, or a meeting even scheduled for years, was because of the complaint Davis filed. Blunt filled the meeting room with attorneys from Comcast and the City Solitictors office. Blunt claimed and held the position that “he didnt have to open the channel to citizens”, but of course the name Community TV says it all. Blunt is a control freak. I dont believe Norman Griffiths will change one thing at city hall, he certainly has the same ill feelings against the citizens as Blunt held. (Do we want another duponter running city hall)?
Theo may be open to opening up city government to the citizens to pay their salaries and of course if City council is an open government should not be turning off the cameras, when we the people come to speak.
Ask each of these candidates if elected to office will you end the Ted Blunt blackout of citzens speaking prior to the city council meetings and those meetings not televised?
Chan 22 was a sweetheart deal with Comcast that 22 would be a free channel to residents of the city, that the channel would be used for “citizens holding forums, debates, have access to creating programs for the community, and that all city council meetings would be seen on Chan. 22 by city residents. Ted Blunt appointed himself as “chairman of the committe” to oversee Chan. 22. He denied citizens the right to hold meetings in the city bldgs, or to have them broadcast on 22. The City Council and the Mayor instead turned 22 into a “free” ad for themselves in their political campaigns. It was Dwight Davis who filed a lawsuit to force those meetings and buildings open to the public. The first meeting in years while Blunt was chair occured only after the complaint was filed. Blunt brought attorneys from Comcast and city attornies to tell those in attendance that Blunt and the committee would decide….not the citizens of Wilmington. Blunt is a control freak. Griffiths will change nothing. Theo will be more citizen friendly.
Not so sure about Theo being citizen friendly. When Norm Giffiths took over for Blunt he allowed a lot of public comment. Gregory is a big question mark, IMO.
BTW, Blunt drove me nuts. Control freak is a kind description.
Dick Tuck’s Chinatown banner asked Nixon, “What about the Hughes loan?”
Someone needs to ask Theo: “What about the Capano loan?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tuck#Pranks
Dick Tuck’s Chinatown banner asked Nixon, “What about the Hughes loan?”
Someone should ask Theo, “What about the Capano loan?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tuck#Pranks
Gregory is no question mark for those who know him for years. Griffiths is a duponter always watching out for big corporate Delaware.
How many City Council meetings have any of you actually attended…one, two three!
Please. Your newcomers. Many of us have been going to these Council meetings for years, we have the inside scoop! We no the dirt on most of them. I take Theo over Griffiths any day of the week.
Someone should ask Griffiths why he so heavily supported LNG going up the river? dupont connection! Or why he wouldnt vote against the Patriot Act resolution? Or why he always votes for the bankers? Or why he wouldnt support stopping Cherry Island Landfill from going higher and higher….and on, and on.
No one picked up on the Adam Taylor interview with Ruggerio(?) aways back where he trashed many of the candidates running for city posts.
I was going to link to it here yesterday but got sidetracked.
Wilmington’s best mayor of my lifetime was a DuPonter. The second best was a major stockholder.
Exactly what “votes for the bankers” were taken in Council? And were any of those votes against the interests of the City and its residents?
Hey Nancy, I just went to the NJ to search for this and nothing I got back (all archive material) looked promising. Hope you can find it, because I would be really interested in that.
I would like to hear from these candidates if they would support asking the HOPE Commission to be more accountable for progress towards their stated goals especially since they largely operate with city funds.
Also on the Hope Commission — since city violence continues to rise and the solutions proposed by the Hope Commission are thin on the ground, are there any circumstances where you would support NOT renewing Hope Commission funding?
The City Council developed what amounted to a 24/7 Community Policing Plan — a plan that would effectively put the Community Policing function in neighborhoods for each shift, each day. Both the Mayor and the Chief have rejected this idea — what would you do as Council President to try to reopen this issue? It seems that a logical compromise is to implement 24/7 Community Policing in the most stressed neighborhoods with an eye towards expanding to other neighborhoods if successful.
Cassandra: You mean the “hopeless commission”. Why do any of you believe the Hopeless Commission has any real ideas to solve the Citys problems. These are the same people who couldnt solve anything in their day jobs. Many are just elitists who are not in touch with the community.
It is the Mosley’s crew, who consistently go against the community groups as to what to do to stop crime. Mosley is not supportive nor is Baker, of community policing. They are in support of “homeland security style” policing.
One of the City’s greatest weaknesses is that it has a more than 50% rental rate, and in some neighborhoods that figure approaches 90%. Not only does that mean that there are alot of city residents without a longterm stake in their communities, it also means that L&I is waging what constitutes a war in getting landlords to appropriately maintain and manage their properties. What new policies would you support to increase home ownership in the city AND what new policies would you support to hold landlords more accountable for their properties.
I’ll go grab it now. I save almost everything somewhere.
The policy I would institute is “that it does not matter whether you own your home or not”. Renting IS preparation for homeownership.
Besides, HOW you live is important. Trash and litter is a reflection on the people, not the houses.
PLEASE stop creating EXCUSES, because there are people who will rely on those excuses to live like PIGS.
I have watched people, in the vicinity of 4th street and Lancaster about the 1200 to 1900 blocks, JUST throw TRASH from eating, out of their cars and onto the street. Others, just drop their wrappers. THAT area is routinely swept by the city, and half a day later – you can not tell it was cleaned.
I would hold the People accountable and not the landlord. Besides if the Police and L&I can not control the people, what makes you think the landlord can?
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What makes you so sure that people who have been DEPENDENT on others, want the responsibility of HOMEOWNERSHIP?
Perhaps the NEXT social welfare program will be a maintenance program provided for THESE NEW PROPOSED homeowners. OH, It is in Southbridge, for the FACADE program.
The landlord certainly does not have to rent to PIGS. They DO have a decent amount of control over who they sign leases with.
The Southbridge facades program is being paid for by Buccini Pollin. All $100K of it.
Shoot, couldn’t find it but it was about endorsements and Ruggerio was dissing Theo, for instance, for being a one-issue candidate-all about the kids, kids, kids.
He took umbridge with several others. It was HIGH DEM agenda through-and-through.
Oh, I vaguely remember that — thanks for looking, Nancy.
Also on the Hope Commission — since city violence continues to rise and the solutions proposed by the Hope Commission are thin on the ground, are there any circumstances where you would support NOT renewing Hope Commission funding?
*
AGREED
Since the all of the Hope Commission money is being kept in the riverfront district even though there aren’t very many city residents (relatively) and they PROMISED that they’d expand to the EastSide this year and didn’t, they had ought to stop funding this bogus group.
Tom Carper’s riverfront boondoggle should not be sucking even more dollars away from better uses.
The Hope Commission’s refusal to support a city-wide hiring of people for the kids Safe Haven program was it for me. Instead they want a glorified rap contest? Now they say they are spending 500K towards developing a inmate re-entry program? There are already people who have been doing that work for a few years.
Is the HC accountable at all for the millions they are getting? yuck.
One of the Wilmington Police Department’s challenges for retaining officers is that other jurisdictions close by (New Castle County and the State Police) pay more than the WPD. Would these candidates support development of a plan to get to some pay parity between city and county police to stem some of the transfer tide? Also, would these candidates be in favor of easing the residency requirements for WPD officers?
From where I sit, it seems as though this City has a ton of services for people who might need them. If I were running the Hope Commission, I think that the first task I would have done is to get a handle on everything that is already in existence — public and private — and start figuring out 1) How to better use what we have and 2) what is truely lacking and working beefing that service up.
Too many Wilmington politicians are quick to propose new services for some group of people where there may already be something useful. For instance, both the Wilmington PAL center and the Hicks Anderson center are underutilized, I think. Asking all of these service groups to be more focused on their local populations seems reasonable to me.
When the landlord evicts them, I hope you are not there crying discrimination. The city and county councils should Governmentally amend the zoning and landlord codes, to ALLOW eviction of Renters by landlords, for being trashy, and for behaviors that the landlord decides is detrimental to the neighborhood.
I did not limit my criticism of the facade program to who paid for it. Even if the Buccini Pollin did, they saved lots of money in their LAND deals with the city. And the pending threat of the use of Eminent Domain, on their behalf. They still got a good deal, even if there was some payback.
Back in the day when I was a renter (and still do rent apartments for crews at project sites) I absolutely positively never saw a lease that lasted for more than a year. I know it is hard to evict someone (by design, I think), but I fail to see how a landlord who has someone on his property who won’t maintain some basic cleanliness and who is a detriment can get a renewal. And that trashy behavior directly harms the landlord’s property, not just the neighborhood. Landlords who let folks stay in their buildings who are actively helping to harm those buildings are just lazy.
Several Wilmington neighborhoods have multiple liquor stores serving a small area that are all too often nuisance properties to these communities. An idea floating around these communities is getting the City to buy out some of these stores to thin out the nuisances. Would these candidates support this idea?
An open government question — would you support the City documenting it actions and conducting more business via the web? For instance, it would be very useful to be able to see a database of LI& citations and notices by property. This would be useful to neighbors to know if issues have already been reported or even to folks new to the city — they can look up a property’s records to know before they rent if they are looking at a problem building or landlord.
The City is taking back from the County some parks that were previously the County’s jurisdiction (Canby Park, Brandywine Park). What policies and funding levels would these candidates support to make sure that these parks remain or become real assets to the citizens of the City?
Paul, the city of Newark has devised a way for the law to allow landlords to quickly evict problem renters. I think it is a two strikes and you’re out deal.
I wonder whether any of the candidates would have the backbone required to increase enforcement of the city’s loitering codes, by pulling people off the street, and facing the subsequent civil rights abuse claims that will be forthcoming, in order to quell the violence existing uncontrolled in some of the city’s areas….
It worked in New York.
Another excellent debate moderated by Allan Loudell!
I listened to this one (did not hear the fisrt few minutes) but couldn’t live blog it — both of these candidates had extremely similar approaches to policy and administration. But I had not asked about eminent domain, but Allan did. Both Griffiths and Gregory talked about approving an entire plan, not just the eminent domain bit (which is abit revisionist) but Griffiths sounded as though he wanted to be accommodating to owners of thriving businesses there, Gregory was completely full of entitlement on this issue. The people of South Wilmington wanted this plan and the City Council gave them the plan they wanted. People in the city expect them to grow the city and to not let obviously detrimental areas persist. Too bad that doesn’t apply in other areas in the city.
Both indicated that they would lead a more pro-active body purposed to providing more oversight to the administration. Good luck with that. Both were quite surprised when Allan told them of a new city radio station broadcasting a signal that could be heard in New Jersey.
The next debate moderated by Allan Loudell is between the Democrats for NCCo County Executive, Aug. 22, 8 a.m. at the Ruby R. Vale Moot Courtroom, Widener Univ. Law School, Wilmington. Hope that Allan will weigh in here and tell us if this one is open to the public.
Damn, I’m sorry I missed it. Thanks for staying on top of this Cassandra.
We’re holding the County Executive debate at Widener so the public can attend.
So come on out! Plus, a slot in the morning presumably exposes more listeners to the debate than a 6 p.m. debate would.
This will be more formal… A reporter’s panel, of which I’ll just be one of two or three reporters.
So I won’t be able to ask as many questions, or be as able to follow-up.
Still — I invite questions!
Allan Loudell
1150 A.M.—WDEL Radio
“People in the city expect them to grow the city and to not let obviously detrimental areas persist. Too bad that doesn’t apply in other areas in the city.”
Like City Hall?
Way to go, deTocqueville!
Thanks again, Allan — we’ll get a post up tomorrow on this debate.
Ask them where they stand on supporting the development of affordable housing for seniors in the City.
Ask them if they are willing to remove the barriers that exist is zoning to create the housing needed for the homesless and vunerable?
Casandra: Hicks and Pal are under utilized? you must be kidding!
When was the last time you were at either place?
There are many non profits in the City who are duplicating services, they could be combined. Many of the non profits apply for grants to deal with a problem and then end up as nothing but another referral agency.
Who is holding the non profits accountable? What about all those “faith based groups” where no one investigates to find if they are properly staffed or just gave their cronies jobs?