Council’s Neighborhood Working Group is “Better
Late Than Never.”
Columbus, Ohio – Council candidate Heidi Samuel stated
today she is pleased her campaign platform to improve neighborhood/city
interaction is being explored by city council members.
Samuel, a civic association leader, hopes the announcement
of this group is a genuine effort to make up for overdue attention
to the importance of neighborhoods. “It’s
time to elevate the importance of our neighborhoods as a measure
of our city’s overall health and a foundation for its
future.”
Samuel cautions civic association leaders and neighborhood
groups against an election year ploy, encouraging them to hold
council members accountable to an action agenda and timelines. “Because
it’s an election year, there is a surge of interest and
efforts by current council members to pacify neighborhoods. What
is important is ensuring this interest and commitment continues
after November,” Samuel said, referring to this announcement
as “better late than never.”
Samuel looks to bring balance and better neighborhood representation
to city council. Past president and current economic
development chair of the Eastmoor Civic Association & Blockwatch,
Samuel, a mother of two young children, has been an effective
grassroots advocate for neighborhoods and urban revitalization. Council,
she says, employs the “squeaky wheel” approach
to answering neighborhoods, allowing conditions to often becoming
intolerable before they are addressed.
“There’s a difference between saying you support
neighborhoods and actually rolling up your sleeves to work
side-by-side with civic associations. Those at the grassroots
level understand the difference.” Samuel hopes
to resolve cumbersome obstacles for neighborhoods by creating
better avenues at the city level for communities to have their
goals and needs met.
Samuel believes Columbus needs a true neighborhood advocate
on council. “Community groups have never been more
frustrated by the lack of access, lack of response, and lack
of long-term commitment to their concerns and needs by city
council,” Samuel says. “There have been a
lot of nods and smiles, a lot of reports created that now sit
on dusty shelves, but very little comprehensive action focused
on long-term issues and effective partnership that make and
keep neighborhoods healthy.”
Samuel’s run for city council calls for the city to protect,
preserve and improve neighborhoods as a method of
ensuring the city’s long-term health. Her focus
is to restore public safety personnel numbers to necessary
levels, expand the city’s code enforcement program
to prevent continued corrosion and blight, and develop better,
more substantive partnerships with neighborhoods to answer
their unique needs.
For more information, visit the official Heidi Samuel for
Columbus Neighborhoods website, www.HeidiSamuel.com.
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