VOTE411 Voter Guide

I have 45 years of experience of civil engineering experience specializing in road and bridge design, and construction and highway safety. The vast majority of my professional experience has been in municipal and county government, though I have spent time in the private sector, making my professional views and opinions very well rounded. In the last 15 years in office, I have weathered the worst of the economic recession while increasing the amount of funds available for road and bridge maintenance. I have reduced personnel costs, administrative costs, and made budgetary moves that were beneficial for both our office and the County general fund while providing excellent services to the public. I am committed to increasing the safety of our roads and bridges. We seek and have been awarded millions of dollars in federal and state funds for roads, bridges, safety projects, and stormwater improvements. I will continue to make Summit County’s infrastructure better, safer, and stronger.

My administration's main goal will continue into the next four years: I want to make Summit County roads and bridges better, safer, and stronger. Infrastructure in this country is vital to its ability to thrive, but nothing is more important than knowing that the roads and bridges you drive over are the safest they can possibly be. In addition a newer goal is to finish implementing the Summit County Surface Water Management Program. This program, enacted in 2021, will finally address and fund the myriad of flooding and water quality issues facing Summit County. I will also keep looking for additional grants and outside funding to help maintain Summit County infrastructure. Infrastructure costs are rising while revenue is, at best, remaining stagnant. I have been successful in the past bringing in the money the County needs to improve roads and I will continue to fight for that money and ensure that Summit County gets a fair share of all available funds.

Protecting the environment is a prominent part of our discussions when designing and constructing road and bridge projects. Construction projects have the potential to be hard on the environment and we carefully design and plan such projects in a way to do the least amount of damage to the natural world. For some examples: if trees need to be cut down for a project, we do it at a certain time of year so as not to disrupt the habitat of endangered species, we divert water under bridges so no construction debris will get into the waterways, and we use the least damaging methods of asphalt placement. In addition, snow and ice control is carefully managed so rock salt does not end up scattered off the roadway. Each truck is carefully calibrated to ensure extra salt is not getting onto the road. We use brine as a pretreatment before storms to reduce the amount of salt needed. Finally we store our salt responsibly, under cover and on a cement base so salt does not leak into the ground water.