Mayor-elect Mike Purzycki answered our readers’ questions on jobs, schools, police, trash pickup, derelict properties, his former rival Eugene Young and the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission.
Will you create a plan to handle derelict properties within neighborhoods?
Blighted neighborhoods will be a priority for my administration. When individual properties are allowed to deteriorate, it affects all properties in an area and allows crime to take hold. Sometimes, just a few vacant properties can negatively affect an entire neighborhood. We are going to take steps to prevent this from happening. I’ll work closely with existing housing development entities, both public and private, and we’ll also look at the benefits that may come from the new neighborhood land bank. Together, I want to preserve our neighborhoods by getting vacant or decaying properties into the hands of those who want to develop them, maintain them and become active participants in the community. In my opinion, we can bring about neighborhood revitalization on a much larger scale than we have in the past and I’ll support efforts to do so.
Do you see a role for the city to partner with organizations that provide educational and training opportunities for traditionally underserved populations?
Every department in our administration will focus efforts on creating opportunities for new jobs to become available in Wilmington. Whether a department’s particular mission involves the creation of jobs or not, each department director will be required to focus attention on how to bring new jobs to our city. We will incentivize employers to hire residents by creating enterprise zones where taxes will be abated and regulations streamlined. We will ask our existing employers to be partners in employing local residents. We will also create training programs to prepare residents for the construction jobs created by the redevelopment of our neighborhoods. These training programs could also assist people who are older to develop new skills required to fill service level jobs.
How do you create economic opportunities for the people who need them most?
I will use all of the powers granted to the city government through our charter and code to bring greater prosperity to all of our citizens through new job skills, job opportunities and sustainable wages. That said, I recognize that the city mandate regarding the delivery of much-needed social services is very limited and it is not supported through the use of city tax dollars. So, with that in mind, my administration will work closely with the state’s social service delivery system to ensure that our citizens have adequate physical and mental health care. We will assist when possible to see that citizens are receiving other economic benefits they may be entitled to, and we’ll help to ensure that landlords and their tenants are adhering to laws intended to promote and maintain decent living standards. While jobs will be a priority for us, seeing to it that individuals and families are made whole through the delivery of state services also plays a large role in improving the overall economic conditions for citizens in Wilmington.
Can you work with the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission? Or is that deal dead, given what it would cost to provide services in Kent and Sussex Counties as well as Wilmington?
Yes, I want to work with the WEIC for a better education system that reflects the needs of Wilmington students and their families. I feel we should build a modern high school in the City of Wilmington that we can be proud of. We should also work with the University of Delaware to invest in education and job skills that are applicable to our economy. We should also embrace technology as a learning tool for all students, but most importantly for those who do not have mentors at home. I support WEIC’s focus on an overall quality education system in Wilmington where our children achieve and improve their own lives, those of their families and contribute to the growth of our city.
How do you create police policy in a way that forges real trust been the police and all the communities they serve?
Along with reducing crime, doing so in an improved atmosphere of greater trust between our citizens and police will be one of my highest priorities. I know that a majority of our citizens and the majority of our police officers respect and support each other. But I also know that there is lack of trust that has to be fixed. Regardless of where we are on the trust meter, none of us can tolerate what violent crime is doing to our people, our neighborhoods and our City’s reputation at home and around the country. I will bring in a police chief who, along with his top command structure, will redirect police policy regarding working with the community. Likewise, I will deploy myself, our police and other representatives of city government into our communities to foster improved relationships and get us all on the same page. Together, we can rid our city of the minority of citizens who are committing crimes and fostering fear or hopelessness among our citizens. The criminals can’t be allowed to dictate who we are as a people and affect how we care for each other and our city. We can and will do a better job of working together to reduce crime and increase citizen and police cooperation and respect.
Will you bring Eugene Young along so that he can win the mayoral race and be thoroughly familiar with the city by 2020?
I respect and admire Eugene and appreciate the well-executed and respectful campaign he conducted. As I begin my first term, I look forward to working with Eugene and welcoming his ideas for a better Wilmington. It’s obvious from the campaign that Eugene and I care about many of the same things. It’s also obvious that Eugene can play a future role in our city’s governance if he chooses to in the future. But it is presumptuous for anyone to think that Eugene needs to be “brought along” or that I am in a position to do that. I look forward to working with Eugene and will need his help along with countless others to make Wilmington a stronger city.
Special refuse pickups can take as much as a month now. Can you speed them up and bring back spring cleanups?
No service that a government offers to its citizens, which, by the way, is supported with citizen tax dollars, should take a month to receive or deliver. Even a few days are too much time for a government to respond to citizen needs or concerns. I operate on the fundamental belief that you cannot fix problems that exist within the government if you do not measure performance and results. To ensure quality city services in every neighborhood, I will employ two inter-dependent data-intensive operational management approaches known as 311 and CitiStat which we will brand as WilStat. WilStat will be the central tool of my customer-focused approach to managing the delivery of city services to our citizens. In my administration, it will be a priority to ensure that improvements in government efficiency and effectiveness are paired with greater transparency, accountability, and integrity. The combined use of 311 and WilStat will help drive a culture change in City Hall and in our neighborhoods so our public- sector employees and residents alike will be truly proud of what we are achieving together. So to the original question, yes, we’ll speed up the delivery of services and I’ll consult with my public works commissioner on the best direction to go regarding the formerly held one-day spring clean-up versus the special pick-up process that the city offers.
Will you put more police on the street?
I will listen to what our city’s new police chief tells me about the appropriate deployment of police officers which will include the number of officers on the street and where they are assigned. We will conduct a management review with the Police Chief of the entire department to make sure that as many officers as possible are assigned to street patrol. We as citizens, and the police officers who protect and serve us, need to be clear with each other about the mission that guides the department and how that mission will be carried out. I have already reviewed the state crime commission report, which indicates that we currently have enough police officers, totaling 320, to adequately patrol a city of our size. I don’t know at this time if our reviews of department staffing will result in additional officers on the streets, but if we can add officers
to street patrols, we will.
