Tom Grant

I reached out to current city council member and candidate for re-election Tom Grant with some questions about his candidacy. Below are his unedited responses:

Why did you decide to run for another term?

I feel I can still contribute to the community and remain as a voice of reason on the Council.

What do you hope to accomplish/see accomplished if you are elected to a second term?

I hope to see the Founders Park development plan completed and implementation started.

I hope to bring renewable energy solar panels through the middle of town along the railroad tracks. This will help free our dependence on fossil fuels and free up money in the budget for other community improvements.

I hope to assist the formation of private/public partnerships to create new jobs within the community (ie: innovation lab and maker space).

I will work to "right size" our police force and reduce the pension burden to a sustainable level.

I hope to continue the sustainability plan started by the sustainability commission and see it published and implemented.

I hope to assist the City and Park District in finding an equitable solution to the funding of city parks as they are vital to the health and well being of our community.

  

What else, if anything, would you like voters to know?

I love our community.

We have the best of everything and are truly blessed to live in this time and place.

Together, with our hard work, a positive attitude and being helpful to all, we will make Carbondale its best yet!

We have many energetic young people seeking a place to fit in and make a living.

We need to coddle new ideas and embrace new technologies that create jobs and are good for the planet and our citizens. 

Thomas Grant

Council Member and Candidate for Re-election.

Corene McDaniel Newest Old Council Member

I did not make it to council meeting last night but probably would have meant a lot of sitting in the antechamber while council met in closed session. According to the schedule, council met in open session for about half an hour to take citizen comments regarding whom should be appointed to Don Monty's empty seat, then moved to closed session to vote on the three candidates. Former council member Corene McDaniel emerged the victor

As I told someone last week, if I was betting a significant amount of money, I would have bet on McDaniel getting the nod from council. She has served on council before, is a known quantity and familiar to most of the other council members. Grant hasn't been particularly active in governmental affairs since leaving his position with the city and, while Kang serves on the Planning Commission, it acts in a purely advisory capacity, with no regulatory power, ergo no idea how he would act in a rule-making.  For the next 15 or so months, I imagine McDaniel looked like the safest bet.

Updated:  According to this report, McDaniel will only serve out the remainder of Monty's term and will not seek re-election. This does make the election to fill the seat for the full term more fair as if Kang or Grant had been appointed, they would have had a significant advantage, as will Monty, in seeking a full term on the council.

Chamber Pick for City Council

Looks as if the Chamber of Commerce members plumped for Tom Grant to take Don Monty's seat on city council as he received a plurality of votes in a poll taken by the Chamber over the weekend:

Thomas Grant is the preferred finalist to fill the empty seat on the Carbondale City Council according to an unscientific poll conducted by the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce of its membership.

            Grant, a former Carbondale Building and Neighborhood Services manager, was named by 45.4 percent of respondents to a survey emailed Friday to the primary contact person at Chamber-member businesses and organizations. The survey, which asked each respondent to select one of the three finalists, was open for responses until noon today.

            He received 30 of 66 votes in the survey. Finalists Corene McDaniel and Navreet Kang both received 18 responses in the survey (27.2 percent each). All three finalists appeared today on “Talk of the Town,” a joint Chamber-City radio program airing each Monday morning on WDBX-FM to make their case for appointment.

            Chamber leaders said the results of the poll will be shared with the members of the city council prior to Tuesday’s special council meeting at which one of the three will be named to the vacancy.

Potential City Council Members

The city has posted the list of those interested in taking Don Monty's spot on the city council:

• Ms. Lorie Allen; 1008 West Sycamore Street; Certified Holistic Touch Practitioner and Certified Personal Trainer
• Ms. Judy Cunningham; 509 N. Oakland Avenue; Retired Registered Nurse
• Mr. Thomas Grant; 5370 Springer Ridge Road; President, Grant Consulting Company, President Mulberry Hill Farm, and former Building and Neighborhood Services Manager for the City
• Mr. Navreet Kang; 613 South Terrace Drive; Owner/ Manager local State Farm Insurance Agency
• Mr. George Maroney; 37 Pinewood Drive; Retired Administrator, Memorial Hospital of Carbondale
• Ms. Ruth Corene McDaniel; 516 East Jackson Street; Former three-term City Council Member (until 2013) and Retired Cosmetologist
• Mr. Adrian Miller; 500 Saluki Drive; Undergraduate Student at SIUC (Political Science Major) and President of Undergraduate Student Government for 2013-2014
• Mr. Brent Ritzel; 801 North Springer Street; Graduate Student at SIUC (Masters of Public Administration Program) and Graduate Research Assistant at Morris Library Special Collections Resource Center

Of the above, George Maroney ran for mayor during the last election, while Navreet Kang and Brent Ritzel ran for council seats, with Ritzel barely losing out to current council member Jessica Brandshaw.  Corene McDaniel served on council for about a dozen years, before declining to run again at the end of her last term.

Of the others, Tom Grant was Building and Neighborhood Services Manager for the city for a number of years and currently runs Mulberry Hill Farm.  I am not particularly familiar with Adrian Miller, Judy Cunningham or Lorie Allen.

Of those seeking the seat, Brent Ritzel probably has the "best claim" to it, as he and Kang were the only two to actively seek a seat in the last election and he lost to Branshaw by only a few votes.  However, putting Tom Grant on the council would have two benefits:

1. Having worked for the city for a number of years, he would bring more knowledge of city operations to council than any of the interested parties except Corene McDaniel

2. As the proprietor of Mulberry Hill Farm, he would bring an active business perspective to council, as everyone else on council, with the exception of Lance Jack, is either retired or employed by the university.

Dump Fronabarger Movement

There's a group on Facebook formed to try to persuade Lee Fronabarger to resign his spot on city council and for the council to elect Tom Grant to the position.  From the page:

Tom Grant had the most votes for the fourth city council seat (he was only 8 votes away from winning the third city council seat), but instead of appointing a man with a huge amount of knowledge about how the city is run who had the obvious support of the citizens, they appointed Lee Fronabarger. Who is Lee Fronabarger? The guy the citizen's DIDN'T vote in.

1) Tell the city council that you are disappointed with their decision.
2) Ask Lee Fronabarger to represent his fellow citizens and respectfully resign and/or decline the appointment.
3) Tell the council to appoint the person the residents of Carbondale voted for, Tom Grant.
4). Help develop a referendum to change the law so that representatives will be ELECTED in the future, and NOT appointed.

It is rather hard, however, to make an argument that the will of the people was overruled when less than 3000 people turned out to vote, the will of the majority of the people apparently being to stay at home and watch TV.  Also notable is that the people making noise about this didn't bother to show up at the city council meeting at which Fronabarger was elected by the council to finish out Fritzler's unexpired term.

Thoughts on Fronabarger

Been musing on the choice of Lee Fronabarger to fill out Joel Fritzler's term on the city council.  I've asked several of the city council members for their reasoning and will comment on them later.  What follows is solely my reasoning.

According to the city's website, a total of seven people turned in letters of interest in the position:

Jessica Bradshaw, Priciliano Fabian, Carl R. Flowers, Lee M. Fronabarger, Thomas Grant, Navreet Kang, and Mike Riley..

 Of the seven, four--Bradshaw, Grant, Riley and Fronabarger--ran in the election.  Of the others, Fabian is a sophomore at SIUC and apparently active on campus but with no indication of city civic activity.  Kang chairs the city planning commission while Flowers serves on the Carbondale Park District board.  If I was on city council, I'd eliminate these three from selection simply because they did not run.  Bypassing the four people who did  run in favor of one of the three who did not would send a negative message so shortly after the election. (I have the same problem with Sheila Simon getting the nod for lt. governor in the last statewide election).

Looking at the four that ran, though both Riley and Bradshaw have been involved in Carbondale as buisnesspeople, neither has a track record of civic activity that I can find.  Grant worked for the city as building and services neighborhood services manager for 15 years and would bring a wealth of experience in those areas to the council while Fronabarger has served on a number of city committees including the aquatic center and planning commission.  Betwix the two of them, I would have picked Grant because of the experience with city operations he brought to the table, plus his razor thin finish behind Lance Jack in the election.  However, he has not been particularity active in city affairs since his termination in 2009, while Fronabarger has, which may have caused the council to choose him, that and the diverse views he can bring to city government a a result of his service upon various committees.. 

Lee Fronabarger Appointed

City council went into closed session for two hours tonight and emerged to vote, 6-0, to appoint Lee Fronabarger to serve the remaining two years of Joel Fritzler's term.  According to Mayor Fritzler, 7 hopefuls had turned in letters of application/resumes for the seat.  Only two of them that I saw, Tom Grant and Mike Riley, showed for the council meeting and waited around until council emerged from closed session to announce Fronabarger's appointment.  After council dismissed, Grant and Riley were last seen heading for The Office (local bar for you non-Carbondale types) in search of cold beer.

Update: Here's some more info from the Southern on the appointment..

Filling Fritzler's Seat

As Beetlejuice notes, mayor elect Joel Fritzler will solicit applications from members of the community to fill his seat for the remainder of his term. Fritzler indicated last night he will request that applicants supply a resume showing their qualifications for the job along with the application. This should help 4th place finisher Tom Grant as well as Lee Fronabarger, should they seek the position, as both have long track records of city and community service.