Grifton Town Mayor

Your current job and title:

Semi-retired, with the following background:
I worked abroad in Africa for a short time, returned to Utah and wound up working for Salt Lake City Water, assigned out in the county on all the water system components. Artesian wells, reservoirs, storage tanks, pumping stations, pipelines, aqueducts, fixing regulators in the middle of the night or repairing a water meter, not uncommon. Grifton has a water system, and I at least know the basics.

In 1980 a branch manager for a large New York Exchange Brokerage firm called my bluff and hired me. For the next nine years I built a large client base averaging $10 million annually in transactions, hundreds of accounts including people, families, businesses both small and very large, cities and occasionally counties, bank trust departments. I worked with many different types of needs, both short term and long term. I also got to help some put together municipal bonds for civic improvement, including redevelopment authorities, which I believe could help here in Grifton.

In late 1989, I felt it was time to do something else. I had had a near-death experience a few years before and I knew it was time to go back to my roots, that I started off in art school for a reason, so I gave back my VP title, big office and secretary, and started my own graphics and holographics business for commercial art applications and for the next nine years built a very diverse client base and did all sorts of
firsts in that world. The list still amazes me, and when that endeavor had run its course and it was time to move on, I got to add inclusion into the Who’s Who in Media and Communications 1988-89. I also during those years formed the Good Will Band to play for people shut in and do something good for them. The band would last 26 years. My workspace was in a seedy part of Salt Lake City, which is where artists go, and over time Community Development Block Grants were used to acquire and rehab buildings, land, parks and public spaces, and we got gentrified with galleries, restaurants and
loft condo/apartment buildings and all the artists wound up priced out and mostly went to other less costly old industrial areas of town, which also over the next 10 or 20 years would have the whole experience repeat over and over.

I should also add that in the last 12-ish years, I was a commercial solar power sales and projects manager for a now-closed company in Salt Lake City. During those years, I helped 20 nonprofits secure between $2 and $3 million worth of solar power grants from Rocky Mountain Power and installed their power systems. I know how to write grants.

Your highest level of education:

Graduated from the University of Utah in 1976 with a BS in political science and international relations.

If you're elected or re-elected, what will be your top priority? Why?

While I could be happily semi-retired, I think the town I’ve become a part of needs new energy and direction. Since I moved here from Utah a little over a year ago, our city to town to village-sized core downtown has lost three more businesses -- Shazam, Retha and Sam’s 2nd hand store, and the coffee shop has been closed for a few months, so not a sign of a good place to do business. While we may not lose any more, as there are so few remaining, each closure means a loss of sales tax and revenue to the city, as well as wonderful individuals who made living here better, which results in higher property taxes to the rest of us.

It means less reasons for those who live here and those moving here to come into the town. Grifton will remain simply a Greenville bedroom community, where folks come to sleep, and little else. This demise has been going on for years, so I believe the current mayor of 20 years is not the one to set a new course. Let me add that I was asked to run as an alternative to others seeking the job by the longtime resident-owner of the home I’m buying, neighbors, and some I’ve met doing my daily walks around town. I have some ideas to try, and the background to know how to go in these directions.

If you're elected or re-elected, how will you involve your constituents in the process of making decisions?

I want any and all to come find me, talk to me, invite to come visit. No matter what path the election takes, people in this town have told me they feel unheard, and I know we can do much better. I usually do a morning walk through town, so pull over and chat.

Why should voters choose you for the position you're running for?

Community Development Block Grants can be used in conjunction with Redevelopment Authority Bonding to completely transform an area, like downtown Grifton, acquire land and create new buildings, improve infrastructure, and the biggest lesson of all: Art brings people and business to an area, brings customers for restaurants and coffee
shops, galleries, bookstores, all manner of commerce, A new reason to come somewhere, other than go to bed. That’s what I’m thinking Grifton could become. Use RDA bonding in tandem with CDBG funding and create new technical colleges and art school facilities and residences that ECU or other education institutions could use to diversify their campus to major studies [such as]
class locations, creating more space for more popular degree programs while creating more work-conducive space for assorted creative arts mediums. I know the right proposal will get attention, yet it will take a lot of work and imagination to formulate this plan.

Which three things about you do you most want voters to know?

I think we can do more than the Shad Festival. I envision using my music connections here to create a fall event,
perhaps in tandem with the Lawson Days. Bluegrass, R&B, Country, a local choir competition, a downtown wall mural competition, maybe begin getting some
outdoor sculpture in place from a tech school welding students -- all things are possible that all the Grifton residents can be a part of.

So … if people want to continue the status quo and bedroom community blahs and do all their shopping and banking 10 miles away, do not vote for me. Do NOT vote for me, because that is not a future for Grifton -- it’s a sentence.

Reach out to me, and let’s talk. Tell me what you’d like this town to become, how you’d like to be treated by the town government, and let’s make a change. It’s time. I’ll sign up for one term. I want to plant lots of trees. I’ll never get to sit under their shade, but our children will, and that will be great. This is about the future.