League of Women Voters of the Cincinnati Area Education Fund
Hamilton County, OH November 5, 2013 Election
	William H. "Bill" Clark, III Answers Questions Candidate for Member Council; City of Cheviot; Ward 4

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of the Cincinnati Area and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. What are your qualifications for office?

I have been on City Council for almost 4 years. It took about 2 years to get into the flow of things and begin effecting change. My time currently on council is the best experience that I bring to the table at this time. Knowing the issues that face our city and working to fix issues and better our city is my goal. I want to keep Cheviot a nice place to live.

2. What services do you believe should be considered basic and essential for the City?

Police, Fire, and Public Works are our basic and essential services. I want our city to keep these services, as our employees provide an A-1 service to us as residents and business owners. Some residents want to outsource our trash services, but this would cost all of us more money from day one of the outsource. I did the research and it would cost each resident close to $20/month for outsourced trash service and they would not receive the same level of service that our department currently gives. I have looked into what the cost of outsourcing Police and Fire to save money would be...and it would cost us more money to give those departments over to another agency to manage. We as a city can run our departments more efficiently than any others in the area.

3. How would you balance the City Budget?

Short-term: Clean up the issues of speeding and drug crimes. Both of these arrests yield revenue. The two biggest complaints I receive as a councilman - speeding and crime. If we put a patrol car to just run radar on our cut-through streets, that will generate more than enough money to pay for that extra officer and increase revenue for our city. This not only combats those that are cutting through the city at an unsafe speed, it forces them to pay a fine for doing so. Combating the other crime in our city, mainly drugs, would also generate revenue through seizures of the cash that the dealing of said drugs generate. Heroine is now the top drug bought, sold and used on our streets. We have an officer that specializes on drug investigations. We should utilize him to the fullest extent to combat this issue, while taking the drug dealers money for doing business in our community. Long-term: We need to revitalize the housing stock in our community. This includes tearing down the older, inefficient homes in the community and replacing them with updated homes that are more appealing to those looking for newer and better housing stock. This generates more revenue based on the home's value, while keeping our community updated. The older homes will cost much more in the long run for homeowners to maintain.

4. Citizen engagement is important to the health of local government. In what ways do you support citizen engagement?

We try to have community involvement through our committee meetings. But, unless it is a "hot topic" no one comes to them. A broader set of ideas would be golden in our community, but to get the input is usually left to the elected officials. We have also tried community forums, but they also have very low attendance. With people having busy lives, it is generally hard to provide a forum to get people involved. Some ideas come from The Cheviot Community Association members, which can provide some great input. I have been a member of this organization for a number of years. Several city officials attend regular meetings to provide and receive feedback.

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: September 12, 2013 11:59
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