I’m a Manchester homeowner, an Iraq War veteran, and a small business owner (a lawyer). I have served in municipal government twice previously. I was on Manchester’s Personnel Appeals Board until I resigned to run for this seat, and from 2007-2010 I was on a town finance committee in Massachusetts.
My ties to the city go back many years, even before I lived here. From 2008-2014 I was in NH Army National Guard units based in Manchester’s Canal Street armory (first the 3643rd Brigade Support Battalion, and then the 372nd Signal Company after I got a promotion). From 2010-2011 I deployed to Kuwait and Iraq in support of Operation New Dawn. I could have had a safer assignment in Kuwait, where most of my unit went, but I volunteered to go with another unit to serve on a gun truck escorting convoys into Iraq instead. Having spent a lot of time here for National Guard duties, I knew Manchester was a great place to live and that’s why I chose it when it was time to buy a home.
Among other issues, I want to work on solving the city’s homelessness crisis, and ensuring we have good schools.
Use of photo in military uniform does not imply endorsement by Department of Defense, U.S. Army, New Hampshire National Guard, or related entities.
I don’t know what all the answers are here, and I would like to hear your ideas. But to start we need to build more affordable housing, and help people get the treatment they need for substance abuse and mental health issues, so they will stay off the streets. I will work to ensure that everyone who wants to buy or rent a home in Manchester is able to afford it. Opioid users who want to quit need to be able to get into detox immediately, and users of any drug need to be able to get into rehab right away when they are ready to quit, so they don’t change their minds. In my law practice, I work with a lot of people who have mental health or substance abuse issues, and my experience is that it is important to be humane about meeting their needs, while also demanding accountability for harmful behavior.
Policy decisions should be left to the School Committee, but the aldermen vote on the budget, which is about half of the entire budget for the city, and I would push to make changes that would improve our schools. The aldermen recently had a discussion about kids with special needs being sent home from school or being told not to come in because they didn’t have the staffing to take care of their needs. That should never happen, and the aldermen can fix it by providing adequate funding to hire the people the schools need.
We struggle to recruit teachers because we pay about $1000/year less than the state average, while having harder jobs than schools in the suburbs who don’t have as many students living in poverty, with special needs, etc. We need to pay them what they are worth. My preference for doing this would be to zealously litigate the education funding equity suits currently going on against the state, because we receive less than our fair share of state education dollars, while wealthier districts receive more. If we can’t find other sources of money, or appropriate cuts elsewhere in the school budget, this would only cost the average taxpayer about $20/year extra.
No, I am not related to Ward 3 Alderman Pat Long, but we were once in an Ink Link article together, along with his sister Patricia and a cat named Pat Long, as a fundraiser for the Manchester Animal Shelter. Here's all of us together!
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