Feb 21, 2017 2 min read

After serving 48 years with the Canonsburg Police Department, I retired. Still wanting to stay active in the community, I decided to run for borough council. I felt that I could be of help with my experience and my involvement with residents over the years.

Running as an at-large council candidate, I was elected to council in 2015. The first meeting I attended, in January 2016, was a re-organization meeting for council. At this meeting, I was elected as president of council.

Some of the duties of council president are:

• Appointing council members to serve on committees.

• Approving the agenda for council meetings.

• Presiding over all meetings.

This year has been a learning experience. There is a great deal of time and work involved in the operation of the borough. Council members not only attend two regular monthly meetings, but other meetings as needed.

As council, our job is to make sure that all business needs of the borough and the residents of our community are addressed. We have the best department heads and employees and all are working for the best operation for the community. I feel that we have a solid council and even though we may not agree on everything, we have come together and are working to keep this community moving forward.

Several things we accomplished this past year were:

• Working on and passing a balanced budget.

• Hiring a new borough manager.

• Working on updating and passing new ordinances.

• Addressing many street and infrastructure projects.

• We have a borough Facebook page that residents can go to for information about the community, and very soon we will have our new website for the borough. This will feature current news and local happenings. We miss a lot by not having a local daily paper for our town and we hope this will help inform residents about important news.

We on council are here to work for you. I am hoping that having this information in each edition of this magazine will be good information for all.

I also would like to thank voters for the opportunity to serve.