For City Council

Phil Gross

What are my plans to help the town and its residents if I'm elected?

After attending all but 1 council meeting in the last couple of years and listening to fellow residents' concerns, I have gotten a better handle on what has been working with council and what hasn’t. If you choose me to represent you on City Council, areas that I would like to focus on are:

1, Quality of life issues: I feel that it’s important to continue to increase a police presence, improve the city's infrastructure, resolve any parking issues and try to lure more varied business back into the City of New Castle (like a general store or market). Lastly, I would work with fellow residents in surrounding communities to improve and grow “community events”, not just in town but also in surrounding communities. By doing this, we would not only bring more business to the city and increase community involvement and cohesiveness but also allow us as a community to bring more focus to the our entire city's features and amenities for visitors.  We can NOT let privatizing our municipal city workers happen! They provide us with great service and by privatizing their jobs they would lose their jobs and most likely the quality of service would drop and service cost would rise!

2, Growth: One very important action that I feel is needed, is to put into place a moratorium on building projects as our city and surrounding communities infrastructure and traffic issues must be resolved first! More specifically traffic and large trucks rolling through town as well as River Road from South Street down to the Dobbinsville area before something fatal happens. Careful and slow monitored growth factoring in the environment, animal habitat and quality of life is the answer!

3, City Council: I would like to push for council transparency, to finally give you, the residents of our community an independent advocate, establish a uniform code of conduct with more accountability for members, as well as to give more weight to the whole community in their decisions and to bring back public referendums. I would like to push for council transparency, establish a uniform code of conduct with more accountability for members, as well as to give more weight to the whole community in their decisions and to bring back public referendums.

I would also like to work on figuring out ways to wean council off of continuously "borrowing" money from the trust for “special projects” to make fiscal responsibility a reality while keeping our police presents, strengthening our shoreline, making our street lights more energy efficient, improving our infrastructure and NOT privatizing our municipal workers! Yes, the city is not broke and we’ve not experienced any tax hikes as my fellow candidates keep repeating, but we are NOT in as healthy of a position as we should be.

If voted on to council by you, I would have monthly informational gatherings at different locations and times, so that members of the community can voice their ideas, concerns and ask questions so that you would be more of a part of the process and have their voices heard.

​4, Our community:WE ARE ONE COMMUNITY​! After walking around our community's over the last month, I think that four of the most heard statements were, "why can't we all get along", "we aren't made to feel like a part of the community" and "why won't Council take into account our opinions" and lastly, "we need some new people elected to council". We need to get some intensives/programs and grants into place to help home owners and landlords fix sidewalks and their facades of their homes, so that all the communities look welcoming. If an absentee landlord doesn't want to work with the community to make their property right, then the City should be more vigilant to bring punitive repercussions against them. This should happen no matter who the owner is!

5, Environmental issues: I would initiate a program that not only informs the public about our shoreline's river rise issues but one that will also develop a plan for our shoreline protection. Another environmental issue that I'd like to take initiatives on, is to cooperatively work with the Trust to bring small, environmentally  friendly trash and recycling containers into the city and the park. Also, I would work on  accelerating the  conversion of our street lights to more energy efficient LED fixtures, With my running an environmentally friendly group called Green Drinks Delaware that champions itself for recycling, pushing for using echo friendly products, humane  treatment of animals, reduced gas emissions and reduced landfill bulk, I hold environmental issues as high priority.