Inauguration Speech

Altoona City Council Swearing-In Ceremony

January 4, 2010

I first want to take this opportunity to thank city officials for putting together this event, and for Chancellor Bechtel-Wherry for graciously agreeing to be our MC.

Most importantly, I want to thank the citizens of Altoona for providing me to serve our city in this way.  It is a great privilege, and a humbling one.  I’m only just beginning to sense the gravity of issues we will encounter, and I can promise you that I will strive to confront our challenges with hard work, integrity and creativity.

Before I begin, I would like to describe for you how I came to the decision to run for political office.  Far too many politicians enter this realm because they want the involvement, and figure out their vision and worldview as the work begins.  In contrast, my desire to serve on City Council arose from a desire to see improvements and solutions for the city I love. The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald described a similar impetus for the works he composed, urging budding authors: “Don’t write because you want to say something, write because you have something to say.”

This philosophy informed the three main tenets of my campaign last year: fiscal responsibility, practical strategies and a culture of life.

For starters, I want fiscal responsibility for the city because I see what a positive influence it has been in my life and the life of my family.  Several years ago, we had only a small taste of fiscal irresponsibility—student loans, paying for home improvements on credit cards, etc.  These are by no means the acts of compulsive spenders, but even these brought a noticeable burden.  I first consider the way these loans were a drain on our budget every month, preventing us from achieving sound financial goals and making progress.  On top of that though, there’s the stress—the concern over whether there will be enough money in the account, the way our stomachs would turn when a crisis loomed on the horizon, and we had no savings to meet it.

Finally, fed up with that kind of life, we decided to live within our means—if we didn’t have the money on hand, we didn’t need it.  Initially, this felt like a giant risk.  A lot of people will tell you that credit cards are necessary to protect against an emergency, but that’s like keeping whisky on tap in case your water gets shut off.  Instead, we opted to keep some “jugs of water” off to the side in case of a “drought”—we have an emergency fund that has been absorbing the occasional bumps that come with life.

Here’s the astounding thing: cities can live within their means as well.  Now I’m going to tread lightly, because Altoona has floated bonds for the last two years for necessary improvements like fire and police vehicles.  They’ve also purchased systems to enhance productivity and safety for our city workers.  It’s not those purchases that are the problem—it’s the years of previous budgets with too much fat in them, and the previous bonds passed by the city, that have forced us to not buy our city vehicles and systems outright.  Think about it: these bonds are secured loans, collateralized with the objects themselves.  As long as we can pay the bills, we’ll be OK.  If we owned them outright, we’d be OK either way.

I’ve had people tell me that the city needs bonds to survive.  Of course, that’s true…as true as the myth that a family needs a credit card to survive.  If our household can defy reality, perhaps the city can too.

The city has some unique challenges, and I think they present unique opportunities for our community to excel.  Someone once said that the difference between a good economist and a bad one is a good economist looks beyond first consequences.  For instance, increasing taxes increases revenue, right?  In the short run, certainly, but what will that do to the business environment, the residential tax base, etc.?  Over the past several years, some of our city’s business leaders have answered the question for us, and we’d be remiss to not pay attention.  As another example, cutting city spending strangles city services, right?  Well, if done irresponsibly, city services will almost certainly suffer indefinitely, but wise belt-tightening, over a period of several years, can be different.  It can attract businesses to the city, provide entrepreneurial opportunities, and incentivize residents and commercial taxpayers to expand and improve.

From Monday to Friday, I am a project manager by trade, so I’m trained in the process of looking at a project from start to finish, and finding the points of weakness that will need to be attacked proactively.  Does this phase represent an acceptable level of risk exposure?  How can we control cost and not sacrifice quality?  What do we need to do now to ensure the project is delivered on-time and on-budget?  As the council considers legislation, we must start out with the end in mind, and we must take steps to put hands and feet on our cost-consciousness.

The final thing that drove me to consider service on city council is the pro-life issue.  Perhaps that sounds unusual, since I won’t be able to vote on any abortion-related legislation as a city councilman.  Perhaps it sounds like an admission of using the council seat as a stepping stone.  I can assure you it’s neither.  I really firmly believe that the citizens of Altoona need a pro-life role model to encourage them—that they are not alone in this fight.  I also believe our pro-life politicians—and we have some admirable ones—need to know that local elected officials appreciate the stand they take.  Finally, there’s value in reminding some of our other politicians that someone will hold their feet to the fire; if they won’t work to defend life, we will replace them with others who will.  If a politician refuses to acknowledge the sanctity of life, do they understand the merit of founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (assuming they have read them)?  Do they understand the seriousness of having their worldview priorities so flawed?  Do they think they can secure liberty or property without defending life?  Practical evidence convinces me it can’t be done.

So that’s what brings me to this place—agree or disagree, I hope you understand what makes me tick.  Again, I thank you for the opportunity to share my vision today, and I ask for your help to make our city an even better place to live.  I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t firmly believe in our potential to make it happen.  I hope you feel the same.

Inauguration Speech

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