Greensboro City Council at-large candidate Gary Nixon offered me some face time, and I took him up this morning at the Green Bean.
Before retiring, Nixon worked as a civil engineer, consulting cities — including some in the Triad — on best practices for things like waste and water, transportation and financial issues. He also has business in his background, having once run a company with 300 employees.
White Street Landfill
The challenger set right in on the sitting council, citing Tuesday night’s meeting, where by a vote of 5-4 council approved a motion to request proposals for the White Street Landfill.
“They have no idea what they want to ask for,” he said.
“I have been on the record as saying I probably would not have closed [the landfill to household waste], but we probably need to honor the commitment we made to those people [who live in the vicinity].
“I’ve done some research since then,” he continued. “The rules and regulations for operating a landfill have gotten a lot stricter, especially in the last nine years. It’s very state regulated…. If I’m elected, what I intend to do is fond out the real particulars of nine years ago, what the neighbors were complaining about. If they complained about garbage strewn on the street, White Street, there’s a solution for that.”
He continued, “Even if that facility was open and had its useful life, the real solution is the regional solution,” meaning a Triad-wide cooperational effort for waste removal, such as a landfill servicing the entire region.
“I was the first council candidate to bring it up as a regional solution.”
Incumbents
Nixon had much to say about the current council and the differences between him and them.
On Mary Rakestraw: “She moved to District 4 because she didn’t think she could get elected for at-large again.”
On Robbie Perkins: “There’s a lot of people that feel he has a conflict of interest. I’ve been interested in politics all my life, but I waited [to run] so I wouldn’t have a conflict of interest until I sold the business.”
Nixon says he holds a real estate brokers license that he uses for his own investment purposes.
On Sandra Anderson-Groat: “She keeps on the stump saying, ‘I maintained a neutral position.’ So, in other words, she’s saying, ‘I have the power,’ and I think it’s once all this stuff casme out about Mitch Johnson, she had no choice. But why’d it take a year to come to that conclusion? She also said she met with Mitch Johnson every Friday for a year. Why’d it take a year to come to the conclusion it wasn’t best for the city?
“She has said many times that, ‘I’m learning to make hard decisions.’ Now, if she’s been on council three years and 10 months, she should have been able to make hard decisions when she got on city council. The best interests of the city are served when people make hard decisions.”
On Nancy Vaughan: “She’s got a tremendous advantage: [her husband, NC Sen.] Don Vaughan’s political backing.”
Decision time
“I don’t have a problem with narrow-margin decisions if they’re informed decisions – you and I can have different opinions on this stuff; the lack of working together is a real problem [on current council].”
“One of the things I’ve been witnessing on the campaign trail is if there’s a difference of opinion, you need to sit down with the other opinion and listen to what’s important to them, because a lot of times what’s important to them is not what they publicly said. And you need to be able to find a compromise.”
“You need to take appropriate time to make a decision, but that just undermines it if you don’t make that decision in a reasonable amount of time. You create doubt.”
Qualifications
“So many people come up to me and say we need not only more good people, but more qualified people [on city council]…. I have unique qualifications. I’ve served in municipal industries for 35 years, working with municipalities and infrastructure improvements. My goal is to be able to show other well-qualified people that they can and should go for a seat in council until we have better government.”
Nixon says he started a business and helped open eight new offices around the country. “I know what people look for [when starting a business]. Economic factors play a role in where people decide to come. We’re doing better in the recreational facilities…. But the unsettling of the political situation on city council is not a plus. The other issue, the police situation, that’s a real big thing, to have a good police force and council united behind a police force.”
The GPD
“I heard last night [at the council meeting], one of them said the police chief’s gonna retire next year. If we had the wrong police chief… my point is you have to have the best in command from the beginning. If it’s retirement issues, you give him a retirement package.”
New Media
Nixon has no campaign blog or website.
“I very occasionally read blogs, because you could spend all day doing that.”
“I spend a lot of time on the web…. We had a small campaign staff, so I wanted to focus on being able to get the message out in a more traditional way, speaking to people…. Sure the younger generation is involved in that, but if you look at the vast majority of the electorate, here some of them don’t even have e-mails yet, let alone get on tweeter and Facebook.”
His chances
Nixon thinks he’ll do well in districts 3 and 4. “People know me, and those people network to other people,” he said. But he acknowledged he may have problames in districts 1 and 2.
“The Simkins PAC came out, and that doesn’t help me at all. And I’m gonna tell you something. George Simkins, who you don’t know, he was a good friend of mine. I tell everyone he’d be rolling over in his grave if he knew they didn’t support me. They focused on one question during the interview: Do I support a police review board with subpoena power? I told them I have a real problem with subpoena power. I would have less objection to a review board, but it comes down to who’s on that review board. How is it gonna be appointed?"
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