City mayoral race
Jojo Burgess
Most important issue facing the city if you look around is the overall maintaining of all of the neighborhoods and focusing on the city as a whole being improved upon.
I'[m not going to say the current administration and city council haven’t done their best to do they can, but there’s neighborhoods that have been left behind.
You go to the west end, you go to the Tylerville section and you go up to the Lincoln Terrace section on the hill, there’s a lot of blight and properties that have been left behind and there’s programs out there that we can use to benefit all of the residents of the city to fix all of that. We have to pay attention to that.
I notice a lot of attention is paid to the downtown business district and rightfully so with us being the county seat, but we’ve got to start spreading some of that wealth around the whole city.
I’m a product of Maple Terrace, my mother was a union worker and we lived in the projects,because in the winter she was laid off. I learned about hard work and I learned about coming from nothing and being something. I want other people to experience that.
Main reason I got into this race. I have four kids and 10 grandkids. One kid and one grandkid lives in washington, all the rest of the kids told me this is the same old Washington. There’s nothing there for us. Why should we be there? I want my kids and grandkids back in Washington. I have a vision for the city of people moving into Washington and planting roots there.
One of the things that is not happening is I don’t think we’re leaning on our state and federal legislators enough to get them to bring back money to the city on our behalf, whether it be grant money or whatever it can be. .
There are so many things this (presidential) administration put in place that our police can get more money, our firefighters can get more money, our school districts can get more money. There’s money out there, but unfortunately for us.
One of the biggest things he fights against party politics.
It’s my belief that once you are elected to office you are no longer a part of that party, you are now a part of the people and you belong to the people and you have to represent them as such. We have to hold people accountable for that.
The federal government has that money for us. I’m watching what they’re bringing back to Pittsburgh, whey shouldn’t we have some of that.
Gun violence
Policing starts at home. We’ve got to find something to do with our youth in this city. As a kid he could go to Brownson House, a YMCA and a YWCA. kids had something to do. Now they have too much idle time on their hands.
Perfect storm for something bad to happen. We’ve got to get back to grass roots parenting. We got to start checking our kids friends and what our kids are doing. We’ve got to find activities for them and places for them to go to have an outlet for them so they don’t get lost in these streets.
Why don’t we have a rec center or boys and girls club don’t have to be out in the streets
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I think we still have a small racial issue. Instead of preaching exclusion on some things, we need to be all inclusive. I want washington to be the place everyone wants it to be like I want Washington to be something we can be proud of.
Community day to showcase being proud to be from Washington
We need to make sure everybody has stake at the table if wee provide that we have the perfect setting where we’re at between Morgantown and Pittsburgh.
It’s massive job to fix averything in this city. It’s not a one-man job. Vision making Washington the example of small-town living. Can do that if we do 2 things
Bring affordable housing and life-sustaining jobs into the community.
When you take people from that walk of life and give them something that’s there’s, those are the roots that yuou put into this community that will make people want to stay. generational welth with a house.
When I go my kids have a home. That generational wealth is huge.
meeting with business leaders to bring businesses from Pittsburgh into Washington, bring plants into
We want people to come here to work here, live here and be here. We need life sustaining jobs we can have that here if we want to.