Politics & Government

Meet the Candidates: Judith Causey Jones

In our continuing coverage of the 2011 election, Smyrna-Vinings Patch provides here a profile of one of the four candidates for Smyrna city council's Ward 4.

Smyrna’s general election will be held Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011 and a record 19 candidates are on the ballot. In their words, candidates will be introducing themselves here at Patch. Today, we have Ward 4 City Councilman Mike McNabb, who is running against Alex Bretch, Mike McNabb , and Charles “Corkey” Welch.

 

I have been a citizen of Smyrna for 58 years and went to , and Western Carolina College. I have been married to Thomas Jones for 44 years. He is a graduate of Georgia Tech and is retired from AT&T. We have two sons - Brent and Chad. Brent and Chad also went to Brown and Campbell as well as . Brent is the entire East Coast Director, over forty employees, for an eye company and the President of GOAF. His wife is a school teacher and they have four children. His oldest son is a freshman at the University of Alabama. My youngest son, Chad, is a paramedic, a smoke diver and one of the youngest Battalion Chiefs in the Atlanta Fire Department and graduated Cum Laude from the University of Florida. His wife works in one of the offices of the school's systems. He has two children.

I had a corporation, which I started and build with my own hands that covered four businesses. I retired in 1992. In 2006, I started a non-profit for families with children who have Autism, Down Syndrome and other neurological challenges.
 
This is what I would like to work to put in place when I am elected to fill the council seat for Ward 4:
 
Hire a certified city planner to plan and work toward what Smyrna will look like in five, 10 and 15 years.
 
Contract with three or four certified head hunters to bring in businesses and steer them to the vacant commercial properties to either lease or buy those properties.
 
To strengthen the zoning laws in order that commercial properties can never infringe on residential properties again.
 
To hire a forensic auditing CPA firm to go back over the books for the last ten years and see what contracts need to be put up for bids and what items have never been put up for bids and start the biding process.
 
Change the bidding process. All contracts up for bid are published on the City website and in the Smyrna Neighbor. Vendors and contractors come by City Hall, pick up the paper work and a tamper proof envelop, fill out the data, seal it up and mail it to an outside company that has no connection to the City. On the appointed council meeting night, this company brings all sealed bids and they are opened and awarded that night.
 
Since there has never been a town hall meeting in Ward 4, I would like to have a minimum of four town hall meetings a year.
 
Change citizens input from council meeting night. Have the agenda published two weeks before the meeting. Have a town hall meeting on the Monday night preceding the Monday night for the council meeting. That way the mayor and council members can get the input from the citizens BEFORE they make decisions. If something comes up at the last minute, then open that question up for citizens input BEFORE it is put to vote.
 
Also hire a professional, certified parliamentarian. ALL MEETINGS ARE TO BE CONDUCTED BY ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER. It is evident to me and to anyone else who has ever been in the business world that this is the way meetings are conducted to preserve fairness and order.
 
With the way business has been conducted and the decisions have been made by this mayor and council it is evident that the City business SHOULD be made more along the lines of a corporation and not as a hobby or who you know. If it were, then this mayor and council would be fired for malfeasance in office. Vote them out of office. You see, I do care for the entire City's citizens as well as those of Ward 4.
 
I call upon the citizens of Ward 4 to vote my opponent out of office and to vote me as their new council person.

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