Mayor Joe Schember to Give State of the City Remarks on Insider
Erie Mayor Joe Schember joins Lisa Adams this weekend on the Insider to discuss the state of the City of Erie. He's proud of the accomplishments of his administration over the last year.
But the Mayor is also realistic about the problems that the city continues to face, and that includes a growing number of homeless people, blight, economic and job challenges and in his view the number one issue, racism and prejudice.
In his 6th year -- entering the middle of his second term, the mayor says his 6-word mission statement is unchanged: Build Opportunity, Restore Hope, Transform Erie.
But the team working to help him achieve those things is turning over -- with new directors of planning, finance and communications and more new staff to come. Mayor Joe Schember: "It did get me down a little bit when we started to lose people, but now we've got some great people that have committed to coming, I can't say all the names yet because they're not all actually on board. But we are moving forward, I really like some of the restructuring we've done to improve performance and the new people coming in should be doing a great job, so I'm pretty excited about it now," Mayor Schember said.
The mayor touted a record number of loans made by Erie's economic development team to businesses and entrepreneurs, including grants for projects like Ironworks Square on West 12th Street in the former EMI property and for IRG - International Recycling Group's plastics recycling plans.
He's not happy about lost funding for projects in the city, such as plans for a hydroponics and community garden in Savocchio Park, funding diverted because of positions taken by County Executive Brenton Davis. "I certainly was disappointed by some of the moves, where money was taken away from projects in the city - but we'll keep working with him and try to work together and move the entire county of Erie forward," Schember said.
Mayor Schember's said his top priority continues to be racism and prejudice and he still dreams of ending it. "That's the one thing...I'd like to accomplish as mayor to end racism and prejudice," Joe Schember said. "Have every person in Erie regardless of their gender, the color of their skin, their nationality, their religion -- their politics, everybody is still a human being - and if we could just all accept each other and even though we disagree - say ok we're going to disagree on that but we'll still work together on the things we agree on, that would really transform Erie, that's my number one priority."