By continuing to support our local first responders and by bringing community shareholders to the table we can ensure our City is an even safer and healthier place for all its residents and visitors.

Truly supporting our first responders involves more than just ensuring they know we support them, it involves ensuring that we are doing what we can to provide them with better pay, better equipment and training. The men and women who work every day to protect our citizens and provide vital services are deserving of broader support.

When we bring the right people to the table we can find the right solutions to combat violence of every kind, more especially gun violence, and to reduce the opioid epidemic that is plaguing our City.

A community’s greatest asset is its youth. By making smarter investments in education and supporting career technical education and apprenticeship programs we will continue making Roanoke a City where more people want to live, work, and play.

We should recognize the importance of training and preparing students for careers that don’t involve the traditional four-year college route. There are many jobs in the current and future economy that will require employees to have skills that are different from those offered at a college or university.

By making investments in our education and public safety we can usher in new economic opportunities to Roanoke, making us a stronger and more resilient City that will continue to grow into the future, while advancing our location business ecosystem, in order to further strengthen and revitalize our neighborhoods and communities.