By Daniel “Coach” Darby

To the Leader-Call

Let me say thanks to your organization for this opportunity to speak to you this evening.

Q/A 1. My main purpose in seeking the mayoral position is to provide the community with a responsible performance of the duties and tasks of the mayoral office along with maintaining the trust of the community.

Q/A 2. We should do more to include methods that create opportunities for everyone in the community to contribute to the economic development ward by ward. Those methods should be based on everyone taking more responsibility for the community. For, if you stay here “this is your home, too!” In my coaching experience one of the most effective ways of accomplishing our goals involved making sure everyone on the team understood their responsibility to the team. And how it was important for them to accept every aspect of their duties to the team for the team to be successful.

So to create a more positive economic environment we will provide avenues for all members of the community to participate in economic development ward by ward, committee by committee and economic project by economic projects’ success. And then my administration would persuade members in the community to accept their duties of my responsibility to the community. Where they will take the steps of helping with the economic development of the community. There should be a vision here. Where you should see Laurel as the suburbs of New Orleans. There should have been much more economic success because with the pass three years we have been the fortune by way of the unfortunate. And we benefited from the influence to our communities; economy from Hurricane Katrina’s ’ funds in the community. People the Laurel/Jones county area is the suburbs for anyone who knows there is a hurricane season coming. Let me tell you about the business in my community on East 19 St. as a result of Hurricane Katrina. There is a great group of people who run this all female home for the handicap. And I was told that they love our community. There are others in the hurricane area between here and New Orleans who would have loved to have a business or own property in t he Laurel-Jones County area.

Q/A E. May I again use my experience as a coach in answering this question. As a coach you should demand from every player that they should be looking, listening and learning every moment when they are working with the team. So, that they would be ready to make a positive contribution to the teams’ effort in a game when they got the opportunity to play or represent the team.

So my position on placing additional burdens on the property owners will be in a similar manner. Everyone in the community owes a responsibility to be productive and constructive citizens to themselves, their families, and their community. They should be productive in order to provide for their needs, their family’s needs and the community’s needs. They should be constructive because you need money to take care of you and your families’ needs. And then the community needs “revenue” money which your city government uses to provide services for the communities’ well being. Therefore, we will promote an equal distribution apportionment of the responsibility and revenue to run the city.

Stimulus money from the federal government’s package : state government leadership has asked for citizens input on the use of the funds. While the state legislature is out of session. We should contact our state legislature and state leaders about the possibility of some type of resolution which will defray some of the cost of the recent school bond mileage to our taxpayers in the city. There was large sums of money which the federal government placed in the stimulus package for school building construction and renovations. And with the present economic situation the school bond will place a large tax burden on all city property owners.

Also, there is a need for fiscal responsibility. So we are suggesting the Laurel-Jones County Property Owners Association ask all incumbents candidates to submit proposed fiscal year budgets along with last years fiscal budgets and audits.

Q/A 4. I will not have an open-door policy to the Mayor’s office where I would work for your organization. But I will have a policy where I will ask your organization to invite me to attend your meeting and understand the issues of concerns for your organization. Then I can work with you as Mayor to resolve the problem. The phrase “work with” is very important where there are ideas from everyone making contributions for the best solutions to the problems.