Gary Storm for Urbana City Council

Having grown up in Urbana, I was given many opportunities here early in life. Now that I have retired and moved back to the community, I can think of no better way to "give something back" than by running for City Council in Ward 7, my home district. While my immediate goal will be to serve Ward 7, I want to do this by bringing progressive and "green" perspectives to City Council decisions that will also affect the city as a whole.

In applying progressive and green values to city decisions, I want to emphasize a particular goal, namely, extending new opportunities to residents of all ages that will allow them to become engaged with a variety of community problem solving groups, voluntary civic and cultural organizations, and/or local government itself. In short, I want to encourage Urbana residents to become more actively involved in our community by creating more readily available avenues for doing so.

Whether it is at the neighborhood, ward, or broader community level, I believe the best resource for addressing problems or enhancing the quality of community life is citizens themselves. People who share a need or problem should be involved in identifying its causes and developing strategies for dealing with it—whatever their educational, cultural or economic backgrounds. While government is needed to address many public needs and problems directly, through its own administrative agencies and programs, we need to distribute a larger share of local tax revenues to empower citizens to address needs and problems themselves through grassroots community action.

I will work hard as a City Council member to create new avenues for citizens to become involved in improving our community at all levels. This will include working for electoral and other reforms in city government itself that give citizens a more direct voice in decision-making and/or hold elected officials more accountable for decisions they make. These reforms include using new communications technology to facilitate greater citizen participation in City Council deliberations (especially for older and/or disabled populations with mobility issues), making greater use of citizen initiated referenda in community decision making, and adopting electoral changes (like instant runoff voting--IRV) that will increase voter turn out in city elections, encourage more individuals to run for office, and guarantee that no candidate is elected with less than 50% of votes cast.