The city has been fortunate to have an individual with Eric's background on the council, and who is currently serving his second term as council president.
As the city council has evolved many positive things have materialized with Eric leading the movement on many of these.
With regards to preserving our neighborhoods Eric has chamioned and been successful in defeating multifamily developments in areas adjacent to and inside of our peaceful and family-oriented R-1 zoning districts. A multi-family proposal at 54th and Nieman was turned down and replaced by the developer with single family homes. The developer did not just walk away as some would say that Shawnee is not friendly to developers. We are. But it needs to be the right kind in the right part of the city.
He sees the absolute most important needs as being Public Safety and Infrastructure. Efforts by him and the rest of the current city council focuses on these areas first. A salary analysis was conducted and determined that our police and firefighters were significantly underpaid in comparison to our competitor cities. Those salaries were raised to remain competitive and not lower our police or firefighter standards. With COVID federal dollars the city acquired a mobile command post for our police department. These efforts have placed Shawnee on the leading edge in the metro in public safety.
I'll have more things to say about Eric as we go forward. For those that may not be aware of it, Eric is a retired US Army Colonel and also retired from FEMA. While with FEMA, he was that agency's man on the site in charge of supervising the rebuilding of communities after a disaster. He knows what it takes to make a city function. We need him to continue to represent the citizens of Ward 2 on the city council, and as such to represent the city when the council needs to take action on various matters.
