Tuesday, Nov. 2 is Election Day for Spartanburg’s municipal races.
Mayoral candidates Cathy McCabe and Jerome Rice have participated in several forums where each candidate often had just two minutes to speak to each issue or question. The Herald-Journal interviewed each candidate on the eve of the election to follow up on some of their responses.
More on each candidate’s vision:SPARTANBURG MAYOR RACE: Cathy McCabe and Jerome Rice compete to replace Junie White
In the forums, McCabe has spoken about being accessible. She hopes to improve economic mobility by encouraging white-collar jobs, small businesses, and affordable housing. She also plans to increase law enforcement in Spartanburg in order to promote public safety.
Detailed forum synopsis:Spartanburg mayor candidates Jerome Rice, Cathy McCabe discuss city, equity in forum
Cathy McCabe Q&A
Jobs and economic development
Q: You have talked about encouraging better-paying jobs. What are examples of those jobs?
A: OneSpartanburg, Inc. chief economic development officer Katherine O’Neill advised me that they were looking for no less than $16 an hour jobs that are coming in. I think we’ve got to continue to do that. We need to make sure we communicate these opportunities to Spartanburg Community College so that we can start training people for those jobs.
Q: How do you plan to increase the number of people of color in white-collar jobs?
A: By communicating some of these new projects to our Black and Brown communities. I also want to talk to Black and Brown young professionals to understand what they think would be helpful in recruiting more Black and Brown professionals into our area.
And we have long-term initiatives to address some disparities and hopefully bring more Black and Brown individuals into white-collar jobs. There is the Spartanburg Academic Movement (SAM), The Franklin School and Hello Family to improve early childhood health outcomes and school readiness.
Q: We have talked about white-collar jobs, but blue-collar jobs like restaurant jobs have been slower to recover. Do you have any recovery plans for blue-collar jobs?
A: It’s tough because it is nationwide. The only thing I can do as a mayor is to be a promoter of the city of Spartanburg and maybe have a day for the blue-collar workers to come together and find out what kinds of jobs they have, what their pay and benefits are. I think it’s important to know the possibilities around here.
Q: You have also talked about developing a long-term plan to handle the growth in our city. What kind of a plan do you envision?
A: We have businesses that choose to build right outside city limits because it’s cheaper. After they build, they want us to annex them into the city because they want our police and fire protection.
So if we pick a certain mileage around the perimeter of the city, we can better prepare businesses to come into the city without having to spend more money redoing their buildings and structures. And when they’re annexed in, they will pay city taxes.
Annexation laws have to be done on the state level, but if I were mayor, I’d be willing to go with our delegation and start marketing for an update on the annexation law.
Of course, I also want to make sure gentrification doesn’t happen.
Minority businesses
Q: How would you strike a balance between encouraging small businesses in general and encouraging minority businesses? And what kinds of minority businesses would you like to see more of?
A: I think we’ve really got to make a direct effort to look for potential minority businesses. I plan to continue the city’s minority business program (Amplify). I’d really like to see minority small businesses move in the direction that can be hired by contractors like painters, painting sidewalks, concrete and so on. Then we can have a list of minority businesses that we can ask contractors to look at.
Q: Where would be some possible locations for the future minority businesses? Since downtown is reaching a capacity limit?
A: There are affordable housing and mixed-income apartments over on the north side, and there’s going to be retail spaces on the bottom. And I’d love to see minority businesses in more eminent spaces once they become more successful, and this helps get their foot in the door.
Equity and Poverty
Q: You have talked about addressing equity issues through the hiring of city staff and through encouraging minority businesses, what about people living in poverty who don’t want to be business owners or in the government?
A: I do want to help in those areas, but I’m not going to be able to move the needle totally by myself. But for health disparities, for instance, I can have “A Day with the Mayor on the Rail Trail” and invite our community to come and talk about how important exercise is. I can have a group from the hospital come to C.C. Woodson and talk about blood pressure and warning symptoms of certain diseases and illnesses.
Public Transportation
Q: You’ve spoken about expanding the public transportation system. What’s the timeframe going to look like?
A: It’s going to take us sitting down with the city and the county to understand the transportation services. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it will be something I will be working on from as soon as I can start that dialogue.
Affordable Housing
Q: How will you incentivize new housing developments while ensuring affordable housing?
A: The Fitzgerald, a private developer, didn’t have to include any affordable housing units, but they chose to do that. I think that a lot of developers want our public to feel like they care and they can be trusted with future developments.
Q: Many of the affordable housing units have an expiration date. Say, after 30 years, a housing development goes from affordable rate to market rate, how would you ensure housing stability for the residents?
A: We will be keeping incentivizing more developers to develop affordable and mixed-income housing. And with educational attainment and economic mobility, people can start owning homes and send their kids to school. They may no longer need affordable housing in 30 years.
Accessibility
Q: You’ve talked about going to different meetings and holding office hours to be accessible. But similar things like the neighborhood-specific comprehensive plan meeting did not see great participation. If that were the case with these different meetings you go to and with your office hours, how do you reach people who don’t come?
McCabe runs for mayor:Former Spartanburg city attorney Cathy McCabe announces plans to run for mayor
A: If I were elected mayor, I hope to work with the communications folks with the city to find a way for me to get information to people and tell them about the importance of things. Not everybody is on Facebook or Instagram, but we’ve got to find ways. Even if it’s some kind of newsletter. I’m not sure at the moment, but I will definitely be working with the city communications office and going to the active neighborhood meetings.
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