City Council Candidates Discuss Public Safety

Patch asked the candidates for the May 3 election to share their opinions on more than a dozen topics relating to the city.

In this installment, City Council candidates—incumbents John Correri and Randy Craig, and challengers James Lauer, Diane Lawder, Lori Maslin and Barbara Wagner—address public safety and protecting the citizens of Havre de Grace:

John Correri

Correri has long been involved in the volunteer end of the city’s public safety groups. But he also considers himself a “strong advocate of the police department.”

“I think the police department in their role here is essential to our job in conducting the City of Havre de Grace. The job they do is something that I can’t thank them enough for what they do.”

Correri is a former member of the Susquehanna Hose Company and still volunteers with the Havre de Grace Ambulance Corps.

Correri said the city is “blessed with those operations and those kind of volunteers.” For that reason, he’s a big supporter of the public safety units in place.

“I’m a very strong advocate since I’ve had experience in two of the three,” Correri said. “It goes back to my father and uncles, and there’s a little line of heritage there, too. Very essentially to your community is your public safety.”

Randy Craig

Craig says there’s nothing greater that falls on the shoulders of government than protecting its citizens.

“[Public safety] is the primary responsibility of government,” Craig said. ”That’s what people count on government for, making sure people feel safe and secure. You can’t have a successful business community, you can’t have a quality of life, if you don’t have confidence that emergency personnel are going to show up when you need them, qualified and prepared to provide a service that you need, and that the police department is monitoring the city and aggressively targeting criminal activities.”

Still, though, Craig sees some room for improvement.

“I think there are still pockets of areas where some increased focused is,” he said. “Public safety is all about the resources you commit to the job. You have to be willing to commit the resources necessary, and then to manage them. That’s what the city does by appointing a chief that’s capable, and I believe, top-notch.”

Craig said one of the most overlooked aspects of public safety is disaster preparedness.

“The city did something called the continuity of operations, but there’s a lot more than needs to be done,” he said, adding that he’d like to see more coordinated, large-scale drills to train personnel.

“When there is a disaster, that’s when people are looking and wondering, ‘what is the government doing? What are they prepared to do?’ And that’s an ongoing process,” he said. “That’s something we’ve focused on a little bit, and it’s something we can expand upon going further.”

James Lauer

Lauer did not respond to repeated interview requests from Patch.

Diane Lawder

Lawder looks no farther than Police Chief Teresa Walter in giving thanks for the safe city she calls home.

“Chief Walter has done a great job with keeping the guys and girls of the police department equipped with state of the art equipment,” she said. “We don’t have a crime problem here. We’re not like the homicide capital. We don’t have rapes. We’ve got a great city. She’s done a great job maintaining it. People feel safe.”

Lawder said public safety falls hand-in-hand with her goal of protecting the city’s employees. Lawder said as a state employee, she’s seen first hand the morale-killer that is furloughs and salary reductions.

“We need to keep these people happy in order to keep what we have,” she said. “If our city is not safe and our city employees are not happy and morale is low, whose going to want to come to the city if we have people stabbing others, trash everywhere?”

She wants the city’s employees to be taken care of so its citizens will feel taken care of.

“My issues are, I want to protect my biggest investment: my home,” she said. “I want to make sure when I come home, my house isn’t burglarized, that someone isn’t in my home waiting for me. I want to make sure if my house is on fire, I’ve got the greatest volunteer fire department in the nation that’s going to come down and put that fire out. If I’m sick and hurt, I’ve got an ambulance corps—again, volunteers, all volunteers—that’s going to come down and get me to a hospital.”

Ultimately, Lawder said what’s best for the city is the same thing that’s best for her family—including her 7-year-old son Will.

“He is the most important thing in the world to me,” she said. “I want to make sure he’s safe.”

Lori Maslin

Maslin loves Havre de Grace for a variety of reasons: the location, the view, the ability to let her dogs outside in her yard and the freedom to walk to dinner downtown. Above all else: feeling safe.

“I know who the Police Chief is. I have confidence in our Hose Companies, and if God forbid we ever have a fire here, that I know there’s going to be a quick response,” she said. “These people are dedicated and care and they’re trained and they have the equipment. This is a great town to live in. You see so many places that are reducing all of this stuff. Some people call it excess, we have five hose companies. You know what? Guess what? I’m glad.”

Maslin is thankful to those in the community who volunteer their time to make the community what it is. She’s willing to do her part to support everything the volunteers support.

“We have people who are committed to the community that do it. They’re everyone from the local baker to the local lawyer to the local construction guy, and it goes across all areas of our community. Everybody is involved in it. Everybody cares,” she said. “They take their training seriously  and they take their job seriously and they work to give back to the community. And over the years, we’ve donated money. A lot of the events we’ve put on have benefited the Hose Company. That’s an important part of our community.”

As for the police, Maslin sees a small town department dealing well with some big city issues.

“There are drugs, there are gangs, there’s vandalism, there’s theft, there’s drunken driving, there’s speeding. There all of those things that bigger towns have,” she said. “All in all, I think we have very good response from our police department.”

Barbara Wagner

Wagner can’t identify anything the city is doing poorly in terms of public safety.

“I think it’s a very safe place. I know there is drug trafficking and crime. But I think the city is doing a nice job,” she said. “Public safety is very important, but there are no issues that I can point to and say, ‘They’re not doing that right.’”

Wagner said the biggest issue in maintaining that sense of safety is to fund the organizations that make Havre de Grace safe. She’d like to see many of the events held at Tydings Park help pay for the city services they require—particularly the police department.

“Since most of them are run by non-profits, I don’t understand why they don’t take some of the money raised for the non-profit and pay for the city service,” she said. “The way I feel about it is, it’s as if we as taxpayers are making a contribution to that non-profit, basically involuntarily. Not that we don’t want to help out non-profits, but we have to think about our own pocket, as well. I think maybe we can change some of the fee structures for that.”

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Other issues the candidates for City Council have addressed:

—April 20

—April 21

—April 22

—April 23

—April 25