Who's Running for Irmo Town Council?: Barry A. Walker Sr.

Irmo-Seven Oaks Patch is asking candidates several questions to help you make an informed decision about the candidate you want to vote for. Each candidate has the opportunity to answer the same questions.

Here is the lineup of candidates, with the letter "I" noting the incumbents.

For mayor:

• I-Kathy Condom (term ends Nov. 30)

• Suzanne C. Gooch

• I-Hardison “Hardy” King (term ends 2013)

• I-Barry A. Walker Sr. (term ends 2013)

For council seats:

• I-Harvey Hoots (term ends Nov. 30)

• Sarah Watson

• Paul E. Younginer

is not seeking another term and will retire at the end of November.

Today's candidate profile is on Barry A Walker Sr.

Name: Barry A. Walker Sr.

Age: 50

Occupation: Chef, owner of Macs on Main in Columbia

Years on Council (if any): Elected to council in 2004

Prior Experience (any governing board): Oliver Gospel Mission, Centeral Midlands Council of Government, City Center Partnership

Family: Wife, Susan; children, Barry II, Tori and Brittany

Education: Bachelor's degree from the University of Connecticut in mathematics 

Web site: http://www.barryforirmo.com/

Patch: What’s your vision for Irmo? Why are you running or why should people vote for you?

Walker: "(I) want to enhance our public safety. Irmo has an aging population. The majority of the folks are elderly, retired that don't necessarily need the government to be in their lives every day, but the government needs to make sure they're safe and secure. In other words, home invasions are prevalent in the city of Columbia and areas. When you have natural disasters, are they OK? When we have power outages and stuff like that are the constituents safe? One of the ways I want to enhance public safety is to buy a snowplow attachment for one of our pickup trucks. They laugh at that and say it doesn't snow in Irmo, but it does. The last two years we had major snowstorms, which actually locks you in your house for a couple of days. Imagine if somebody should get hurt shoveling that snow trying to shovel snow out of their driveway and the ambulance can't get to you. The bottom line is, just like the Boy Scouts motto, is be prepared. I want Irmo to be prepared. I own a chainsaw, but I'm not a lumberjack. In case that tree falls on my house or my neighbors' house at least I will have the one chainsaw in my neighborhood that would be able to cut the tree down and get it off the house. That's all I'm talking about is to be prepared. My vision for Irmo is to grow the town smartly by making sure public safety is top notch, our first responders are taken care of and ready to go, and to make sure we have the tools needed to help our community."

"I’m the most qualified businessman that’s been on council. I’m not a bureaucrat. I know how to balance a budget every two weeks. I know how to make decisions and not be afraid of making decisions. I ran this business (Macs on Main) for 13 years, so that’s something to say for itself. The restaurant business is probably one of the hardest businesses to run, but I’ve been able to do what I do and make it grow. They say after the first three years in the restaurant business, if you’re able to last that long, you’ll be all right. It’s true. You have to get over that hump of if you’re going to make it or not. We got over that hump and then some after 13 years. It’s a matter of how do you continue to grow the business or do you let it down by not growing. Even during the recession, we still had to grow the business."

Patch: What issues do you see Irmo facing in the next 5 years?

Walker: "Smart growth. Irmo has managed to surround neighborhoods and not annexing into town limits. On the surface that’s OK because neighborhoods require more services and we don’t have a tax. What we’ve done is not grown the town. Irmo has a negative, at the last census, a negative 12 percent growth in our town. We’ve grown in real estate because we’ve annexed a lot of commercial land, but we haven’t grown in population. The real estate is the lifeblood of the community, it creates tax base, but the soul of the community is the people and if we haven’t grown by people then you’re going to go out of existence. One thing I want to look at is how do we bring in more people into the town of Irmo."

Patch: What’s your stance on the Okra Strut Festival?

Walker: "What I’m looking for is basically a piece of land or location that’s central to Irmo where we can have this festival there for the next 100 years until we outgrow it. One of the things the Okra Strut Festival does is showcase our good welfare, our talents, what we have to offer. I have a big house that I don't need anymore and I raised my family there, three kids four bedroom house. I want to make sure that Irmo attracts other families, young families that want to raise their children there and want to come and buy my house.... I don’t need that big house anymore .... That doesn’t cost you anything. It’s a nationally recognized festival, been featured on USA Today, featured on the Today Show and we have to take advantage of it. Let more people know about our festival."

"It’s not a money-making event. It’s not an event designed to make money. Last year, the town put up $20,000 to rent a parking lot for a day. The second thing about it is after we spent that money, we got it back in the form of fees. The Okra Strut doesn’t lose money. It’s not designed to make money. It's not a retail, revenue center. Like Blythewood has a balloon festival. It's an event to draw people to Blythewood to showcase Blythewood. The Okra Strut is an event to showcase Irmo. I want people to come here and look at the town and see what we have to offer. It's not designed to be a revenue area where we generate revenue and make money. Councilman (Hardy) King is off based with that. He wants to kill the Okra Strut and we want to see it grow.

Patch: What are your thoughts about having chickens in your backyard?

Walker: "If your covenant allows it, then there's no problem with it but a lot of the subdivisions don't allow it. So, you have to abide by those covenants. You can't just override them. There are a lot of issues with that you have to look at."

Patch: What are your thoughts on Irmo growth (zoning, annexation, etc.) ?

Walker: "We’ve annexed vacant land, not what we call commercial land. We haven’t annexed residential properties. That should happen. That should be more residential properties. You can grow the town smartly. You can grow the town with just bringing in bodies. To grow the town smartly is the way you have to do it.

Patch: What’s your stance on financial spending? Conservative or liberal?

Walker: "I’m a fiscal conservative. I have a budget here at the restaurant and I know how to make a penny stretch."

Patch: Anything else you want to add?

Walker: "One of the things I worked on and got accomplished this year was the transparency and the accountability of our council. Nobody was talking about videotaping or live streaming the council meetings on the Internet for the people who can’t make it to the actual meetings, which are the first and the third Tuesdays of the month. But now after this election is over, we’re going to videotape and record and broadcast archived meetings online so that you can go back and click on that meeting to see how we came about the decision. How the debate was going and how we came about the decision we came about, so that way you can see how your elected representatives act and how they are. If they ramble, if they’re really on point you’ll be able to see itself. You don’t have to rely on somebody’s interpretation of it.  You can go back and look at it.  Like this issue with my snowplows, everybody laughs about it, they say ‘oh, snowplows in South Carolina?’ But when you hear me explain it, you say that’s not such a bad idea actually because if we have another snowstorm, which we will, and the town is locked down we don’t have anything right now to clear the streets. We have nothing. At least we’ll have at least one snowplow that we can get an attachment on a truck. We can at least get to the major roads or at least let the ambulance get to you or at least your corner or the first responders get to the corner of your block. At least they won’t be locked down for three days like we were. When we had that big snowstorm, it’ll melt during the down but at night they’ll freeze over so now you have an even bigger problem. I’m looking out for first responders being prepared and public safety.  It doesn’t make sense for public safety not to have the equipment to help us."