How believing in everyone who has big dreams, big pockets, and great intentions to make your community better could be detrimental to small communities.

If I had a quarter for every time that I heard, “The last mayor didn’t do x, y, z,” and “You have big shoes to fill,” I would have more than the less than $100 a month the municipal mayor got paid. I would’ve definitely been able to afford not having a full-time job in healthcare IT while being a mayor during a global pandemic.

I remember my first task after being sworn in. I decided to be adventurous, and if the mayor’s only job was to break ties and oversee the police department, I was going to oversee the police department to the best of my ability, armed with enthusiasm and a writing and communications degree.

“The last mayor didn’t have us worried about parking issues. We’re not the parking police. We don’t write tickets.” 29-year-old me looked around the room and nodded as police officers old enough to be my father and or grandfather stared at the job description I printed and placed in front of them.

“I’m not the last mayor. I want to help everyone, including the folks who have walkers and wheelchairs, and get through on the sidewalk because cars are where they shouldn’t be.” The goal wasn’t to make profits off the tickets but to create a baseline of law and order. Hell, they didn’t even know where the tickets were when I got there. A week or two later, I got a ticket for parking in front of my apartment on Braddock Ave and laughed at it because I didn’t even live in the part of Braddock where you couldn’t park. Years later, I learned that the things that I was fussing over were called quality of life citations. It was heavy on the broken window theory.

“We have two internal police investigations that you need to take care of.” Beyond a middle school Uno Reverse peer mediation class that Woodland Hill put me in, and my college newspaper journalism skills, I had low investigation skills and wasn’t sure if those were transferable skills. But, armed with great listening and flexibility, I interviewed officers and delved into the complaints and found solutions that even the council agreed with.

“We have over ten years of evidence not tagged or sorted. You oversee the police department soooo..” My mouth hung open, and when I first heard of why a jail cell was stuffed to the max, as if was the police department’s junk drawer.

“Well, can’t an officer call down to the DA and get them to uhh pick all of this up.” Sounded like a simple solution. It took calling in so many people to help us sort it and send it that it was an experience, and it was expensive. I think it was around then when I realized a lot of mayors are just smoke and mirrors, and some actually do the job. I would interview officers on my lunch break, fix the computers, and even meet with the security company in between my full-time job. There is no money in municipal government; one must be doing it for passion. I tried to avoid local government like the plague; I just wanted to canvas for everyone.

I now ask people and organizations who want to bring their dream project to Braddock, “Do you have a sustainability plan? If, for some reason, you left this project or thing, could it still continue?” If the answer is no, then it may be a project in the community, but it’s not a community project. whoever is doing it for themselves. Braddock has had so many organizations and people roll through with their dream project that it’s almost as if folks have this “Yeah, sure. How long will this stay?” fatigue. In a town where the median income is less than $40,000, it’s sometimes better not to have something than to build a project/thing and then run out of money. Sometimes the best intentions do the most harm when building a community.

The shiny new person in town thing wears off eventually if you’re not all the way in it for the right reasons. Sure, it was “fun” or “cool” when someone comes to town right off the heels of a large federal crime sweep, and makes stickers leaning into the gang culture by purposely misspelling Braddock as “Braddocc,” but that doesn’t have a long-term impact and doesn’t tell the community who you are. It’s genuinely giving cosplaying as a working-class individual, and who wants their legacy to be that?

It’s very heartbreaking/frustrating to watch people get disappointed again and again. Building a park two blocks away from Gateway Rehab and then getting mad because the center that was there for decades won’t move told me everything I needed to know. Running a nonprofit and leaving when it got hard showed what work ethic was or wasn’t.

I guess that my last straw was fracking. Once upon a time, US Steel proposed a fracking well at the ET Plant in Braddock, and my predecessor was for it. His argument was that it would bring jobs. Braddock residents showed up against it in droves. We already have some of the worst air in the country. The argument against it was not open the door for other environmental ailments.

It shocked everyone when I endorsed Malcolm Kenyatta for Senate, and I would do it again. So many small things and the lack of grit and “teach them how to fish” weighed heavily in my decision.

All this to say, please ask the right questions and be a little skeptical when someone comes to town and wants to save it. Some people and organizations really want to do great work, and some have great intentions, but in the end, come across as predatory. It’s always better to underpromise and overdeliver than to start a million projects and only have one left to show for all your hard work.

Before I was mayor, I was a home rule commissioner. It involved building the borough’s charter (like the constitution) with a team of people. I got to champion the movement to remove the police department from the mayor’s responsibilities because the person who is the mayor can change, but the borough manager in a stable government body stays the same. Now there is no Braddock Police Department, as the regional policing that we fought so hard for years after it was proposed and fought. Building community only works if you’re authentic, there’s trust, and sustainability built in anything you do. Anything less is narcissistic, irresponsible, and self-serving.