LIMA — It was a one-man show Wednesday at the NAACP mayoral candidate forum, but candidate Keith Cheney still faced questions on a variety of topics of importance to the minority community, such as job creation, law enforcement practices and community development.
The event had originally been formatted as a debate, but Mayor David Berger declined to participate, citing concerns over a perceived lack of impartiality after a Facebook post from Carol Fails, wife of Lima NAACP President Ronald Fails, featured the comment, “Mr. Keith Cheney, hopefully the next mayor.”
Instead, it was Cheney fielding questions from NAACP State District Coordinator WilliAnn Moore. When asked about strategies for job creation for minorities, Cheney responded that, while it is the private sector that creates jobs, city administration can play a role to help create a more job-friendly environment for everyone, including minorities.
“I will implement what is known as LCSI: Lima Common Sense Initiatives, whereby every single department will be evaluated to determine what their procedures and policies are and what improvements can be made,” he said.
Cheney also pledged to work with the NAACP and other minority organizations to help connect minority job-seekers with opportunities.
“We will put [them] together under one umbrella to work with our administration, and our administration will work with them to ensure that we are reaching out to the minority community and providing opportunities,” he said. The NAACP “will have a seat at the table in my administration.”
On law enforcement, Cheney said that increasing minority participation in law enforcement is essential to improving relations with the minority community.
“You don’t recruit by posting a job and saying, ‘If you want to be a policeman, come up here and take a test,’” he said. “You go to the streets, the schools and colleges. We need to go together and talk to young people and encourage them to become officers.”
Rather than community oriented policing, Cheney instead advocates an approach he called the Community Action Team.
“You take the officers and dedicate a number of them to a particular part of the community, and they become a part of that community,” he said. “They walk the streets, they go into the convenience stores to buy their coffee. They walk around and talk to their neighbors.”
Cheney also called for more Community Development Block Grant and private-sector funding for community centers like the Mizpah Center and Bradfield Center.
“When this administration is using 19 percent of those monies to pay enhanced salaries, that’s shameful,” he said. “That is going to change.”
Fails did not make an explicit endorsement. He instead called on people to do their research on both candidates and to not be afraid to vote differently than they had in the past.
“If you do what you’ve done, you’ll get what you’ve got,” he said. “Sometimes you have to step out of the box and do something different, because at the end of the day, your voice counts.”
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