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By Christine Kelly
Candidate Dayton City Council
In 2005, I chose to make my home in Dayton. I grew up on the west side of Cincinnati, graduated from NKU, and spent several years living, attending school, and working in Pennsylvania, Montana, Utah, and Nevada. I love our River City. The people, architecture, restaurants, parks make our town a place where I want to be. It’s walkable, beautiful, and filled with hidden gems like the best doughnuts ever.
I currently serve on the Board of Architectural Review and served on the Main Street Board for a number of years. During my time as a Dayton resident, my volunteer activities have included Light Up Dayton, Easter Egg Hunt, Fall Fest, Art on the Avenue, Paint the Town, and Beyond the Curb.
I’m excited to see our Main Street become more vibrant and want to continue developing our central business district and industrial park. The new residential and mixed-use developments going in along the riverfront and up on 10th are also good for our city.
While the growth we are witnessing in our city is apparent, we need to make sure that we are fiscally responsible. We must address the state employee pension shortage, updating the first responder’s radio communication system, and making sure that our first responders have the resources they need to continue to provide residents with our current excellent level of service as our community continues to grow.
Issues on which I’m particularly committed include working on the opioid crisis at the local, county, and state levels. I recommend the establishment of a human rights commission in Dayton to work closely with law enforcement and people such as Dr. Engle, who is leading the way in medical solutions to this problem. The opioid crisis affects so many aspects of our residents’ lives and puts additional stress on our first responders. A human rights commission is a volunteer group appointed by the mayor to promote peace, mutual response, understanding, and quality of life. They work with the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights to make sure that the Kentucky Civil Rights Act is enforced. Currently, only 24 cities in Kentucky have a Commission on Human Rights and only one in the river cities, Covington.
We need to address the problems with the road in Grant Park and our many stormwater runoff/drainage issues. I’d like to see us work with SD1 and the EPA to explore stormwater management strategies including green roofs, permeable pavements, bioretention areas, vegetated swales, vegetated filter strips, rain barrels, cisterns, and sand and organic filters to see which could be beneficial for us.
Also, I would like to revisit the breed-specific dog ban that is in place. Finally, I would like to revisit the ban on chickens. I think it would be beneficial if residents could have several laying hens to provide fresh eggs.
Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns. I hope you will consider voting for me on November 6.
As a disability advocate with the Center for Accessible Living’s NKY satellite office, I handle the disability hotline. Approximately 75% of the calls I receive concern accessible housing across all financial levels. Obviously, it’s worse for people living on a fixed income such as SSI, SSDI or VA benefits. HUD requirements for the percentage of accessible low-income housing have not been raised in well over 20 years yet according to the 2016 census information, people with disabilities make up 17% of the population in the Dayton Independent School District while the HUD percentage of accessible housing has stayed at 3%.
As someone who has critical interests in architecture and human rights, what steps would you take to push for new and renovated housing to incorporate universal design to make Housing in Dayton more accessible?
That is a great question and I apologize for not realizing my story had been published and replying sooner. Implementing the principals of universal design so that housing can be accessed and used to the greatest extent possible by all people should be the goal of all new construction as well as during renovation. As you know, while buildings that are owned by local, state, and federal governments have specific criteria to which they must adhere, private developers or individual homeowners aren’t necessarily held to the same standards.
For new construction we should be better about working with our private developers to implement universal design principals. Making housing that is equitable, flexible, with low physical effort and designed with appropriate size and space for approach and use should be a win for both developers and the community.
Over the years our city has offered matching grants for existing properties to make improvements to sidewalks, parking pads, residential and commercial facades, and removal of chain link fences. I think that creating a matching grant initiative to renovate existing housing could provide the motivation for landlords to make those sorts of improvements. For property owners on fixed incomes, we would need to identify additional funding sources to assist them with their portion of the match.