Corrected version
Two candidates hoping to unseat incumbents on the Greenwood City Council made their cases Wednesday before the Greenwood Voters League.
Margaret Clark, a Democrat running against Ward 3 Councilman Ronnie Stevenson, and Marcus Cooper, a Democrat who will face Ward 4’s Charles McCoy, spoke to the group.
The Democratic primary is May 7.
Clark began her speech Wednesday by saying, “There is a problem in Ward 3.”
In discussing her goals, she focused on education and infrastructure improvements.
A former president of the Greenwood School Board, she criticized that board’s recent decision to pass over Dr. Jennifer Wilson for the superintendent’s job in favor of Dr. Montrell Greene. Wilson, who had been serving as interim superintendent, has since resigned from the district.
Clark said that to make sure the education system in Greenwood improves, board members were not supposed to “tear it up.”
“In order to have a successful school system, you have to have the highest-quality school administration,” she said to applause.
“Some of our current City Council members have rubber-stamped tearing up the successful school district’s administration, because the council has to approve the school board,” said Clark.
Clark joined the school board in 2001 and became its president in 2006. Later, became its president. Later, Mayor Carolyn McAdams announced that Clark and others on the board would be replaced when their terms expired. Clark’s term ended in 2009, and the council ultimately chose Lora Evans to fill the seat.
Clark said that while she was on the board, she had no special agenda, and she and fellow board members — including another onetime president, Barbara Gray, who was present at the meeting — did not carry out special agendas for others. She also stressed the importance of finding competent board members who know the intricacies of public education.
In terms of city infrastructure, Clark said mayoral candidate Sheriel Perkins has referred to parts of the city being contaminated with either a cold, a flu or both. These lexical illnesses refer to areas of Greenwood that suffer from potholes, flooding and other engineering problems. Clark said using this standard, parts of Ward 3 have “a walking pneumonia.”
She said there are houses in Ward 3 that flood each time it rains, and though “plenty has been said by residents,” nothing gets done. “What good is a city government if it does not respond to the needs of its citizens?” Clark asked a crowd of about 30 people.
“I will make sure that an engineer is brought in to make an assessment of what needs to be done to correct the problem and inform the residents of what can be done and work to help find grant money to get it done," Clark said.
“If the city can find the grant money to plant crepe myrtles down Park Avenue, it can find the grant money to fix these people’s homes.”
Cooper also laid out his vision for the area he hopes to represent and the city as a whole.
He brought to the podium a box full of playground balls. Describing the problems he has encountered touring Ward 4, he lifted each ball, one by one, and said he hoped to “pick it up, dust it off and put it back on the table.”
The issues represented by each ball were education, bandaged streets and fresh new ideas to help the city’s economy grow. On education, Cooper brought with him an article from the Commonwealth's 2009 Voters Guide, when George Ellis, the current president of the Greenwood School Board, was running unsuccessfully for mayor.
Cooper quoted Ellis as questioning then whether people should serve on the school board who don't have children in the public schools.
"Hmmm," Cooper said. "Do I need to say anything else?"
Of the five school board members, only one presently has a student in the public schools.
Cooper also quoted Ellis as saying in 2009 that he hoped to prepare young people well in school so that they might return to Greenwood as adults.
"Hmmm," Cooper said. "OK, I think we had someone from Greenwood, but what did we do?"
Cooper apparently was referring to Wilson, a product of the Greenwood public schools
• Contact Jeanie Riess at 581-7235 or jriess@gwcommonwealth.com.
