| Party Affiliation | Democrat |
| Profession | Business Owner |
| Present Employer / position | Dunn Enterprises |
| Length of residence in Jurisdiction | Life long resident of Baton Rouge, moved in District 6 a year and a half ago. |
| List of educational institutions and degrees | Attended Southern University Baton Rouge and received my Bachelors degree in Business Administration from Southern New Hampshire University. |
| Prior elected and appointed positions | Member of Louisiana DSCC seat 65B |
| Civic involvement and affiliations | A board member of the Baton Rouge Airport Board of Commissioners. He is the President of the Capitol High Alumni Association; a member of the National Association of Parliamentarians; serves on the boards for the Angel’s Empowerment Organization; and a founding board member of The Butterfly Society Domestic Violence Organization. He is a member of The North Baton Rouge Now Blue-Ribbon Commission; Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Police Reform and Community Engagement Committee; the Baton Rouge City-Parish Body Camera Committee; Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome Police Policy Reform Advisory Committee; and Co-Chair of Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome North Baton Rouge Revitalization Transition Team. |
| 1. Should local taxing bodies have input on the ITEP program? Why or why not?
| Yes, I believe local taxing bodies should have input on the ITEP program and/or applications. I'm supportive of the standards that Councilman Cole put in place a year or two ago. Local taxing bodies should have the right to decide for themselves if they think an application is beneficial enough for that body to reduce or eliminate tax revenue. |
| 2. How should law-enforcement agencies be held accountable to the city and its residents?
| I'd like to increase our efforts on prevention and not be solely focused on crime response. We have to create more education / career readiness opportunities, quality jobs and income opportunities that people can create the type of life style they desire. If we do that, we won’t have as many people looking to illegal activities to create the lifestyle that they desire. I think we need legislative reforms of the Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board. We've seen far too many times where BRPD officers in particular have been fired or disciplined by the Chief and the board over turns or reduces the punishment. In my opinion we need to address that issue, as well as the makeup of the board and appointing authority. We also need to make some changes to the police officer Bill of Rights and the Police Union contract between our City Parish Government and the BRPD Police Union. |
| 3. How do you plan to address the discrepancies of public investment around the city, including economic investment, access to primary health care in north Baton Rouge, and issues of blight?
| I think the disparities around public invest are because we have a 7 / 5 Metro Council. Ultimately we need a 6 / 6 Metro Council so real diplomacy, negotiation and compromise can take place at the council level. Once that happens, I believe those discrepancies will go away. North Baton Rouge has been forgotten, abandon and victimized because of those discrepancies, I’m committed to addressing those discrepancies if given the opportunity to serve on the Metro Council. The healthcare access or the lack there of in North Baton Rouge is criminal, thousands of people don’t live within life saving distance of an emergency room. We need a city parish health department that can help make healthcare decisions on behalf of our citizens, based own our healthcare needs and not allow those decisions to be made solely by organizations who are focused on profits. To address the blight issue, I’d work to increase home and property ownership. We need to get all those adjudicated properties off the city parish rolls and in the hands of citizens who will put them back into commerce, take care of them and improve community. |
| 4. How will you address parish-wide flooding?
| We need a comprehensive plan to address our water flow and drainage issues, similar to what we did with our infrastructure issues with the MoveBR program. We can’t keep kicking this issues down the road, we have to address it now so our children and grandchildren won’t be concerned about flooding in Baton Rouge 20 - 30 years from now. |
| 5. What steps would you take to ensure adequate oversight of agencies with dedicated funding to prevent overspending of taxpayer dollars by those agencies?
| I’m not sure what level of over site is in place at the moment, but I support industry best practices like annual independent audits. I do think we have several agencies with dedicated funding and those agencies have huge surpluses, while we have budget short falls in other areas. I’m not supportI’ve of over ruling things that voters have already voted on, but moving forward with tax renewals we should entertain a discussion on how to use those surpluses to address budget shortfalls. |
