By Press Times Staff
GREEN BAY – Green Bay District 3 residents will soon decide whether to keep their current alderperson or elect someone new to the job April 5.
Incumbent Lynn Gerlach is being challenged for her District 3 seat on the Green Bay City Council by William David Morgan.
District 3 encompasses parts of east Green Bay.
The Press Times emailed both candidates the same question and gave them 200 words to respond.
What do you see as the most important issue facing the City of Green Bay, and if elected, how will you address it?
Lynn Gerlach
A: Green Bay faces a wonderful opportunity: Rediscover what makes your city special or fail to capitalize on change that will not be stopped and cannot be reversed.
Our challenge is to learn to embrace inevitable change, and make it work for us.
Helping long-time residents find renewed appreciation for their city is both a challenge and an opportunity.
We need to rediscover and appreciate the tradition (a winning football team in a great stadium; an affordable and accessible, nationally-ranked amusement park; a vibrant meat-packing industry that gave us Curly Lambeau and our team’s famous name) along with newer successes (automated garbage pickup; vibrant Hmong and Somali centers; a nature-based four-year-old kindergarten; a center that feeds more hungry people than any other in Wisconsin; excellent hospitals; Literacy Green Bay; a Microsoft-Packers partnership for innovation).
Change is difficult, but inevitable.
Our challenge is to help long-time residents appreciate and embrace an evolving city and strengthen ourselves for both future opportunities and future difficulties, including climate change.
As a former military spouse who has lived in seven states and diverse communities and neighborhoods, I offer a unique perspective on Green Bay.
I will support the patient movement toward renewed pride and resiliency.
William David Morgan
A: As a retired law enforcement officer, with 39 years of experience working in the patrol division of Brown County my main concern is the safety of our citizens.
I would hope to work with our new police chief, Chris Davis.
I have heard nothing but positive comments from the working staff about his approach with them so far.
We have vacancies in our public safety departments that they are struggling to fill.
I would hope that we could find ways to fill these positions, as I have seen in my own experience, citizens prefer having crime stopped before it happens.
They shouldn’t only be reactionary.
We need fully-staffed departments to reach these goals.
We have seen our shootings in Green Bay increase drastically.
If you follow the trail as to what provoked most shootings, it almost always starts with illegal drugs.
Between shooting victims and illegal drug induced deaths we need to find ways to fight those supplying these drugs killing and harming our citizens.
I would love to serve on committees that work with these issues and be a positive vote to stop these issues.