City Council Questionnaire
Question Six
Are you open to building relationships with our surrounding communities? If so, how would you go about doing this? What experience do you have doing this?
Daniel Driehaus
Yes. Through my involvement with SORTA/Metro I am able to interact with our neighboring jurisdictions directly. More importantly, our Wyoming employees, including Rusty, have developed strong working relationships with our neighboring jurisdictions. You can see this in the North Pike cooperating with Woodlawn. Also, this multi-jurisdiction cooperation was on full display during the I-75 interchange initiative in 2022. Hartwell, ODOT and Lockland voices were heavily involved. Rusty provide great leadership representing our City in these discussions, with the help of several astute Wyoming residents and a spirit of cooperation with neighboring jurisdictions.
Grant Hoffman
No Response
Melissa Monich
There are three venues where I build relationships with surrounding communities. First, I volunteer weekly at Valley Interfaith Community Resource Center in Lockland. Mayor Mason of Lockland and Mayor Kinsey-Mumphrey of Lincoln Heights are also strong supporters of Valley. Second, I represent Wyoming in The First Suburbs Consortium, which includes government leaders from the “first ring” suburbs of Cincinnati. An example of this collaboration is education on Hamilton County emergency management. Third, the City is co-designing the North Pike Streetscape with Woodlawn through a joint grant.
Elena Pavel
I believe building relationships with our surrounding communities will benefit Wyoming. Cross-pollination meetings, communications, and information sharing will enable learning from each other, better integration, and increased safety. I worked with many organizations that had a strong involvement in the community, such as universities, museums, county parks, and local government. As City Council member, I will apply that experience and lessons learned to improve relationship building with surrounding communities.
Cindy Peebles
Yes. I believe joint council activities might be an opportunity. These wouldn’t be formal business sessions, but opportunities for the members of the councils to get to know each other personally, in a non-business setting without a specific city agenda.
April Robles
Yes, I’m very open to building relationships with our surrounding communities. This is an aspect of the Strategic Plan and I think this is an important part of being good neighbors. The Incumbent group identified this as an opportunity for Wyoming and each of us reached out to a neighboring community. It is important to open those doors and find out ways that we can work together to achieve mutual beneficial goals. These conversations helped to contribute to potential solutions around the I-75 future construction, future improvements made to shared borders and streets, and exchange of information for the mutual benefit of our communities. I specifically connected with one of the Trustees for Springfield Township and we got to know each other, find out what are some of the goals for our communities and exchange ideas about how we could be more helpful as neighbors.
Jodi Woffington
I think it’s absolutely critical we continue to build relationships with surrounding communities. We are already working to create top to top relationships with local city managers, while also sharing public safety resources to strengthen all communities. We are working with the city of Woodlawn on the North Pike development to ensure the needs of both communities are considered.
While running a global advertising agency, I’ve worked with people and offices all over the globe – all with different priorities, cultures and needs. That has given me the skills to listen/understand, negotiate, and compromise. While President of our Cincinnati office, I brokered a joint venture with a company in NYC to advance the business goals of both companies. These are directly transferable skills in working with neighboring communities.
Chris Woodside
In my professional career I’ve had experience doing exactly this. The key is to discover where our goals align and find the synergies that lift us both.
