Gary Miller’s re-election kickoff speech

Dr. Gary Miller announced his bid for re-election to Danville’s City Council on Wednesday, and SouthsideCentral is glad to give you the full text of his speech.

Welcome: I want to thank each and every one of you for coming out here today especially in such cold weather.

I chose Leggett Town and Country because it is an example of a small locally owned business, one of hundreds, which are economically interdependent on each other and are the backbone of our business community. I could just as easily have held this event across the street or at a downtown business. We always make a public showing when a new business comes to town, but it is important that we continue to support and encourage these businesses that did not bail out when the economy declined and move on, that remained loyal to Danville, and we must remain loyal to them.

We need to continue to promote programs that improve and train our workforce – just as the armed forces has a rapid deployment force to be ready to go anywhere in the world on short notice we need to have a Rapid Employment Force of trained workers who are available when industries come looking to locate here. Pittsylvania County is the largest county in the state, we have the land but we need a trained workforce to compete – we have lost potential employers to other localities because of lack of a trained workforce.

People often ask why I want to be on City Council, how do I have the time when I have a busy medical practice. Well I do it because I love the City of Danville; I care for its people. When my patient was laid off his job of 30 years at Dan River and began crying in my office, I cried inside for Danville. When a mother talks to me about her 14-year-old son who was gunned down when he ran out into the street to look for his sister to protect her, I cried inside for her loss. I asked the Mayor to appoint a task force to study what can be done to prevent this happening again. Our good Mayor Sherman Saunders and the Reverend Larry Campbell both of whom I greatly admire, did even better than that and the Coalition for a Safe Danville was born. Crime is everyone’s problem – a criminal can get in a car and drive to anywhere in Danville in 15 to 20 minutes.

You can discount our murder and crime rate and say that our rates are no worse than any other locality of similar size and let it go at that, but if these towns have people dying in such a tragic way then perhaps all of them need to form such a coalition of citizen activists. We need to provide our police the resources to combat crime. We also need to demand accountability from them and from ourselves.

I have been a proponent of recycling for many years. It is time we start picking up after ourselves. We need to stop throwing things out of our car windows because we are too lazy to find a trashcan. It cost time and money to clean up after others and ourselves. We are filling our landfills with plastics, cans and bottles etc. We need to recycle. Since I joined the Council, I have pushed for curbside recycling. I helped persuade the City to begin an experimental program now limited to a few neighborhoods. It costs over $45.00 a load for trash to be deposited in a landfill where it takes up space for a thousand years. Or we can recycle as much as possible and get paid for selling our trash. I can’t be satisfied until 100% of our neighborhoods have access to curbside recycling. But we need the help of our citizens for these programs to pay for themselves; we need at least 50% participation per community.

While on council I helped broker a meeting of City Council and Danville Regional Medical Center to open up dialogue for future cooperation. We must have a quality hospital system that our citizens are proud of and have confidence in. No perspective industries will want to locate here unless they are sure their employee’s medical needs will be taken care of.

While on council, I supported anti dog leashing laws and introduced amendments to strengthen the original resolution brought before council.

I have supported projects such as the White Mill (the Phoenix that is rising out of the ashes of the former Dan River) and the Berry Hill Mega Park, which I am convinced, will pay back large dividends in the future.

And lastly, in the past 2 years I have developed a great respect for the 1200 plus city employees the Firefighters, Maintenance, Sanitation, Parks and Recreation workers, Teachers, Utility Workers, Economic Planners, all those people who day in and day out keep this city safe and running so well.

They collectively went without a raise even a cost of living raise last year. We must find a way in this year of declining budgets to get them a raise this year so they and their families can afford to live here and continue to provide world-class service to our community.

We must continue to pull ourselves out of this recession – one step at a time. Hence the theme of my campaign. “Danville is coming back One Step at a Time”!

We thank Dr. Miller for getting his speech to us for publication.