Margo Cantrell, Brookville City Councilwoman and vice-mayor
Age: 62
Family: fiancé John Gevat
Occupation: Substitute teacher for Brookville Intermediate and High School and retired owner of a used automobile dealership that was called Simply SUVs and Trucks.
Years on council: Was appointed in 2006. Elected in 2007 and has remained on council.
Stipend: Paid $75 per meeting
Education: Graduated from Our Lady of Mercy High School in Detroit, Mich. Upon graduation, Graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor's degree in Communication Arts and Sciences.
Political Party: Republican
Community Activity: Brookville Planning Commission and past president of the Brookville Chamber of Commerce.
Chuck Letner, Brookville City Councilman
Age: 56
Family: Married to wife Sherri and has one adult son
Occupation: Maintenance worker for the city of Englewood, retired from US Airways Aircraft Maintenance position and is the previous owner of Village Auto Parts (NAPA) and Emperors Palace video arcade in Brookville.
Years on council: Nearly eight years
Stipend: Paid $75 per meeting
Education: Graduated from Brookville High School and Montgomery County Joint Vocational School, which is now the Miami Valley Career Technology Center for Auto Mechanics and Aviation Maintenance.
Political Party: Republican
Jerri Letner, candidate for Brookville City Council
Age: 54
Family: Three adult children
Occupation: Corporate quality assurance analyst for Procter & Gamble
Education: Graduated from Brookville High School and received an associate's degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix.
Political Party Affiliation: Republican
Memberships Include: Member of VFW Post 3288
Anne Kirklin, Brookville City Councilwoman
Kirklin declined to be interviewed, but did confirm the following information:
Age: 49
Years on council: Served on council since 2012.
Occupation: Credit analyst for a banking company
Stipend: Paid $75 per meeting.
Political Affiliation: A Dayton Daily News background search revealed that Kirklin voted in May as a Democrat. However, she recently told this newspaper that she is now an Independent.
ONLINE VOTERS GUIDE
Learn more about what's on your ballot for the November eleciton at vote.daytondailynews.com
A Brookville native will challenge his brother and two other incumbents in November for Brookville City Council.
Brookville’s approximately 4,050 registered voters will chose between incumbents Margo Cantrell, Chuck Letner and Anne Kirklin and challenger Jerri Letner, Chuck’s brother, to fill the three seats up for grabs.
Kirklin, a credit analyst for a banking company, declined to be interviewed.
Jerri Letner, a corporate quality assurance analyst for Procter & Gamble, said he hopes to bring fresh thinking to the city council and, if elected, will focus on efforts to make the city a better place to live.
“The sign outside of the city limits of Brookville says, ‘Proud and progressive,’ but in the town, it’s pretty much status quo,” Jerri Letner said. “I think having a few more younger people on the council, we can still represent the town in a professional way and keep some of that small-town atmosphere. But at the same time, know that we have to grow in certain areas of our town to really give the people the things that they are really wanting without having to drive everywhere.”
Jerri Letner said he will focus on are sustainability, as it relates to educating the public about the importance of recycling, and working with the school district.
Chuck Letner, maintenance worker for the city of Englewood and a US Airways aircraft maintenance retiree, said he should be re-elected because as a councilman he has brought good ideas to the table.
“I proposed the use of GovDeals.com as a way to sell surplus equipment online, reaching a nationwide audience rather than just local. I started the city-wide garage sale where each section of the city has a designated date for a sale,” Chuck Letner said. He said he spearheaded the switch of the city’s police and fire dispatching from the Regional Dispatch Center to the Englewood Dispatch Center, a move he said saved the city money.
Chuck Letner also said he has developed relationships with officials in neighboring communities that could come in handy if Brookville needed to look outside the city for help.
If re-elected, Chuck Letner said he wants to continue to focus on economic development and developing the land near Interstate 70.
Cantrell, a substitute teacher at Brookville Intermediate and High School and a retired used car dealership owner, said she wants to focus on efforts that will bring more employers and more residents to the city.
“I think we need to somehow try and figure out a way to get some additional employers and some additional residents into Brookville, so that we have a little bit of a larger tax base on which to draw upon for services that we provide our citizens,” Cantrell said.
Brookville’s top three employers are Green Tokai Co., Brookhaven Retirement Community and the Payless Shoes distribution facility.
Cantrell also said she wants to help make sure the city’s website is more user friendly.
“That’s one of my key pet projects that I would like to see happen,” Cantrell said. She would like to see an OpenGov online checkbook added to the city’s website.
OpenGov is a cloud-based company based in California that creates interactive reports to make it easier for jurisdictions to show how taxpayer money is collected and spent.
Cantrell said she should remain on council because she has already shown that she is a champion of things needed to improve Brookville. For example, she said, “We had a two-way stop street that presented a lot of opportunities (for) a major crash. So I championed making that a four-way stop.”
Downtown Brookville
Both Cantrell and Jerri Letner said city leaders need to focus on revitalizing the city’s downtown area.
“I’ve been involved in trying to get downtown redevelopment by participating in a process where we used grant money to allow some of our existing businesses to redo their facades on their buildings so that they could bring in new business or small businesses into those buildings,” Cantrell said.
Jerri Letner said if elected, he would also like to work on finding funds to help “spruce up” the downtown area to make it attractive to those thinking about moving their businesses to the city.
Jerri Letner also said that he believes that current city leadership pays no attention to the downtown area, pointing to brick falling down and paint-chipping on the buildings.
“We have really pretty-much abandoned it and moved out all the businesses towards I-70, and I-70 was there 60 years ago. I’ve heard people say all the traffic is out there at I-70. My response is that it’s been there for 60 years,” Jerri Letner said.
Cantrell also said she would like to see the city have a small business incubator to address the empty building problem in the downtown area.
“I would like to get a coalition of those property owners together and maybe with some available grants or funds, I’m not sure what’s out there, either demolish or rebuild the buildings that are uninhabitable,” Cantrell said. “Then try to lease out the space on short-term leases at a very inexpensive cost to small businesses.” She added that this would be for the purpose of allowing entrepreneurs opportunities to grow their businesses and then move on to larger facilities.
Fairgrounds move
The Montgomery County Agricultural Society plans to move the fairgrounds from Main Street in Dayton to a nearly 70-acre site owned by RJ Properties on West Campus Boulevard in Brookville. The move is contingent upon whether fairgrounds developer Miller-Valentine Group can come up with the $18.5 million needed to make the move happen. As of Oct. 14, Miller-Valentine was $3 million short of its goal, said Eric Joo, partner and vice president of Real Estate Development with Miller-Valentine.
Cantrell is in favor of the move and believes the move will happen.
“I think that any project that has a lot of pieces to it takes time to make it all come together,” Cantrell said.
Chuck Letner is also in favor of the move but said he is “cautiously optimistic” that it will happen because the fact that the total amount needed for the move has not been raised yet.
“They have got until April of 2016 to break ground or the deal’s over,” Chuck Letner said.
“The planned development zoning approval for the Montgomery County Fairgrounds project expires on April 1, 2016, and the project must be commenced prior to that date,” said Rod Stephan, Brookville’s law director.
Jerri Letner said he is also in favor of the move, but has some doubts about the project.
“I am not 100 percent confident at this time that the move will happen but remain optimistic,” he said. “I feel at this time from what I hear at the council meetings and on the news that the (parties involved) do not seem to be talking much to each other.”
Brother vs. Brother
Chuck and Jerri Letner said there is no tension between them, but they are not running the council race as a team.
“(Jerri) just wanted to step up and be a part of the process and put his opinions out there and see what happens,” Chuck Letner said of his younger brother. He added that he encouraged Jerri to run after Jerri approached him about the idea.
“I would never discourage anybody from running,” Chuck Letner said. “It’s just another individual who just happens to have my last name, who is interested in serving the city.”
Jerri Letner said he had been thinking about running the last couple of years.
“It is coincidental that this year I started asking my brother a little bit more about it, and I really didn’t even know that his position was up for re-election,” Jerri Letner said.
Jerri Letner added: “I love my brother. He (got onto council) years ago for the same reason that I wanted to. It’s my time. I’m old enough. I’m tired of sitting on the sidelines and complaining. It’s kind of like not voting, but being mad about the outcome.”
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