Gaurav Kumar, a 12 year resident of The Parks, is running for the Mill Creek City Council. He lives with his wife and son, who is a junior at Jackson High School.
Gaurav’s professional experience includes over nine years in Smart City innovations for urban planning, transportation, public safety and land use purposes. He is currently a Business Head in a technology company responsible for growth management through efficient use of people, programs and processes.
MCV: Let’s begin with how do you pronounce your name?
GK: GOR-av koo-mar. Or you can just call me GK.
MCV: What are your top three priorities?
GK: The same priorities I’m hearing from our City residents:
1) Public safety/safe neighborhoods
2) Economic development to help fund our government without excessive tax increases.
3) Fiscal responsibility = living within our revenues
MCV: What are you going to do make our city and neighborhoods safer?
GK: 1) We must never again lose our medic unit. We need to strengthen our partnership with South County Fire.
2) Support neighborhood watch programs, invest in traffic calming and pedestrian safety
3) More neighborhood patrols.
MCV: What are your plans for economic development?
GK: 1) The City needs to promote itself as a shopping destination. When successful, more sales tax revenue will be generated thus reducing the need for large tax increases.
2) We need an economic development plan to show new businesses that may want to locate here that we are serious about their success.
3) Council has talked about a new utility tax. This is a large tax on our residents and businesses. Any utility tax must go to a vote of the people before being enacted. It’s only fair.
MCV: What does fiscal responsibility mean to you?
GK: Mill Creek must live within its revenues just like our families and businesses. We will always have less resources than we want. Spending must be considered realistically:
1) Does the budget item reflect the City’s needs and priorities
2) What are the costs of deferring a project. e.g. when we defer road maintenance, it frequently costs much more to fix.
3) What is the long term cost of an expenditure? Are we creating a long term liability?
MCV: The Council has approved a zoning change to allow over 1,000 new apartments on Mill Creek Road. Do you have an opinion on that?
GK: If we really want to help people build wealth, we should focus on condominiums and not rental units. We could have affordable units for purchase in any new buildings.
We already have three low income apartment complexes that pay no property taxes to our City, School District and State. We have hundreds more full price rental units. Mill Creek already has a full range of rental opportunities for anyone that wants to live here. I think we need to focus on ownership.
MCV: Any final thoughts?
GK: Mill Creek is full of people who care. The residents are telling me three things:
1) They are concerned about all the businesses leaving Mill Creek
2) The City’s budget, spending and tax increases are becoming more concerning.
3) They are concerned about safety in the City and their neighborhoods.
I will use my professional background and training to keep Mill Creek the place that we want to and can afford to call home.
