Lauren Shoemaker

The Gaston Business Association Questionnaire

Please provide a short introduction (50 words or less) highlighting your background and achievements.

I am running for a seat on the Mount Holly City Council.  My husband and I moved to Mount Holly 19 years ago shortly after we were married and have raised our family here. Mount Holly is home.  I have volunteered on the boards of the Mount Holly Community Development Foundation, the Community Garden, the Farmers Market, the Planning & Zoning commission and more.  I have also had the pleasure of serving two terms on the Mount Holly City Council.

What inspired you to run for city/town council, and what specific qualities or experiences make you well-suited for this role?

I initially ran for city council after participating on several city committees.  The more time I spent volunteering and serving the community, the more I was interested in serving on council to help maintain the momentum of the positive energy in Mount Holly.  Now that I have served for 2 terms, I believe that I can continue to contribute my skills to the projects that are on the table as well as those on the horizon.  There are so many great things happening in Mount Holly and I would like to continue to help foster an environment that allows it.  In my personal life, I have had a 20+ year career as a scientist, focusing on microbiology, molecular biology and food chemistry.  My job requires me to know the full story about an issue and make my decisions based on facts.  I have also been a supervisor for over 8 years which allowed me to learn a great deal about working with people.  In my role as a supervisor, I’ve been involved with hiring – something that was extremely useful when I served on the committee to help select our new City Manager.

What are your top priorities for your city/town (specifically pertaining to the business community), and how do you plan to address them if elected?

One of my top priorities for the next four years would be the Downtown Development project.  This project will have a broad scope of positive impacts to our community, bringing a beautiful new downtown park with an amphitheater and restrooms along with approximately 100 townhomes (this is an estimate based on the current discussions). The park will be a draw for the community and will have amenities to improve quality of life for all residents. The amphitheater will have programming to draw citizens together downtown. The investment from the developer will make the area more attractive and place that property back on the tax roll to bring more money into the city to help offset rising costs and help fund other projects. Downtown businesses need more patrons and foot traffic. The limited residential component of the Downtown Development project will bring new neighbors within walking distance of our Main Street to patronize the businesses. Continuing our city events and encouraging foot traffic downtown can only serve to help our businesses and improve the area.

Please select one of the following local issues, and provide a brief description of your stance on the topic: Economic Development, Public Safety, Transportation & Infrastructure, or Education.

I believe that public safety is the city government's #1 most important job.  It is a service that individual citizens could not provide for themselves due to the incredible expense and, and these services make up a significant part of the city's annual budget.  I feel that it is the council's job to ensure that the police and fire departments have the staff, equipment, and expertise to be able to answer the emergency calls and respond to our citizens in their time of need.  I am proud to say that I have done all I can to help financially support both the police and fire departments during my tenure on city council.  Mount Holly recently purchased two new fire trucks to replace two trucks that were over 25 years old (the old trucks were donated to communities in need in Western NC), financed the upgrade of our 911 emergency call center, hired more fire fighters per shift to increase their safety and improve response times, and supported a police initiative to improve recruiting and retaining of officers.  Thanks to the upgrades, and most importantly the incredible dedication and skill of our first responders, we have some of the best incident response times of any agencies in the county. Our 911 calls are picked up in under a minute.  Police officers and fire fighters are in route in amazingly short times and they are saving lives and protecting our citizens' property.  Mount Holly can really be proud of the incredible public safety infrastructure that our police and fire chiefs have built and I’m proud to support their efforts.