On June 18, 2007, Charlottesville resident
Peter Kleeman
officially announced his candidacy for a seat on the
City Council
. He qualified for the ballot last week by turning in 125 petition signatures to the city registrar.
An area resident since 1981, Kleeman has been an independent transportation consultant since 1997 specializing in air quality, noise, and energy modeling and analysis relating to transportation activities. Before becoming a consultant, he worked for three years as an engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
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“After coming here, I have grown to love this city,” Kleeman told a gathering of reporters under a hot morning sun. “I believe that my role as a citizen is to be actively involved in the issues, and I have done that.” He has served on the
Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Board
, vice president of
Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation
, and a frequent volunteer for community organizations.
Kleeman said he wants to connect citizens with decision-makers in city government, and that city planners have to do a better job connecting to neighborhoods. He said the region needs to develop a transportation network that includes outlying counties. He wants to see more money put into public transportation and walking paths.
“We’ve seen a whole series of issues in the neighborhoods recently where the neighborhoods have felt left out of the process, whether its about historic preservation or cut-through traffic.” Kleeman says he will spend a lot of his campaign talking to neighborhood associations.
Along with
Barbara Haskins
, Kleeman is one of two independent candidates in the race. He previously ran for Council in 2000, but failed to win the Democratic nomination. This year he bypassed that process, which resulted in the nominations of Holly Edwards, Satyendra Huja, and incumbent David Brown.
“I felt we needed to have more candidates than positions in order to have a meaningful dialogue
and energize the city.”
Watch a video of this event below:
Sean Tubbs
