Uptown Consortium, Inc. (UCI) hosted an Uptown Insights virtual forum on October 13 with Cincinnati mayoral candidates David Mann and Aftab Pureval to discuss issues important to the Uptown community. Emmy award-winning journalist and community relations and communications professional with UCI anchor institution Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Michelle Hopkins, moderated the event.
“We wanted to provide a forum for both candidates to speak on key issues affecting Uptown,” said UCI President and CEO Beth Robinson. “This forum was planned with the Uptown community, partners, and institutions at the forefront of our mind. It was an excellent opportunity for both candidates to answer important questions and share their vision for Cincinnati and the Uptown area.”
Aftab Pureval is the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts and was the first Democrat elected to the office in more than a century. Pureval has made access to justice a priority by launching a nationally recognized help center to assist people representing themselves with legal resources. The Honorable David Mann has been an elected member of Cincinnati City Council for eight years. He served as Vice Mayor from 2014 – 2018 and has been chair of the budget and finance committee since 2015, where he overs the city’s $1.5 billion budget and supports various city municipal services and departments.
As residents of Clifton, both Mann and Pureval were eager to discuss topics important to the Uptown community. Discussion topics were centered around six different categories — economy, development, community, inclusion, transportation, and talent. The first question respondent was given 30 seconds to respond and the second was given two minutes, with candidates switching between the two for each question.
The first set of questions was about the economy in Uptown — specifically about continuing Uptown’s growth as shown in an Economic Impact Study, job creation, and maintaining livability in the area.
With support from elected officials and collaboration between the five Uptown neighborhoods, Mann said he felt Uptown could not fail. “The city must be a partner, and as I say, I was involved in the monthly meetings of the Uptown Consortium. You’ve got a great leader in Beth Robinson and you’ve got great institutions supporting what is happening. From my perspective, you’ve got five great neighborhoods, so it cannot fail to come together, but the city must continue to treat [Uptown] as a priority, must continue to support with our development personnel, the leadership of the city, from the mayor’s office to the city manager."
Pureval pointed out the importance of Uptown working for all members of the community. “So many communities and cities across the country are trying to create a 15-minute city, so that you can work and live and recreate near all of the amenities that you need, whether you’re walking, biking, using public transportation, or using our roads with busses and cars. That’s exactly the vision for Uptown to be a diverse neighborhood that fulfills all of those needs so that if you start as a student at UC, you have access to housing in Uptown. If you start as a tech entrepreneur, you have access to housing and jobs in Uptown. If you start as a med student and then a doctor, you have access to housing and career opportunities in Uptown. From blue-collar workers to white-collar, from affordable housing to market-rate housing, creating that density and that diversity has to be a priority for this community.”
The final bucket of questions was about attracting talent to the region. Hopkins referred to a quote from University of Cincinnati President Neville Pinto, to which he references a “surge in the talent innovation movement that is sweeping the globe” that will “define America standing in the 21st century.”
“In order to attract young diverse families, we have to create neighborhoods that are dense, that are diverse, that lean into the arts, that have good public transportation, that are walkable, that have bike lanes,” Pureval said. “Those are the kind of neighborhoods that young talent is looking for, and that’s the vision for Uptown.”
Mann felt the potential for attracting talent to Cincinnati and Uptown was already here, it just needs to be utilized properly. “We’ve got tremendous opportunities here, and I anticipate that more and more individuals, more and more companies, will be looking at Cincinnati. We rate very high on any number of surveys about cities of interest to young people, cities of interest to those looking for affordable cost of living, the list just goes on and on and on, so let us not lose heart. And the city has to be in the middle of that, of course the city government, and we need to support Chamber of Commerce, other groups and activities in our community that try to take advantage of all those benefits and make sure our case is made to the whole country.”
Contact information for both candidates were also provided to allow any unanswered questions to be directed to Mann and Pureval following the session.
See contact information for each campaign below.
Both candidates discussed the other topics important to Uptown in detail, the full video of which can be viewed online. Watch the full Uptown Insights mayoral forum here.