Sheffield City Counsel Member Penny Freeman
SHEFFIELD – Sheffield City counsel Member, Penny Freeman recently announced that she is running for the Mayor’s seat for the City.
Here is her Position Statement:
Penny Freeman is a former public school math and science instructor who went on to start a small private school to allow students of all ages to learn math and science using project based methods that reach across all learning styles. She also is the owner of a tutoring center that prides itself on making difficult academic materials easy to comprehend.
While Freeman has always prided herself on making a difference, the time she has spent on the Sheffield City Council has become the most noted. During this time, she worked on various city projects and developments, introduced and helped to pass hazardous duty pay for police and firemen, worked to get and maintain proper street/road signage and install and maintain properly painted crosswalks at school crossings. She has worked on a number of projects at the Michael Community Center which included acquiring a flag and flagpole for the only city building without one, a $50K handicap accessibility remodel, repainting and landscaping, and creating a community computer lab.
She has worked with veteran’s affairs, Veteran’s of Foreign Wars organizations, veteran’s housing, and has helped to make sure the City’s displaced service men and woman have proper housing and have enough food to eat.
She has worked with the Sheffield City Schools in reading initiatives, community-based reading projects, youth engagement in social clubs, and outdoor organizations such as Girl and Cub Scouts. Most recently, she created one of the States’ only Junior City Councils that allowed Sheffield’s youth to get acquainted with city government and gain ownership in the growth and development of the city.
Freeman authored an ordinance in support of city gardens and has tirelessly worked to maintain gardens at Tenth Avenue Park and has assisted the Senior Citizens Center in maintaining their community garden.
Most notedly, Freeman has started a community food pantry that has served more than 4,000 families across the Quad Cities and has never turned anyone needing food away.
Freeman has recently decided to run for Mayor of Sheffield to turn her skills and talents towards helping the City as a whole. Her passions for helping people and solving difficult problems in an efficient manner, coupled with her leadership and knack for motivating people to become a part of the solution, will prove beneficial as she turns her leadership to the City at large.
Her ideas for making Sheffield the best it can be are as follows:
Strive towards Safer Streets by:
Street Repaving/Restriping
Flood Intervention
Sidewalk Repair
Continued Community Policing
Create a City Based Animal Shelter
Work to incorporate incentives for property owners to remove blight.
Encourage economic growth by:
Building our Industrial Park: Good Paying Jobs equal a stronger economy.
Adding to our current city services: Municipal Broadband Internet.
Increase business recruiting efforts all over the city
Operation: Home Sweet Sheffield:
Employ marketing strategies to increase enrollment in City Schools.
Increase city/business based part-time jobs to Sheffield students.
Work with housing Authority to offer classes such as financial planning and sustainable living for residents to assist in eventual financial success; eventually creating a pathway to new openings for other residents.
Focus of sustainable housing for homeless and veterans
Freeman believes that we must bolster our success by investing in our youth and giving them ownership of the progress that happens in the city, and in hopes of encouraging students to stay in Sheffield or to come back and open businesses, she wants to continue and strengthen youth civic engagement opportunities. “Investing in our youth is investing in our future.”
