Restaurant manager plans
campaign for city council
A resident with years of experience managing local Long John Silver's restaurants has announced his plans to run for Scranton City Council.
Tim Perry, 38, of 2325 Birney Ave., a Democrat, said he decided to try his first run for public office last summer when Mayor Chris Doherty cut the salary of city employees to the $7.25-an-hour minimum wage. He thought that "enough was enough," and it hit home because his brother, Michael, is a city police sergeant, and their brother, Patrick, is a patrolman, he said.
"It was a series of bad management decisions by city leaders months and years prior to that, that led them up to that point where city employees had to work for minimum wage," he said.
Mr. Perry is the third Democrat to formally announce a council candidacy, but only he and Bill Gaughan remain in the race. The other, Doug Miller, said Monday he will run for the school board instead.
Mr. Perry blames an "us-versus-them mentality" between council and the mayor that led to "government gridlock" and promised to work to end it.
He said he will not have any trouble separating his duties as a councilman from his loyalty to his brothers, who are members of the city police union, which had a contentious relationship with Mr. Doherty.
"My expertise is in management and cost analysis and bringing in new revenues, but where my heart lies, my heart lies with the citizens of the city and for my brothers and for the people who actually do the work, the unions," he said. "So the perspective I bring, I can actually see both sides of the story and I'm empathetic to both sides. ... Everybody just wants to do what's right for the city."
Mr. Perry said he could not say if he will support the city's recovery plan, which calls for large tax increases the next two years.
"I'll support any plan that's going to move Scranton forward as long as it's fair to everybody involved," he said. "Anything that comes to me for a vote, I will look at on a case-by-case basis. But it's too hard to kind of say, right now, without having anything in front of me. Anything that I may vote on, I will make sure that I read it or understand it and become an expert at it before I approve it or not approve it."
He declined to rule out tax hikes.
"I don't think anything can be ruled out right now," he said. "I think anybody who says they can rule out tax hikes really doesn't understand the situation."
Mr. Perry said he hopes to create new sources of revenue and enhance the collection of current revenues.
"There's a couple things that we're kicking around right now. I don't want to get too specific in the ideas," he said. "One of them has to do around our nonprofits and making a deal with all them. ... This comes from my past experience. There's never been a time when I haven't gone into a ... different restaurant where there wasn't money on the table that wasn't being realized."
He said he wants the city "to start acting like business owners" instead of borrowing to fund budgets.
"We need to stop that. And there's no easy fix," he said.
Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@ timesshamrock.com