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Crowd of nearly 100 at Dan and Beverly O’Brien’s home attests to Mayor Cooper’s popularity. Photo, Geoff Maleman.
Tested and rested, Mayor Jeff Cooper stood in the people-dense driveway of Dan and Beverly O’Brien’s mid-town home yesterday afternoon and declared a modest list of reasons he deserves to be returned to office next April.
“I have achieved the goals I set out to meet four years ago,” said the first-term City Councilman on Opening Day of his third campaign.
“One was to put our city on firm financial footing. Another was to make sure the city was protected by environmental policies. And to make sure our city, our neighbors are protected by police, fire and emergency services.
“We achieved a great deal regarding the budget, in renegotiating pensions, renegotiating benefits with city employees to save the city millions of dollars,” Mr. Cooper said.
He gave a possibly surprising response to the question of what has given him the most satisfaction in the past four years.
“The collegial attitude of the City Council,” said Mr. Cooper, who is Mr. Congeniality, in office or out. “This attitude has given us the ability to move forward and get on with our agenda, with the issues we have had.
“This has not always been the case. People have helped to build bridges and use them on other issues and hold them over. We are devoid of that on this Council. We have gotten past that.
“As (fellow Councilman) Andy Weissman likes to say, ‘We can disagree without being disagreeable.’ That really holds true with the five of us. This has enabled the Council to get things done. It makes serving so much more pleasant.
“I look forward to four more years of doing that.
“The hardest part for me is running a campaign. I don’t care who gets the credit. The most important part is to achieve goals, to get things done.”
