Jill Miller Zimon - Pepper Pike City Council Candidate

One of About.com Cleveland's own is running for office. Jill Miller Zimon, a periodic contributor to this site and owner of the blog, "Writes Like She Talks," is a candidate for Pepper Pike City Council. I had a chance to chat with the forty-something, mother of three yesterday about her candidacy. Here's what she had to say:

1. What made you decide to run for Pepper Pike City Council?
On January 1, 2009, the Chagrin Herald Sun (now the Chagrin Solon Sun) published its issue in which it names "Most Influential Person of the Year" for each of the communities it covers. Along with elected officials in three other communities, I was named for Pepper Pike - as just a regular citizen who, with her blog, had been pressing to get the political yard sign law changed (something which other residents said multiple people had tried to accomplish over the years). And by asking questions of sitting council members and following their suggestions, that law was in fact changed (Pepper Pike residents now are allowed to post up to three yard signs during each election cycle - we used to be allowed just one, no matter how many races or issues were on the ballot).

I talked to a wide variety of people about City Council and campaigning. I started to attend every meeting (Planning & Zoning, Road & Safety and regular City Council meetings). And I started to read about how to win a local election, how to campaign and I started to pull data from the county Board of Elections to understand what I'd be getting myself into.

With all that as research, I thought about what I've accomplished in the past and what I would be able to contribute that would matter to the city and the residents. This was actually made easy by the fact that of eight elected officials in Pepper Pike, not one was younger than 54 and only one of the eight has a school-age child. With the 2000 Census indicating that nearly one-third of all the city's households have kids 18 or under in them, and 48% of all registered voters are age 54 or younger, clearly a huge swath of the community has no one on council who directly reflects their phase of life.

I decided to run because I believe in leadership succession and I believe that it is necessary to a city's planning to have as many representative stakeholders as possible in its formal government.

2. Have you ever held public office before?
Never. I've never run for public office before either. (So I don't have any losses yet!)

3. How long have you been a Pepper Pike resident?
My husband and I moved to Pepper Pike in the spring of 1999.

4. What unique talents do you bring to the position?

I have a joint degree in law and social work and am licensed (inactive) to practice law. I also passed the LISW exam and maintained my LSW for 12 years. Since 1992, I've applied my education almost exclusively to work - for pay and volunteer - that revolves around problem-solving. This includes eight years at a private non-profit mental health agency and, over the last eight years, freelance writing on a variety of topics. The citizen journalism work that I've done over the last four or five years has benefited enormously from my having these skills because the forums that host me do best when visitors and I engage and produce thoughtful discourse through which we all learn.

At the city government level, I see using these talents to assess the community's needs and determine, in conjunction with the mayor, the other council members, city personnel and residents how to proceed to address the identified needs.

Other talents I bring to the table include a good working knowledge of 21st Century tools for communicating. Pepper Pike has always attracted young families but the city needs to keep up with how those new, young families wish to interact. Many of them are completely comfortable with and expect to be engaged via social media and other electronic-based tools. I look forward to helping the city develop and implement a range of opportunities through which all residents can participate, to the extent they desire.


5. What else would you like About.com Cleveland readers to know about you and your candidacy?
I wish that all people who write about politics had to run for office before they were allowed to publish their writing about politicians. I know this will never happen, but being a candidate for office and going the whole nine yards through Election Day really places a person in a very different place than where the journalists and pundits are, with just a few exceptions.

People should realize that if we want better elected officials, we need to have better candidates. And if we want better candidates, we need to provide a climate that embraces people willing to stick their neck out in order to work for not much money, comparatively speaking, and with a great deal of expectations and outcomes to meet. In other words, there's nothing wrong with being demanding in terms of wanting high-quality candidates. But as voters, we have to be willing to realize that there are in fact competing constituencies in any single community and when we elect a person to a position in which that person will have to make decisions on behalf of an entire population, a little understanding could go a long way.

Thank you for giving me this chance to speak directly to the readers and residents.