Seven Questions With Brant Locklier

By Nathan Young on August 9, 2012

Update: This is the series of questions that I have sent out to the Anniston mayor candidates that I have been able to contact so far.

Today’s seven questions is with Brent Locklier. Mr. Locklier is currently running for the mayor seat in Anniston Alabama. Brent Locklier moved to the Anniston area from south Alabama and he is currently working at Tyler Union but has worked in China as president of Perdue Farms China. Brent’s Family was involved in the 2007 Enterprise tornado. His wife was in the destroyed elementary school. And their daughter was in the band room at the high school that was destroyed. They were all okay. For more information on Brant Locklier for mayor go to: http://lock4mayor.com/

1. With the extremely high crime rate in the City of Anniston. What are you willing to do to help lower crime in Anniston and to keep police from leaving Anniston?

We need to form a team to evaluate all aspects of the public safety employees and make sure we have the best facilities, equipment and pay in order to attract and keep the best people. Then we need to implement any changes needed.

I want to form a group of volunteers, called block mayors, to help the mayor keep up with crime, clean up of areas and other potential problems and needs. We as citizens, also, need to get involved and take back our neighborhoods and block mayors will help create awareness and trying to stop crime before it happens.

I also believe that as we revive the local downtown area and create jobs that crime will drop. With more activities going on downtown there will be more people there and less chance for crime. We have plans to help re-educate citizens and that will help reduce crime.

2. What are your plans to help the Anniston City Schools from failing the kids? What are your plans to keep kids engaged outside of school?

We will gather the BOE, school officials, parents, council and put together what it will take to be the best school system possible. We will then take the best of everything we are currently doing to form a plan and then we will figure out where to get the funds from to help fund it.

I want to put together a city wide plan of increased recreational team activities in sports and use church leagues as the medium to build these leagues. Our kids and youth need easier access to sports facilities and I want to take part of my first year salary to help build a ball park downtown. Let’s build a few more basketball courts etc to increase access to these leagues. Then we need to have these activities year round in different sports to keep kids involved.

There are great people coaching teams and we must help them as a city to get kids off the street. Using churches to sponsor teams and helping the churches will help kids spiritually, physically and mentally.

3. What are your plans to clean up corruption in city government? What are you willing to do to make the departments inside city government-run more efficiently?

I prefer not to call our city government corrupt as there are a lot of people doing a good job among our city employees. Our city leaders are not performing as they should be and those are the people that were elected by us in a small turn out in the last election.

I do believe that my experience with running budgets of $550 million in private industry for 30 years will enable me to set up accountabilities and measures to track our spending on a more timely basis and determine if we need it or not. The Anniston City budget is only $30 million and I can see the potential for $750,000 savings when I look at the current budget. Reviewing the numbers on a timely basis reduces the potential for corruptness and easily points out ways to be more efficient. My expertise is in turning around businesses.

Another step is to make accountabilities and goals more public, by posting on a web site will also reduce the chance for corruptness. We will do that in my administration. The more eyes the better control you have over the potential for corruptness.

4. What are your plans to recruit new jobs and businesses into Anniston? What are your ideas to transform the downtown area into a place people would want to visit?

The most important problem we have is that revenues have been falling by over $4 million in the last few years and if we do not figure out a way to get more revenues, we will not be able to fund any programs or address any problems we have. We have been raising taxes and taking money out of reserves to fix the problem and that will never last for any long period of time. We have to change that now.

I propose to bring in revenues by making the downtown area as a key part of my revenue plan.

We will gather all the best minds a put a strategic plan on the direction of our city.
I want to create revenues for the city based off of this plan and will propose to take part of my first year salary to start the process of building a ball park downtown. We will then move a few games being played outside the downtown area to downtown and thus have activities planned for many nights a week.
Then we will put together a plan to have events in Anniston every weekend that we can and fill up the calendar. These activities will be bike related, concerts, cultural and many other things that we are currently doing.
We will put a brochure of the activities together to use to help draw people to Anniston and to also attract business to Anniston. We will market our city with these activities .
We will develop some incentives in order to attract business and set goals on how to pretty up our city. Thus, we will using recreation, culture and our ball park to get people downtown spending money.
I will then bring my international business contacts to town to seek investment opportunities. McClellan will be a key part of that. I have some people that are interested in building an auto parts making plant.
I will then seek to market Anniston products in China with my many contacts over there. If we can sell our goods over there that will help revenues.
I will seek to bring a Water Park to Anniston. There is an interest in this and my sources tell me that this has a great potential for bring jobs and people to Anniston.
These revenue building projects will increase revenues and will bring jobs.
Then we need to take the people and fully fund our Education plan and then fund programs for the Adults to be able to get a GED and learn a vocational skill. This will prepare our citizens for the jobs as they come to Anniston
The Block Mayors I will create will help with city clean up and reduction of crime and the youth programs we will create can be fully funded and help improve the lives of our young people and prepare them for better futures.

I would like to see the Ladiga Trail come on into town and nice little park with shops to greet riders. I would like more parks and trees downtown and a Civil rights plaza near the Trailways station. There are so many opportunities and directions we can take.

5. How do you plan to bring the people of Anniston together? What are your plans to keep people and neighboring communities engaged and working together?

I have spent my whole business career turning businesses around and found that each person is of equal importance and bring something to the table. I have turned around companies in China by bringing people together. You treat people with respect and help them succeed then anything can be done. I will get many people involved in turning our city around. I will do what I can do to help each council member and each person be a success. I will work with other cities on ways to improve the quality of life.

I have been in this area for four years and believe that we should all work together for the betterment of our area. I have no past wounds with people to overcome and bring a fresh global prospective to leading Anniston into the future.

6. There are talks of transforming Anniston into a eco-tourism hotspot. What are your plans to promote biking, hiking, and other outdoor activities in Anniston?

See question four above as it is all part of the plan for increasing revenues by making our town a place where people will come.

7. What are your plans to help improve infrastructure in Anniston? What will you do to our streets to make pedestrians, cyclists, and other people safe?

I think we need to list all of our road needs and prioritize and start finding funds to fix the roads. I would like to see walking areas and places for bikes to be used around town. We would need to evaluate what we could do to improve the safety of bikers. That is going to be the focus of our Marketing plan for Anniston and we need to make sure that bikers are kept safe.

This where you can add any remarks and make a statement on why the citizens should vote for you on August 28th.

Citizens should vote for me for the following reasons. These are experiences that I feel have uniquely prepared me for the job of turning Anniston around.

I have 30 years of managing budgets much larger than the City of Anniston.
I have 30 years experience of managing much larger numbers of employees than the City of Anniston, up to 900.
I have led 3 companies in turning around their businesses in the last 15 years and saved $27 million.
I have assisted the states of Alabama, Virginia, Maryland and Nebraska in marketing products in China.
I can bring international business to Anniston to help increase revenues.
I will donate part of my first year salary to build a downtown ball park to help create revenues.
I bring a fresh global approach to the city and have no special interests.
I have used my campaign to help local charities raise money.
I have 30 years of experience in bringing different groups of people together to be successful in business.