Episode Details

Cynthia Vermillion is welcomed back into the podcast to discuss her second bid for city council.

We introduce Cynthia to our general concept via Tim’s traditional opening and then we get right into things with Kevin’s opening question: “What are some of the more important things you learned over your first term on Council?”

Cynthia responds that growing a procedural understanding alongside the new administration was difficult (and involved a lot of reading) but created a great opportunity to build relationships throughout the government as she learned. Jordan quickly follows up with a question related to all candidates attempting to serve and gets Cynthia to expand on some of the processes that have been developed to improve this “onboarding” process.

We take a few minutes to let Cynthia tell us about her career and personal history before public service became so integral. Spending most of her career in Phoenix, Arizona Cynthia moved to Hilliard in 2004 with her husband and four children to follow his promotion. She started to get involved first with schools primarily and then moving more into political activism and volunteerism first at the national and state levels and then into community based activism with the founding of Progress Hilliard.

Building to a full slate candidate effort in 2019 Cynthia took the plunge to be part of that first offering of Democrats to run for Council in almost 30 years - culminating in her election.

Jordan pivots to talk of how Council governance happens with collaboration or non-collaboration and Cynthia describes the course of business - how some concepts or hopes get forwarded or dropped and once selected developed along the path to becoming legislation. Jordan and Cynthia parse the way the city’s non-discrimination clause made its way into the city charter and the methods and language used by the city’s legal counsel to finalize the ordinance itself to make it fit for purpose. Cynthia describes all the various levels of research and community involvement brought to bear on the issue to make it as clear and forthright as possible.

Jordan shifts discussion to the new power sharing “trio” of schools, council, and township as it pertains to Tax Increment Financing and the future of Hilliard. Cynthia discusses all the “calculus” that goes into the decision-making about TIF from the Economic Development team and the various pressure points present in negotiations between developer and city.  Further, she describes some of the processes behind many city programs / funding plans and how that work is rooted in professionalism and review.

Cynthia believes a lot of the morale improvement she’s seen over the course of her service is directly attributable to the more professional structure that city manager form of governance has brought forward through a blend of fun, communication, and steady growth along clear lines - putting more resources into the community.

Tim asks Cynthia for first term surprises positive or negative and Cynthia replies that given the enormity of the changes taking place at the time it helped her stay open to all types of change found to be necessary or desirable. She was also shocked at the coarse nature and lack of professionalism among some colleagues in those early days. Jordan then asks - given those frustrations - what brought her back for a second term. Cynthia says her hard work and accomplishments that have made a positive difference for residents keep bringing her back to the job with pride.

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The City's Electric Aggregation Program

Kevin then asks if Cynthia has anything on deck for a potential second term and she lets us all in on the potential for Neighborhood Planning G