Name as it appears on the ballot: Theodore Melkoumov
Previous elected offices held: N/A
Age as of Election Day: 30
Occupation (employer, where you work, what you do): Primary Owner of Computer Store Silver Knight PCs and IT Professional
Best phone number and email for voters to reach you. Website and campaign social media:
- 910-824-2054; ted.melk@gmail.com
1. Give us your elevator pitch in 200 words or less. Why are you running for this office? What makes you the most qualified candidate?
I am pragmatic, level headed and have a technology background I wish to bring to our city council that does not care about partisan politics but wants to fix problems in our Can Do city. I think having someone on council that understands AI and technology in general and how that has secondary and tertiary effects on our rights is critical to making good decisions for city governance.
2. What do you view as the three most pressing issues facing your district and the city as a whole? How will you address them as a city council member?
Our biggest issues all feed into each other: Homeless & Crime, Management of Resources to be Custodians and Builders of our Future and Investment in Critical Infrastructure and Housing/Economic Development. These are broad issues but they require good decision making and a willingness to walk across the room and get things done. We cannot let our city continue to trend down at a time when cost of living is skyrocketing into the stratosphere. Our rent prices have nearly tripled in Fayetteville in the last 5-10 years. That is unsustainable. Our pay hasn’t tripled. This leads to folks becoming homeless as the house they were renting 5 years ago gets sold out from under them and the new landlord doesn’t want to renew the lease. This creates an environment of limited resources that only the strongest survive through and leads to a business environment that no one wants to invest into. We have to work together as a council with real leaders to build Fayetteville into a city that people in Cary and Charlotte want to move to, instead of all of our talent leaving post school/military duty. This will drive businesses to invest into real jobs here that produce meaningful employment that doesn’t just pay the bills but also enables folks to purchase their home and decide to stay here long term. When a town like Fayetteville is already transitory as it is, you end up with a constant battle of attrition of residents. You need people to stay here and invest. Bring their talent and experience, but understand the local environment. Fayetteville has the potential to be the shining example of what America’s greatest strength is: Through our diverse backgrounds, diverse skillsets and a merit based system we bring the best of EVERY culture and group to the table and accomplish things that any one group would be poorly equipped to handle individually. That happens no where else in the world and here in Fayetteville we have the additional benefit of the worlds largest military base bringing in talent from all over the country. Its the ultimate funnel and we need to leverage that with a cohesive council wanting to get things done. That’s the type of mentality and drive I plan to bring to the council if I am elected.
3. What’s the best or most important thing the Fayetteville City Council has done in the past year? Additionally, name a decision you believe the council should have handled differently. Please explain your answers.
I think the most important thing City Council has accomplished this last year is start to work together on issues. A house divided cannot stand. I think the decision to lack leadership in the council is one of the biggest issues. You have to be willing to discuss issues with your fellow council members and come to a consensus. Organizationally the mayor should be working with the council to not only be the figure head of the city but also the de facto leader that helps groups find compromises, solutions and paths forward. Its a very diplomatic role. Its a give and take that the council needs to have with the mayor so that as group they solve problems. That is not what is happening. Groups form, they fail to agree on hardly anything. They are supposed to be a team to help our city, that as a group agrees (generally) on what “good” is for everyone. Every district will have different issues based on culture, geography, financial means etc. But rising tides raise all ships. The decision to do something about youth crime is good. The decision made wasn’t the best, but it was something when we have been getting a whole lot of nothing. The same applies to doing something about the contactors that failed on delivering on their construction projects.
The College Lakes decision was one I disagreed with. I have to postulate it this way: If you have a back yard, would you be okay with large gas tanks being installed feet away from your fence line underground that may have issues down the road? There is a reason why zoning designated it the way they did years ago. I agree it would be nice for that property on the corner to get reworked and with the expansion of the 295 corridor there will be more development and economic activity and 7/11 was willing to pay for a LOT of upgrades for an area that has major traffic congestion issues. But you have to see that is not the only project that can go there, and potentially something a lot less controversial would make sense.
4. Last year, the City of Fayetteville sued a contractor for abandoning over $6 million in construction projects. The city has since hired new contractors to finish the projects. What steps will you take to ensure Fayetteville is able to successfully complete capital projects in the future?
I think everyone is asking the same questions: How did it get this far, why was there inadequate accountability up to this point and how do we prevent it in the future? It seems like some of the decisions the council has made since have been adequately reactive instead of proactive. We need to be proactive about our projects. When we are investing MILLIONS of tax payer dollars, we need to have better oversite by having knowledgeable people do the work of oversite. Things like who the bonding company is for a contract, meeting folks where their business is and getting to know a vendor as part of the vetting process is critical. Will it prevent all fraud and failure in the future? Unlikely, but it would cut down on a substantial amount of nonsense. Unannounced check ins, progress reports that have someone knowledge in them review and audit them, etc. Additionally we have members of our community, who have social incentives to do right by our government and people who miss the ability to bid, not due to lack of skillsets but because government contracting is so convoluted. Just like the permit process needs education, the same applies to government contracting. It cannot stay a club only the folks who have the resources to survive the paperwork can participate in. That is how we have insane cost overruns for basic things like maintenance because its nigh impossible for small to medium size businesses to participate (to clarify I am not suggesting 3 person mom and pop companies need to be building multi million pickle ball courts) but the process should be guided, which can be solved with better portals and intake sheets and having a contract office that wants to help get vendors onboarded.
5. While overall crime in Fayetteville has decreased by around 13% this year, the number of homicides and incidents of juvenile crime have increased. The Fayetteville City Council recently enacted a youth curfew ordinance. Would you have voted in favor of it? How will you work to improve public safety and reduce crime in the city?
I believe a youth curfew is ineffective at best, lip service at worst. Are we seriously trying to teach our children that the streets are not safe? Does the government think that a child will actually heed that if they are already not listening to their parents? It adds to their rap sheet as inevitably the only time the charge is applying is really when a juvenile is already being arrested for something else as I don’t believe FayPD has the time to cite every random 15 year old walking home from a friends house late at night with the staffing shortage they are experiencing. The question is: What does it meaningfully accomplish? The only thing it seems to do is add a Class 3 Misdemeanor to the parent as a consequence, but a parent will already be getting other consequences when their child is arrested for the activity that involved law enforcement. It makes people feel better that “something was done”. Root cause analysis says something different: why does a juvenile feel the need to go out late at night? How do we address that? When we drill down to the roots of a problem we can start meaningfully addressing it. The statistics about crime also require the context of a good chunk of the population giving up on reporting it. When Fayetteville PD cannot recover stolen cars, do anything about theft and violent crimes, how can we realistically expect them to do something about minor issues like drug paraphernalia, vagrancy, break ins, property damage, or any other minor crime that has a low probability of getting solved? My own business has been vandalized a half dozen times. What is the point of calling the police to tell them someone spray painted the side of building with explicates. At that stage you have to handle it yourself, and unless you need a police report for insurance reasons, there is not really a point in calling in the police. Staffing the police department adequately and making sure that technology is properly utilized will go a long way to fixing issues by creating a negative consequence for it. Then you have to start analyzing the “why” a crime is happening to deter it and reduce it so people don’t gravitate to it.
6. How will you work to attract and retain new businesses and other development to Fayetteville? Name another municipality you believe has made smart decisions about sustainable growth and development, and describe what it has done that could be implemented in Fayetteville.
Urban environments are by their very nature harder to run. You have a higher population density and since the dawn of us having cities, we have been learning on how to run them better. Every municipality has issues that need addressing and that will always be the case in some form or another. My belief is that we must build our environment into a place where we would want to move to from a nice area. Where people in Southern Pines, Cary, Charlotte, Ashville, Chapel Hill want to move to Fayetteville because they believe we have opportunity, good schools and a nice area they can raise a family. I get laughed at for saying that, but if that is not the goal, why are we even trying? I think all of these areas we see our youth move to and find success in have something we should learn and build on. Their solutions will most likely not cookie cutter to our city, but we can learn from their lessons, use their framework to gather the data and make data driven decisions with a clear understanding on how that data was gathered and what the scope was. We need to address the homelessness problem in Fayetteville if we want to make an environment that businesses wish to invest into and make sure the permit office is working correctly so businesses get operational quickly, effectively and most importantly safely (the whole reason we have a permit process) without damaging folks property rights and freedom.
7. The county and city have often struggled to determine who is responsible for addressing homelessness. How would you work with the Cumberland County government and other community partners to decrease homelessness in the city?
We need to have a team effort on this issue and it goes all the way up to state government. As a country, we can understand the human rights abuses, cost overruns and lack of quality in mental health asylums were all valid reasons (amongst many others) to shut down the facilities during the Reagan Administration, but that doesn’t suddenly mean that people no longer need these facilities. The economic damage that long term homelessness does is way higher than the lower costs of rehab, retraining, life reset and long term care of our mentally ill population. We all agree we have to fund a jail and prison system to deal with criminal behavior but are ignoring what the long term effects of mental health facilities and life retrain facilities not existing does to our economy and society. Every person that can kick the drug habit, get a job, get back on their feet and participate in our society is a double win! Not only are they no longer a negative drain on resources in an area and contributing to slowing down business development, but they also become active participants in the system, contributing taxes, raising families and being a net positive. We have to get people to understand the problem, address the issue where it makes for rehab and for the very small percentage of people that cannot be in the general public due to serious mental health issues, have a place for them. Its the only financially responsible thing for the tax payer. It fixes so many problems and gets people off the street. I will do my best to work with NGOs that have been vetted thoroughly and also the county to address a problem, that while funded by the county is also the responsibility of the city as its our backyard.
