City Council President Jim Violette is not pleased with Westbrook’s progress in attracting new jobs to the city over the past two years, and if he were elected mayor, he would work to change that.

Violette, D-Crestwood Drive, said he would aggressively seek new opportunities and work to market the city to attract more growth.

One thing that he feels has hampered Westbrook, Violette said, is that often people seeking answers from City Hall get conflicting information from different departments. He said this could get expensive for developers when they begin a project based on information from one department, only to have to make changes down the road when another department gives contradicting information.

“From what I’m seeing, there needs to be better communication between the departments,” Violette said. “I’d make sure that, when it comes to making a decision and before investors spend a penny, there’s one person giving all the answers.”

Another key aspect to economic development, said Violette, is ensuring the continued health of the city’s schools. “If we allow the integrity of the school system to be damaged, then we’re only shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to economic development,” he said. “Because like it or not, they’re tied hand in hand.”

Over the past two years, Violette said he has seen budgets come from the administration that he feels have tried to cut too much from the school department, and he doesn’t want to see that trend continue. “My feeling is (the administration is) going after the school system very hard,” said Violette. “And I have a fear of what that would do to our educational system.”

While he said he would work to protect the schools, Violette pledged to make sure the school budget is as lean as it could possibly be. “(I’m not) going to give the superintendent and the school committee everything they want,” he said.

Violette is also concerned about the recent incidents of vandalism on Main Street. A part owner of Rookies, one of the businesses that has had several windows smashed by rocks, Violette said vandalism looks bad for the city and it also hampers development downtown.

“Why would someone want to bring employees here when tires are getting slashed,” Violette asked. “No one wants to come here and spend $12,000 fixing windows and potentially have their insurance cancelled because of the damage.”

He said he would sit down with police and explore ways to curb vandalism, including possibly setting up a sting operation to catch vandals in the act. “It is a major concern,” he said.

Over the past two years, the city has been looking for ways to merge departments wherever it could to reduce costs. Violette said he had some concerns about how that has affected city services, but he said it would take a year or two to see what the full effect of the mergers were.

If elected, Violette would also work to make sure the city takes care of its property without adding to the property tax burden. Violette said as budgets are formulated, one of the first things usually cut is money to repair and maintain buildings. He said this attitude of putting off maintenance in order to keep the budget down hurts the city in the long run because over time, buildings fall into disrepair, and it eventually costs more to repair them than it would if they were properly maintained.

Violette said he would take any money from the sale of city property and put it in that account so any necessary repairs would not come out of the city budget.

In a similar vein, Violette said he would establish another account for equipment purchases. Similar to the building maintenance fund, he said he would put any money collected from back taxes into that account. As that money built up, the city would be able to buy whatever equipment it needed without having to borrow the money and spending taxpayer’s money on interest payments.

“We can start being smart about how we spend our money,” he said.