Joe Cobb for Mayor - Campaign Launch Remarks
Below are the remarks from Joe Cobb at the launch of his mayoral campaign on January 11th, 2024 at The Train Station in Roanoke, Virginia.
Good evening, Roanoke!
Thank you for being here! Thank you for loving our city! Thank you for all the ways each of you is making a difference in transforming our city!
Mayor Lea – thank you for your kind words and support. We are all grateful for your leadership and legacy. Beth – thank you for sounding the clarion call on addiction and effective ways of creating lifelines for healing and hope. Bill – thank you for your dedicated service to our city on Council and your continued work in our community. Brenda – thank you for keeping what is most essential before us, always.
Taylor, my dear son – thank you for being amazing in every way and for always showing up for me! James, Ginny, JJ, and Emma and family watching from Charlotte – thank you for your constant encouragement and unconditional love.
On May 1, 2018, we made history. With your help, I was elected to the Roanoke City Council and became the Vice Mayor. On November 8, 2022, I was re-elected to City Council and became Vice Mayor for the second time. I cannot fully express how grateful and honored I am to serve this city that welcomed me when I was a stranger in 2001 and honors me with this opportunity to humbly work alongside you to make a difference.
Tonight, I am excited to announce that I am a candidate for Mayor of the City of Roanoke!
I believe our greatest calling as human beings is to love one another by honoring and celebrating what makes us unique and by discovering what we can create together.
Only love has the power to transform.
When we start from a place of love – we can do anything. We can face our
greatest challenges and transform them into possibilities. We can look our most
daunting fears in the eyes and transform them into moments of awe. We can sit with our deepest despair and transform it into unbounded hope.
The writer Brené Brown, in her book, Dare to Lead, says that “Leadership is about courage. It’s about finding the courage to show up and have difficult conversations, to take risks and embrace change.”
I stand before you tonight filled with creativity, courage, and a commitment to move Roanoke forward!
Here are five ways we are doing and can continue doing this work:
Community Safety
All of us want to feel safe. Too many of us don’t. When I moved to Roanoke in 2001, I arrived one year after the Backstreet Café Shootings, when a man targeting gay people opened fire killing one person and injuring six others. I wasn’t sure how safe I would feel as a new resident, coming out as gay, in this city. What I have experienced through my twenty-years is a city that deeply cares and works together to address our greatest concerns, including community safety.
In 2019, I approached our Mayor and City Manager about developing a strategy to address and reduce gun violence in our community. I knew this was a risk – a courageous risk – in taking a leadership role in addressing a national and systemic problem. With the support of City Council and city administration, we began our work as a community and I stepped up to lead in the formation of a task force and then commission to address the issue head-on, seeking community-based support and local, state and federal funding.
Through intensive collaborative efforts, we built a city-wide infrastructure of community partners and agencies dedicating our mutual efforts to strategies of prevention, intervention, response and justice. Our initial focus was on youth and the reality of seeing too many youth join gangs and engage in violence. Through our efforts, we created and supported youth-based programs helping them see and experience a positive path for their future – education, workforce training, skill building, and jobs.
The way we have brought our community together in a multi-faceted approach, to tackle what is a complex multi-layered issue, is being lauded as best practice by governors Northam and Youngkin, and AGs Herring and Miyares. It has also empowered us to secure funding and resources directed toward reducing this public health epidemic.
Our efforts have included the creation of a RESET Team – a team that responds to acts of gun violence and trauma and connects families with resources; a Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Team – also known as the Street Prevention and Intervention Team – doing intensive case management work with youth and their families to redirect them to a more hopeful future; we have supported city funding to implement prevention and intervention programs through local agencies and faith based organizations including:
“Mental Health Barbershop” in collaboration with Hill Street Baptist Church, First Impressions Barbershop and Lucy Addison Middle School, to launch a Gun Lock Distribution and Safety program,
Purchasing 8,000 gun locks that have been distributed through Roanoke City Public Schools and community events (a program that will be expanded this year to reach even more people),
Three successful Groceries Not Guns events with over 300 guns turned in, including 111 semi-automatic weapons,
A new hospital-based violence intervention program that connects persons impacted by violence and trauma with critical resources and a year of follow-up support
Free mental health support for persons experiencing trauma related to gun violence
Launch of What’s Good Roanoke – a media-based holistic approach to reducing gun violence connecting youth and families with local resources to better their lives.
Our efforts are paying off as we have seen a marked decrease in youth-related incidents of gun violence. Yet, we have seen an increase in adult interpersonal violence, or what has been called conflict resolution by homicide. This, of course, is unacceptable. We will continue our efforts working with all of our partners in the city, including the Roanoke Police Department and the Sheriff’s office, to increase our efforts to address this interpersonal violence and work alongside them toward a 10% reduction year by year over the next five years.
As part of this effort, I am committed to sustaining our support of compensation increases for our public safety employees, supporting efforts to attract and retain more personnel, and strengthening our community policing and neighborhood engagement model.
Further, as we recognize that opioid-related deaths are four times the number of gun homicides in our community, I am committed to working with our Roanoke Valley Collective Response to focus our efforts to address and reduce these deaths, (first and foremost in SE Roanoke, where we are seeing the largest number of overdoses and overdose deaths) and utilize funds from the opioid abate authority to increase harm reduction efforts, treatment programs and recovery housing.
These steps take courage and commitment, and together we will see a change in our culture and create a safer community.
Transportation
In 2018, when I was running for Council, I heard over and over from citizens a desire to increase public transit service hours and to add Sunday Service. Well – we’ve done it. In a little over a week, we will launch MetroFLX, a new schedule-based and on-demand transit service that will extend hours through 12:45 am Monday-Saturday and Sunday Service from 9-6!
In addition to this achievement, which I have been proud to lead as President of the Greater Roanoke Transit Company, we christened the brand new, state of the art, Transit Center as a new transit hub for our riders and operators. We continue to see an increase of 10-15% in ridership every month!
I am committed to working with our neighboring localities to expand transit service, especially along the 419 corridor and Williamson Road – both high employment and service corridors that would benefit businesses, employees, and citizens.
I fully support the continued expansion of bike lanes throughout our city, infrastructure support for walkable neighborhoods and safe sidewalks and school zones, and increased pedestrian safety.
Finally, I am committed to expanding our Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport Runway to increase air traffic and provide more direct flights. This will benefit our city, our region, and our economy.
Education
With this year’s annual budget, the City of Roanoke is investing over $100,000,000 in our Roanoke City Public Schools! We are excited to see the addition of the new DayTec CTE Center at William Fleming High School, the new Welcome Center at the current Booker T. Washington Administration Building, and the ongoing support for new and renovated builds for our city schools. We celebrate the schools’ Equity in Action Plan and are proud of all our teachers, students and staff. I am committed to ensuring funding stability for our schools and working with all our regional educational partners to ensure full access to education. In addition, I am excited about our city’s investment in the new Adult High School as part of the Melrose Plaza in NW Roanoke.
Housing
We are seeing unprecedented growth in the values of our homes, while also seeing a reduced inventory of available homes on the market. At the same time, we are aware of a shortage of middle-income and affordable housing.
With a rise in homelessness in our area, our City Council and local government have put out the clarion call for more affordable housing and are pleased with new housing units coming on-line as well as the potential for future development. As we consider this need for increased housing, we must be creative in our approach – being responsible with our development, retaining as much green space as we can, while increasing housing options and access to essential services for our citizens.
I am proud of our Homeless Assistance Team and our city’s housing service providers who over the past year have collectively housed over 250 citizens who were previously homeless or unhoused. With new homes being built in NW and SE Roanoke, and the formation of our new Land Bank, which is overseeing the development of sixteen properties, we are committed to making housing available for everyone who calls Roanoke home.
Jobs (Economic Growth)
The place we are gathered in tonight is in our city’s Innovation Corridor – over the last decade, and currently, we are making significant investments in our economic eco-system – Carilion’s new Crystal Spring Tower with a new Cardiac Center and expanded ER; the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and VT/Carilion School of Medicine, the new Johnson and Johnson Wetlab and the growing efforts of VERGE and the Roanoke Blacksburg Technology Council and RAMP co-hort.
The economic impact of this Corridor, small business growth and sustainability, growth in our manufacturing and industry sector, arts and culture tourism and our outdoor economy (GO Fest netted over 2 million dollars in economic impact this year!) is inspiring fantastic growth for our city and region.
To add to this, City Council invested $10 million toward a $60 million investment to Riverdale, the new development in SE Roanoke, and a further $10 million toward a new grocery store in a previous food desert in NW Roanoke! These projects represent not only new business growth and housing opportunities, but also new jobs and new reasons to attract people to live, work and play in our city.
I am committed to continued support of these efforts and am delighted that all our local economic development offices are working together to develop Woodhaven Technology Park and to prepare our larger regional market to welcome businesses like Trader Joe’s!
I am so full of hope. Our city is growing. Our challenges, though painful, are being addressed in meaningful, sustainable, and transformative ways.
We are Roanoke – we are creative, courageous, and committed to loving and working our way into a glorious future.
As your next Mayor, this is my pledge to you:
I show up.
I work hard, with you and for you.
I celebrate our city.
I love our city.
Let’s do this, Roanoke!
Thank you.