Former Mayor of the City of Plymouth, Gary Cook filed Tuesday on the Democratic ticket for one of three city council at large seats. Due to the fact that the City of Plymouth has increased in population to over 10,000 this municipal election will now have three at large seats instead of one.
Cook is very experienced in the political world filling the Indiana House of Representative seat when his dad passed away in 1990 and then serving in that position until 2002. In 2004 Cook was elected to serve the citizens of Plymouth as their mayor. He served one term. Gary Cook was also elected to the Plymouth School Board two years ago and just recently resigned from that position to become a fulltime school employee service in the Department of Safety and Security.
Democratic candidate for Mayor, Rex Crump approached Gary and asked him to consider running for a city seat on the council and with his wife Cheryl’s blessing he decided to throw his hat back into the political ring.
When asked what he would like see changed Cook said, “One thing I’d love to see since we are in the technology age is live video streaming of the council meetings. People who normally couldn’t attend could at least sit at home on their laptop and watch city government at work.” He also indicated having the meetings podcast so citizens could watch at their leisure. Cook said, “I think we should be reaching out to people who don’t take the time to attend meetings or don’t have the ability to attend.”
Another issue Cook addressed is the budget saying, “My property taxes in the city have gone up with the current administration and I would like to assist in helping rein that in as a city councilman.” When Cook was mayor he tightened up the budget process by having realistic budgets without a cushion and commended former City Clerk Treasurer Toni Hutching for her knowledge in working on budgets. He said, “Being very frugal we were still able to put some money into the Rainy Day Fund.” Cook did suggest using some of those funds for economic development, continued promotion of the city and the county.”
Council candidate Gary Cook also addressed the city’s three TIF Districts. He said, “A lot of that money is designated for projects right now. Once that financial burden is satisfied on those projects we need to take a serious look at cutting back on those TIF Districts. Each one should be examined individually to see which ones can and can’t be adjusted.” Cook noted that he is interested in reining in spending and releasing some of the funds to help homeowners, businesses, local units of governments and schools.
Cook commented on a question about a joint project between the school, community and city to build a pool. He said, “I don’t have a problem with a joint effort as a whole but the proof is in the pudding. I would want to see the facts and figures first before I would give 100% support to it.” He wanted to see who and how much was being put into the pot.
Cook is married to Cheryl and they have three children, Brad is married to Ashley and they live in Evansville with his first grandchild, Alison. Calvin is a grad school student in Denver for physical therapy and Leah is a grad school student at Ball State.
