Spartanburg City Council ‘09: District 4 Candidate Cate Brandt Ryba

“I want to serve the citizens of Spartanburg on City Council because Spartanburg has given so much to me.” That’s the first in a list of  reasons for running posted on Cate Brandt Ryba’s City Council District 4 campaign Facebook page.  Ryba, 31, is a Spartanburg native.

She is a graduate of Wellesley College and has a masters degree in urban planning from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Ryba currently works in media and communications for the Mary Black Foundation. Prior to that, she worked for the City of Spartanburg as Economic Development Coordinator.

Ryba will be running against Spartanburg small business attorney Thomas Belenchia. The election is Tuesday, November 3rd.

On Monday, I sat down with Mrs. Ryba to find out what her vision is for the City of Spartanburg.

Why do you think that you’re the best choice for the City Council District 4 seat?

I think that I am a good choice because of my experience working for the city as a staff person. I understand what it takes to get things done within the city structure. I think that my background in urban planning is a key asset that I’ll bring into council, because so many of the issues that come before council are development related and real estate related. I think that understanding what’s a quality development and what’s not will be really helpful in policy making.

I also think, having grown up here and lived here all my life except for when I went away to school gives me a unique perspective. I’ve been a young person here. I have a family here, so I have the different perspectives of being in different age groups while living in Spartanburg.

I think that my work in the arts community will be an asset to understanding how important that is to economic development, because you really have to have a holistic approach to creating a successful city. It can’t just be one thing or another you really have to understand all those pieces.

I really think that my experience in economic development really will help me with policy making on council, understanding how important quality-of-life issues are to having a successful place.

Do you support the adoption of the Downtown Master Plan?

Yes. I actually was the project manager for the Downtown Master Plan when I worked for the city. It was such an inspiring experience. We had about 500 people come through during that charrette, and it was incredible—the participation that we had.

Some of the concerns that were expressed when we went through that process were [things like] “we need to make sure this plan is used,” because we spent a good deal of money on consultants, and staff time, and our citizens’ time and we need to make sure that it happens.

There are pieces of it that are being used now, but it does need to be officially adopted.

Would you support the creation of city-supported small business incubators to assist entrepreneurs create and operate successful small business models in Spartanburg?

Definitely. One of the things that I think was started [in the city] when I was working there, and that I think they’ll probably end up continuing and I hope improve upon, is a retail-recruitment program. Other cities like Greenville and Asheville have done [that], and Rock Hill has a really great program. One of the things they can do is help get marketing expenses paid for small businesses, rent offset, and things like that.

I definitely would support those kinds of initiatives, and I think with the [George Dean Johnson Jr. College of Business] coming in we’ll have an incredible resource there. Actually, I think that part or the building space for the business school is additional office space that could potentially be used for business incubators. I’m not exactly sure if that’s true, but I think there is additional square footage for incubator space.

There’s reason to believe that downtown Spartanburg is entering a period of growth, both in terms of population and local economics. What actions can City Council take to ensure that such growth is sustainable instead of a short-lived boom?

I think supporting small businesses, deals like what’s happened with RJ Rockers, and Cornbread to Caviar—continuing to help businesses as they come in and make it easy for them to start their business in Spartanburg. It needs to be made easy to start a small businesses in Spartanburg [by] streamlining some of that process.

I think continuing quality of life stuff, like for example the Creative Tastes event, which was in its second year this year. I think having things like that shows people that the city is bringing new things to the citizens. Continuing to support Hub-Bub is a huge part of that. It’s a vote of confidence that the city really cares about young people and young families and keeping those people here.

That’s a real key to making Spartanburg successful.

How do you think City Council can best address Spartanburg’s high unemployment rate, and what specific ideas will you present to do so?

One of our focuses at the Mary Black Foundation is early childhood development, and some people posit that if you don’t have quality educational experiences age 0 to 3 that you’ll never catch up. I’d love to see the city get involved in someway with supporting children age 0 to 3, because that will be our workforce 18 years or 15 years from now, and once someone drops out of school it’s really hard to help them.

Also, like I said before, I think making it easy to start a business in Spartanburg—I was in Burlington, Vermont, this past weekend and I was at their farmers’ market and they had a table there from their economic development office. They had this booklet that I brought home [with] all the things you need to start a business in Burlington.  The whole process was right there. It makes it really easy to figure out who you have to write checks to, what permits you need, so I think maybe coming up with something like that. That’s just one idea.

What steps, in your opinion, need to be taken to help bring more of Spartanburg’s large college population into downtown?

One of the challenges that we have is the walking environment between Wofford and between Converse and downtown.

The challenges with Church Street, that’s a state highway, so we’re limited in what we can do, design-wise, along there. There are recommendations in the Master Plan for trying to make that walk better. One of the ways you do that is to have things that are along the way, between destinations, so that people actually want to walk from point A to point B. Right now there’s not a lot to walk by.

So I think encouraging small businesses to open up their spaces between those places, for example those spaces next to Venus Pie that are vacant between Converse and downtown. I think making it more walkable would help.

I think also things like encouraging something like RJ Rockers to open—college kids love to go out—and if there are places for them to go out and get a beer or get some chicken wings or go shopping they’ll come.  Provide them the place, and they’ll come.

Do you support a policy of sustained annexation by the City of Spartanburg?  Would you support a more aggressive annexation policy?

Our annexation policies in South Carolina are extremely antiquated. It is such a challenge for our city to expand, and I’m excited to see that they’re doing that in these places where they’ve had these service agreements. I think that’s great. I really do think that if people understood all that they were getting for their [tax] money they would appreciate being in the city.

Our tax base is challenged because of all the nonprofits we have, including the churches, the colleges and the hospital, and so those folks aren’t going anywhere and we don’t want them to.  But we have to have a way to continue bringing in revenue.

Do you believe the city is doing enough to provide affordable housing options for poor residents? What initiatives would you propose or support on council to address this?

The Housing Authority is really—and they’re not affiliated with the city—they’re the ones that build the housing, and they’ve been super-successful in getting Hope VI grants. They’ve been very progressive in how they want to design the new housing compared to how they’ve been in the past. They want to make it more like a neighborhood—with the units set apart and everything else. They’ve mixed homeownership with rental which is really effective in helping property maintenance and community pride.

I think the city has applied for HUD funding too [for] helping with demolition and maintenance of the housing. I think they’ve done a great job, and they have a great Neighborhood Services Director, Wes Corrothers. I think that they’re designing  neighborhood plans which would be really helpful.

Considering that the City of Spartanburg is a majority African American city, do you believe that City Council should do more to increase the number of minority-owned businesses in the city?  What measures would you support to address that?

We have a wonderful minority and women’s business coordinator, Jackie Dudley. They have different resources in terms of grants and those kinds of things to help minority-owned businesses.

I also think we should support [minority-owned] small-business that already exist, for example the new jazz club [Celebrities] that just opened. Supporting them sets an example that we want to have minority-owned businesses be successful in Spartanburg.

Considering that Spartanburg has a high HIV/AIDS infection rate, particularly in poor and minority communities, what specific steps do you believe that city government can take to help stop the spread of this disease?

For me that’s really an educational issue. I know that the city has worked with ReGenesis a lot, and with the health system here to. I think that perhaps an awareness program through their youth coalition might be helpful. If the kids are talking about it, then the parents are talking about it.

Also an awareness campaign working with the marketing department to do a billboard campaign or something like that would be great.

What are your thoughts on last June’s LGBT Pride march? Do you support or oppose such events in the City of Spartanburg? If asked, would you speak at a future Upstate Pride event?

I did attend the last Pride march, and I thought it was great. I think that as a City Councilperson you represent everyone in the city, no matter what they believe or what they do, you represent them. I think it’s important to have all kinds of demonstrations.

I think that anyone who wants to have a march or demonstration in the city, if it’s not hateful or discriminatory, they should be able to have it.

And yes, I would be willing to speak if asked.

Do you believe the city does enough to fund the arts? Would you increase funding, decrease funding, or leave funding at roughly the same level?

I think they do a great job.  HUB-BUB is probably one of the main reasons why I’ve been so thrilled to live in Spartanburg. There are lots of reasons I love living here, but when I first moved [back from college] I was able to really connect with a whole lot of people that I think might have been more difficult to find if I hadn’t had a place like HUB-BUB.

It also offers a variety of experiences for a variety of people in Spartanburg, so I think it’s totally worth funding at the level that they do, and I think a lot of folks privately fund I as well, which is great for them to have that kind of diverse funding as well.

I think things like ArtCycle—the bicycle sculpture program—was such a low-cost thing to the city and it really [creates] a visible sign that the city cares about art. I think stuff like that is great, because it’s not a huge expense and it really creates a big impact.

Would you support moving municipal elections to regular election years to take advantage of greater voter turnout? Do you think moving the elections would encourage more people to participate in city government?

I think it’s always a great idea to have more people participating. When I was going through the voter list in my district, I was surprised by the actual population in my district [versus] how many people are actually active voters. Anything we can do to help people participate more and care more and feel like they’re part of making decisions in their communities [would be positive].

I don’t know what the details would be of doing something like that, but if other communities in South Carolina have done it I don’t see why Spartanburg couldn’t. I don’t see what the opposition would be.

Do you believe nonpartisan municipal elections help or hurt the local political debate?

I think it helps, because I think it doesn’t polarize people as much. I think it allows us to focus on issues without the baggage of the parties. So I think it’s actually a really great thing.

Would you support a city ordinance allowing the grocery sale of beer and wine on Sunday?

I think it’s great that the City of Spartanburg has allowed restaurants to serve beer and wine on Sunday, because that really helps the restaurants out a lot. I would support the idea [of grocery sale of beer and wine] if it could be done [legally].

Tags: City Council, Election '09, Interview, Local Politics, News

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 10:39 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.