MANCHESTER – Mariah Prokop has thrown her hat into the ring for the first time expressing that Manchester needs a change and that she’s heard from the public that business as usual is no longer acceptable.
“The reason I am running – just like a lot of the surrounding towns – is that I am tired by the lack of transparency. It grew old to see how much information was not being provided to residents if they couldn’t just show up at a council meeting,” she said.
“I love my town. I have lived here my entire life. I grew up here. I raised my daughter here. When I’m gone, I hope my daughter comes back which at that time she’d be retired and comes back to my house,” the candidate added.
“I’ve seen our town transform in a way that I am not happy with. The Manchester Township that I grew up with is not the Manchester Township that I see,” she said. She noted that the township has the land, space and privacy “and that is why a lot of people came down here. We lacked a lot of congestion and now it is being so built up that you can’t even get down Route 37 in our section of Manchester in under 10 minutes.”
Prokop said she was in the medical field for more than 23 years. “I started when my daughter was 4. I was a medical assistant, sterile procedures for a long time and did a bit of marketing for one of my other specialists…With so many different patients, different people and different types of personalities, I talk to people all the time. When I did the marketing, I did some public speaking which I feel would help me (as mayor). It’s like being a bartender – you hear everyone’s story.”
“Where I was working, we saw a lot of Manchester patients. You hear all the problems, financial difficulties, what is happening in their own neighborhoods and they don’t like what they see Manchester becoming either and it’s sad. It’s not just one group, it’s many groups of people: young people, retired people. It’s all the residents coming together saying ‘we don’t like what we see happening,’” the candidate added.
“You have to deal with people and you have to show people that you actually care about what they are saying,” Prokop said.
As to priority issues in Manchester, she said, “I understand you can’t just stop every bit of development and I don’t believe it is even legal to say ‘we can’t build anymore.’ I have looked into something called down zoning and I have never ever heard that word used in our town and I don’t know why?”
“I spoke to someone on the Zoning Board and asked if she ever heard of that word. She had not. I’m wondering why we are not talking about that. In layman’s terms down zoning is keeping all the building in the section you have already created the building. Keep it there and don’t let it trickle everywhere else. The over building and construction is not something I agree with,” she explained.
As to updating the township infrastructure Prokop noted the power outages that have been experienced in Whiting and Pine Lake Park. “I have family and friends that live in Pine Lake Park and they experience these outages frequently. We are putting up new homes and apartment complexes in Pine Lake Park when the power grid can’t handle what it’s got. If we are going to keep building, where are we going to get the power source from? It’s also Leisure Village West. It’s all that west end that can’t handle the power grid anymore.”
“We are also sharing water with Jackson now. Now we will be paying for it from somewhere else. I don’t think the infrastructure can handle more people,” she said. “Where are these kids going to go to school? How many teachers do we have? Do we have enough classrooms? Route 37 and Route 571 can’t take any more people. No matter how many stop lights or traffic lights you want to put up, it’s not stopping the overabundance of cars.”
As to the idea of attracting a health village and building a youth and senior center, the candidate noted that “our seniors need places to go and they do need help and assistance with certain things. They need assistance when their electric goes out they need a place to go and help from people to fill out forms and to get online with them to do certain things because a lot of them are not computer savvy”
She added, “to have a senior center is a wonderful idea but they all have their own private community clubhouses and we have two public library locations in Manchester. The clubhouses are right where they live. Why can’t those outreach centers be part of their actual community so it is right there where their home is?”
Regarding the campaign process Prokop said she’s been using social media “which plays a huge part in campaigning because a lot of younger people and seniors are on it. Another portion of it is our local papers – The Manchester Times – that plays a vital role I think moreso in the senior communities because some aren’t on social media.”
She added, “the biggest challenge I find – which is disturbing to me and I hope this changes – is that I feel the senior community are blocked out of getting a lot of different information and it is because the senior communities (Home Owners Associations) will not allow anything they consider political on their grounds. This means those living in those private communities cannot have a meet and greet on their property or have their information printed in their private community papers so they are getting blocked out of information that is vital for any election.”
Running as an independent with no political club backing is expensive, she said. “It is much easier when you are backed by a party but the reason I didn’t go around begging for money is because I don’t want anyone to ever be able to say ‘We know she owes these people a favor.’ I had a nice resident donate a small amount of money and I had a long-time business owner make a donation to me as well. Otherwise, it is coming out of my pocket. Shirts, signs, fliers are coming out of my own pocket.”
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