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Eric Geyer (Brecksville Member of City Council at Large, Ohio, candidate 2023)
Eric Geyer (Republican Party) ran for election to Brecksville Member of City Council at Large in Ohio on November 7, 2023.[1]
Elections
2023
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Eric Geyer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Geyer's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I was raised right down Route 82 in Columbia Station, where I was an Eagle Scout. After graduating with a Doctorate of Pharmacy from the University of Toledo and meeting Julie Anne, we moved to Brecksville with our three dogs to start our family. We just loved the neighborhoods, the parks, and much more. Luckily, we found that our neighbors are all just wonderful people.
Over the past few years, I have been a leading voice for patients and pharmacists working with patient advocates, public employees and lawmakers to help improve access to medications, expose statewide issues with prescription drug abuse/misuse, prescription pricing issues and vaccinate those most in need from COVID-19. I also work in Brecksville as a supervising pharmacist at a long-term care pharmacy, so I am truly invested here.
I've always been dedicated to giving back to others. Now as a proud dad to Annabelle and Miles, I truly feel the calling to contribute back to Brecksville to the best of my abilities. Brecksville is where Julie Anne and I will live and enjoy the rest of our lives. I am committed to ensuring Brecksville is even better than it was when we chose to live here.
- Initiate programs that make our community safer and healthier, like a 24/7 medication disposal program with our police and accepting Silver Sneakers at our Community Center
- Maintaining the charm of our city and keeping it a desirable place to live
- Improving our walkability, connectivity and city-to-resident communication
I am deeply passionate about working to improve the health of and access to healthcare for others. This can take part in many ways, and I've worked a good deal on the state level with this. Echoes of this are clear with some of my platform ideas and something that I have a found a lot of residents care about.
Ensuring tax money is spent wisely is another area that I care deeply about. This means ensuring resident feedback and thoughts are taken into consideration and shared when substantial sums of money are spent and doing so transparently. This means working hard to communicate with residents but also accepting and listening to their feedback, whether in person, via email or however they choose to communicate. Having a master plan also helps this as it provides a means of accountability to the residents from those who are running their city.
My first job was a dietary service worker at Southwest General Hospital. I worked it for a little over 2 years in high school. It taught me a lot about hard work and made me appreciate what it takes to get ahead in life. I eventually became a pharmacy intern there, and truly loved everyone there across the many departments I worked with.
As a true Northeast Ohio resident, my first historic memory was that of Michael Jordan hitting "The Shot" over the Cavs, when I was just shy of 4 (roughly my daughter's current age).
I also distinctly remember sitting on the floor of my living room, next to my grandmother, when Bill Clinton was impeached thinking we would never see anything like that again.
Clearly, 9/11 is seared into my memory. As a soon to be high school graduate, it was terrifying not knowing what may happen that was beyond my control in the days, months and years to come.
I think the person I look up to most is my late grandfather. He was a GM employee for nearly 40 years and also farmed. He taught me a lot of hard truths about life and truly helped ground me as a young boy. Many of those lessons and quotes stick with me to this day, and probably why I enjoy yard work.
Second was a great mentor from pharmacy school of mine, Dr. Robert Schlembach. He acted as a grandfatherly figure to me in pharmacy school and always knew just want to say to motivate me. It must have been his decades of service as a professor and Dean combined with his World War II service. Truly a great person to all whoever met him.
I think a key step to this is providing ways for residents to give feedback that can be read by commissions and council. This could include a form on the city webpage and ensuring passionate people are appointed to the city commissions. Any time a project is underway, proactively reaching out to the residents in that area is of the utmost importance and should always be done. This includes simple road repaving to the massive project like Valor Acres. Their feedback is essential, since their homes are the most impacted.
Aside from the maintaining of roads and current infrastructure, I would work to continue the connectivity and walkability progress that we have seen. There are a few key areas in town that small improvements could make a big impact on.
Brecksville has always been a safe town. I pledge to support our first responders to keep it that way. I do believe that small steps and actions could be done to make us even safer. Adding a medication disposal bin in our police station would help protect kids from accessing medications by accident, and keep them out of our water supply. Improving connectivity, over time, keeps pedestrians safer and may lead to signage projects in high traffic areas that can also bring attention to drivers when someone is crossing our streets or using them.
I think our downtown is adequate, but with the Central School rezoning on the ballot the city needs to bring this area into hyper focus to ensure this area is developed in the right way. This is possibly our last chance to bring a major change to our downtown and it needs to be done with a lot of forethought, planning and resident input. This, along with Valor Acres, gives us two areas of focus that will deeply impact our community and should be major boons.
Currently, record requests can be cumbersome to the city employees who handle them. I've been told this by a few current council members. I'd love to see a way, with a new website, where more records could be housed online and the ability of a person to search these documents on there own could help lift some of the burden from our city employees.
I think the biggest power that people need to be aware of is that one council member can't do it alone. It take a majority to make something work and get it passed.
While it certainly can help, the way our council is setup there are always some council members who are not up for election and can help with any transfer of knowledge and transition in the wake of electing new members. In this specific election, at least 2 members of council will be new to the role.
On the flip side, getting new people into office can provide a new view on how to approach issues, which can be very beneficial. This is something I've heard a lot of people mention as I've knocked over 2500 doors, as of this writing.
I think the biggest skill that is most helpful for a city council person, is the ability to listen and work with residents when concerns are raised. This can lead to improved outcomes for all involved. At times it may not, but simply knowing that someone is listening to concerns and working to address them is very powerful to people.
I think the biggest characteristic to have is to remember to be humble. You're elected to serve the voters, not yourself. It seems simple, but can easily be forgotten when the power to make important decisions comes.
I feel that being an active who listener who can appreciate people concerns, even when they come with different perspectives than myself. Learning this skill as a pharmacist, has been big in my professional life and something that translates well when listening to and conversing with residents.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
External links
[1] ↑ Submitted to Ballotpedia's candidate survey in 2023.
