Candidate for Hamilton City Council: ‘I’m not a politician’

Casey Hume, one of several running for Hamilton City Council in November, says he hopes voters will add him to the city’s leadership because he is one of them.

“I’m not a politician,” said Hume, 42, a Hamilton native and member of the Hamilton High School Class of 1992. “I am just like everybody else in this town, and I want to see the best for us. I’m going to provide a different perspective.”

He plans to provide some examples of ideas he has during the Greater Hamilton Chamber of Commerce candidates forum scheduled for 6 p.m. on Oct. 10 at Miami University’s Hamilton Downtown location on High Street.

“The majority of people who have run for city council have either been business owners, in the political arena in some degree, lawyers, real-estate people, things like that,” he said. “I’m giving a perspective of the common working man, which the majority of Hamilton is made up of.”

He is one of eight candidates seeking three seats that are up for election in November. Also running for the seats are council members Carla Fiehrer and Matt Von Stein, as well as challengers Danny Ivers, Archie Johnson, Eric Pohlman, Jason Snyder and Susan Vaughn. Incumbent Kathleen Klink is not running again.

Hume likes that Hamilton is on the rise again.

“I love what’s going on, but I also see a lot of issues that need more attention,” he said. “Our public safety as a whole,” he said. For example, “we’ve got an issue with, it seems like our crime rate is rising, the infrastructure crumbling. The homeless and drug epidemic.”

“With the issues we’ve got going on with our roadways, they’ve been an issue for quite some time,” he said. “It’s not something that just popped up overnight. But yet we continue to budget for optional projects.” For instance, he said, “The 2019 budget had money set aside for a parking lot at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park.”

“The way I’m looking at it is, Our needs have got to come before the wants,” he said.

One thing he would like to see more of in Hamilton is activities for people between the ages of 10 and 21: “There’s a big gap right there….. I’d like things to serve the youth.”

Hume has worked for Speedway and for another company where he handled site management. He also served 15 years with the Army reserve and National Guard, leaving as a sergeant. He was a mechanic in a combat engineering unit.

He now works for Oliver Heallthcare Packaging in Fairfield, where the company coats, slits and chops medical paper — the kind that surrounds gauze, syringes and many other medical objects that one sees in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms, when doctors and nurses tear away the paper to get to the devices.

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