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Burke decides to run for re-election
If she is elected, the coming four-year term on the city council would be her ninth
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Published: June 25, 2009
Updated: 06/25/2009 12:55 am
Mayor Pro Tempore Vivian Burke will run for re-election, despite saying four years ago that she would not run again.
Burke, who is 74 and a Democrat, has represented the Northeast Ward on the Winston-Salem City Council since 1977.
If re-elected, the coming four-year term would be her ninth. She is the longest-serving council member in the city's history.
Burke said after the Democratic primary election in 2005 that she would not run again.
She said yesterday that she decided to run this year because her constituents asked her to.
"I've been encouraged by the people I represent to continue," she said this morning. "And I decided that I will."
Not everyone is pleased with her decision.
Marva Reid, the president of the Northeast Winston Neighborhood Association, said that Burke should have mentored a younger candidate to take her place.
"I applaud her for everything that she's done, but I just think that it is selfish on her behalf to continue on," Reid said yesterday. "We should have people put in place with young minds -- young visionaries that could turn Winston-Salem around and bring us further into the future…. In the Northeast Ward, we have not moved, we have not grown."
Burke said she disagrees.
"I'm just as eager and enthused today as I was when I first got out there," she said. "I've always wanted to stay where I am. And there have been people to run against me, but people must think I'm OK if they keep electing me."
Burke said that, if re-elected, she would focus on improving blighted housing areas in her ward, on improving public safety, and on developing Liberty Street. She said she is proud of the businesses that have opened around the Northeast Ward during her tenure and said she believes that some neighborhoods in her ward struggle because of absentee landlords.
"Maybe we need stronger things on the books so that in older neighborhoods there would be certain requirements for investors," she said.
"And we would have to be strict in enforcing it so that our neighborhoods will not become eyesores."
So far, no one else has said they will run for the Northeast Ward seat. Filing for this year's election opens July 6.
The ward is bordered loosely by U.S. 52, Hanes Mill Road and Patterson Avenue to the west. It includes the neighborhoods north of Fourteenth Street and is bordered on the east by New Walkertown Road and Business 40.
■ Laura Graff can be reached at 727-7279 or at lgraff@wsjournal.com.
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