the Bliss Institute<\/a>, Mr. Hardy was involved with the College Democrats, a role that allowed him to join John Kerry\u2019s presidential campaign in 2004.<\/p>\nAfter college, Mr. Hardy was elected to the Akron School Board in 2005 and became the board president in 2009. In 2006, he was the regional director for the Jennifer Brunner for Secretary of State Campaign. Following that campaign Mr. Hardy became the special assistant to the President at Kent State University, where he also earned a Master\u2019s in Public Health. This lead to a brief stint at Summa Health Systems before he joined the Summit County Department of Health. Following Mayor Horrigan\u2019s election last fall, Mr. Hardy was appointed Chief of Staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t ask to be Chief of Staff right off the bat,\u201d Mr. Hardy told the class. Instead, Mr. Hardy led the transition team between the Fusco Administration and the Horrigan Administration. Mr. Hardy said in politics and governing, \u201cyou have got to know someone is going to have your back and tell you the truth.\u201d He felt he could provide this to Mayor Horrigan.<\/p>\n
The most pressing issue facing the city is clearly the Combined Sewer Overflows, remnants of a turn-of-the-20th<\/sup> century engineering practice resulting in storm water overflowing into sewage drains during heavy storms. The remedy\u00a0 is estimated to cost $1-$2 billion.<\/p>\nThe consent decree mandated by a federal judge requires the city, and therefore its residents, to foot that cost. However, Mr. Hardy noted, \u201cthe EPA allows for an \u2018integrated plan,\u2019 where the consent decree can be forgone if the city can do it for cheaper and make it more environmentally friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other issues facing the city include the disproportionately high infant mortality rates in zip codes 44320 and 44327. These zip codes also have disproportionately high rates of obesity and diabetes and a 10-year difference in life expectancy from other zip codes in the Akron area.<\/p>\n
On the merger of Huntington Bank and First Merit, Bank Mr. Hardy said somewhat sarcastically, \u201cthat was fun, definitely a learning experience.\u201d The merger was problematic for the city given FirstMerrit\u2019s commitment to provide jobs in the city in exchange for renovation of the plaza in front of the FirstMerrit building. There were questions on whether Huntington Bank, a bank out of Columbus, would honor that agreement. For the time being, it appears Huntington will honor the agreement and could bring 200 jobs into Akron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cFor me, my political involvement, it starts coming here to the University of Akron. I took this class 12 years ago. I got a tremendous amount out of the Campaign Battleground class. Having that hands-on experience really helped me figure out whether or not I wanted to get involved [in politics],\u201d James Hardy, Chief of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":543,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/campaignbattleground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}