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Katrina Hobbs-Everett, in formally declaring her candidacy Monday for Haverhill’s Ward 2 city councilor, is calling for better support for small businesses, public safety planning that is threaded throughout city departments and greater transparency in city spending.
Hobbs-Everett, who first ran for City Council in 2015, told WHAV she is looking forward to the “opportunity to complete what I started” as one of the city’s first ward councilors.
“My top three issues are supporting small businesses—and that needs to include all of our small businesses, comprehensive public safety planning that resources are committed in all departments and seeing our tax dollars work for us, meaning pushing for real budget transparency,” she said.
Ward 2 unusually melds together, what she calls, two “distinct” neighborhoods—Mount Washington and part of Bradford, but Hobbs-Everett notes she uniquely works in one and lives in the other. She explains she raises her children in Bradford operates her co-working business, Coco Brown in Mount Washington, a neighborhood she has served as an advocate since she was 17 years old.
She said Haverhill’s future success depends on “coalition making,” explaining she believes the city must be more cross-collaborative than it has been in the past.
“We really need to learn how to harness the diversity that we have here in this city. I think some folks are afraid of that word, ‘diversity,’ but what that means is simply different and, even, if we’re talking differences in intellectual thought, we need to have that diversity really being involved to kind of catalyze our gateway city—to be able to compete with other gateway cities, to be more competitive,” she said.
This past January, Hobbs-Everett was awarded the Special Drum Major for Justice Award at Haverhill’s Calvary Baptist Church’s first Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.
Carmen Garcia-King previously said she also plans to seek the Ward 2 Council seat, making it the first district to have City Council competition. On the School Committee side, Lynette Hickey and Jill Story are competing for the Ward 5 elected post.
Formal nomination papers will be available from the Haverhill city clerk’s office beginning May 1. If there are more than three candidates in any race, a preliminary election would take place Tuesday, Sept. 12. The final election is Tuesday, Nov. 7.