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Politics & Government

City of Bowie Elections 2011: District 3 Candidate Profile: Henri Gardner

Gardner prefers the hands-on approach of helping others.

Editor’s Note: In Tuesday’s Bowie city elections, there are four contested races – , , and . Continuing today and through the weekend, Patch is running profiles on the nine candidates in the four contested races. For mayor and District 1, the incumbents are running unopposed. Today, Friday: The two District 3 candidates.

During last April’s job that fair Bowie City Council members Henri Gardner and Diane Polangin organized, Gardner found himself with his laptop helping some fair attendees get new e-mail addresses.

“We had to tell them that ‘hotgirl@yahoo.com’ didn’t make it as a professional e-mail address,” said Gardner. “Some of the folks just weren’t aware of those kinds of things. They just didn’t know. That was the level of help we were providing.”

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Hours and hours of monthly city council meetings go with being on the Bowie City Council. But Gardner said his favorite part of the job is directly helping others.

“I was raised to believe that in the next life, what we do to help others here is part of how we will be judged,” Gardner said. “As a council member, you can help mold lives, and not just attend meetings and legislate.”

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A six year resident of Bowie, Gardner, 43, is an At-Large councilmember running for the District 3 seat. He joined the council in January. He was appointed to fill the seat of Geraldine Valentino-Smith, who was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates.

Like most council members, Gardner said he believes it’s vital to expand core city services while keeping taxes down, which includes continuing to grow the city’s relatively new police department.

But Gardner said he also thinks that the city needs to take some of its $30 million reserve fund and help residents in dire economic straits. He worries that a second wave of home foreclosures may come that will pull some of those who survived the first wave under. He also believes that city code enforcement officers need to show some leniency toward those facing economic troubles.

“Our long term residents paid taxes to help build our reserve fund,” he said “I don’t want to give away the candy store, but they are entitled to receive some support from the city.”

He envisions a youth summer jobs programs where young workers would help economically stressed homeowners with repairs using supplies provided by local merchants such as Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowes.

“We need to create partnerships, we need to move forward and help people,” said Gardner.

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