HUNTINGTON, W.Va.— Huntington’s 71st Mayor Patrick Farrell shared his vision for the city in his inaugural speech Thursday morning at Huntington City Hall’s Auditorium.
Patrick Farrell
In his speech he talked about wanting to make Huntington safer, invest in reliable and resilient infrastructure and grow economic prosperity and create job opportunities.
Farrell said that making the city safer is a two-pronged approach.
“Number one we got to work with our law enforcement, police department to run the drug traffickers out of town, we got a drug problem and if we’re going to fix it we got to make sure that they have the tools they need to combat crime,” Farrell said. “The other part we need to do, we have a homelessness issue, if we’re going to fix homelessness, you got to have housing, you got to have social services, you got to have support services. I think we need to do both, that toxic intersection between drugs and homelessness needs to be solved.”
While he is going to work with law enforcement on combating the drug issue, he announced the launch of a pilot program that will address the issue of veteran homelessness in the city.
“We’re going to work with all the agencies that are currently working on it, including the VA,” Farrell said. “And we’re going to figure out by name who are the people living on the streets and what we need to do to get them off of the streets. Who they are, where there from, what brought them there in the first place. We’re going to do all the things we need to do to get them housing.”
To accomplish his plans, Farrell said that his first focus will be taking a look at the city budget.
“Step one is the budget, where we spend our money is where our priorities are,” he said. “What we’re going to do over the next 45 days, we’re going to look at all of the budgets for each department, we’re going to make sure that they map directly with the priorities that we talked about, which is making Huntington safer, building infrastructure and growing jobs.”
While he has been preparing for his new role, he says that he isn’t short on the advice that he has received.
“I’ve gotten a lot of advice, that’s one thing I haven’t had a shortage of,” Farrell said. “Mayor Williams gave me some great advice, Mayor Goodwin from Charleston she gave me good advice, the Speaker of the House came down from Charleston, he has great advice.”
He said that he was filled with joy during the ceremony, because he was surrounded by his family.
Farrell succeeds Steve Williams who served for 12 years.