Greensburg residents voting Nov. 7 to fill two seats on city council will have a choice among incumbents in Democratic nominees Sheila Brumley and Randal Finfrock and Republican challenger Carrie Hamley.

Brumley, a 2020 appointee seeking her first elected term, and Finfrock, who is completing his fourth term, are jointly campaigning to remain in office along with a fellow city incumbent, Mayor Robb Bell.

Under the city’s home rule charter, the mayor presides at council meetings and votes on motions along with the four council members.

“We do have our own opinions, but we come together to agree on different projects and needs of the city,” Brumley said of the mayor and council.

“We work through those differences and make Greensburg work,” Finfrock agreed. “It’s a team effort.”

Brumley, who is council’s director of parks and recreation, said she wants to continue with improvements the city has begun, including enhancing recreational facilities.

Brumley served on a steering committee for improvements underway at the city’s Spring Avenue Park. She said the city is “not done yet” and is considering additional new amenities for its various parks, including benches and picnic tables and a potential golf simulator to boost interest at the Mt. Odin golf course during winter months.

Brumley said she would like to see development of a community center in the city. But, she acknowledged, “It requires a place to put it, and it requires a lot of money to do it.”

Finfrock said this is the last time he plans to seek a council term and he hopes that, four years from now, another member will be ready to take over as council’s director of accounts and finance, a role he has filled for more than a decade.

He said Greensburg is “in outstanding fiscal shape. I’d like to maintain that and not get back into raising taxes and getting into tax anticipation notes.”

He said the city for more than a decade has maintained services while avoiding any tax increase to support its general fund. Last year, it added a 1-mill charge to pay for a $1 million loan for public safety expenses that previously were covered by revenue from the shuttered J. Edward Hutchinson Parking Garage.

Hamley, who is a Greensburg Salem School District graduate, said she decided to seek a council seat over concerns about issues including blight, parking inadequacies and the need for downtown development and infrastructure improvements.

“I think the current council definitely is taking steps in the right direction, but progress is slow,” she said. “I would like an opportunity to bring a different perspective to the table.”

She said she has lived and worked in four countries and speaks multiple languages. She obtained a college degree in French and Spanish languages, which she went on to teach.

Hamley said more needs to be done to hold accountable out-of-state landlords who allow properties to deteriorate.

At the same time, she said, “It’s not throwing homeowners under the bus, but offering them help. If there’s an elderly couple whose sidewalk cracks, there’s no help for them.”

Hamley said she is skeptical of a recent city-commissioned study that indicated there are sufficient parking spaces in downtown Greensburg.

She argued that too many of the spaces are leased or in private lots and aren’t available to the general public.

“I can look from my house and see a lot with 70 to 80 spaces and just five cars,” she said. “Not just anybody can park there.”

While the county just completed reconstruction of a parking garage to accommodate 175 courthouse employees, Hamley proposed that the city consider an agreement with the county to designate peripheral spaces for overflow courthouse parking, served by a shuttle. That, she said, could free up more prime downtown parking spaces for visitors.

While efforts to revitalize Greensburg’s parallel Pennsylvania Avenue have taken hold, Finfrock said, “They don’t seem to translate to Main Street.”

He said he is encouraged by a consulting team’s idea of focusing initial downtown redevelopment near the courthouse.

“That has some good prospects,” he said. “Hopefully, we can get that done.”

“We used to be the city that would fight you, that would be tough to deal with,” Finfrock said of Greensburg’s past relations with developers. “We’ve changed the entire face of city government. It’s more open. We need to do better at communicating that change to developers as well as our own citizens.”

Finfrock said expanding on and better publicizing events downtown such as the monthly Greensburg Night Market could be more important for attracting people to the city, rather than focusing on parking.

“If we give you a reason to come to town, you will come to town, and you might actually move here,” he said.

“We’re all working together to get different new things downtown,” Brumley said of council.

Noting that parking is a hot topic in Greensburg, she said, “There is plenty of parking in the city; the parking study showed that. You might not have it right in front of the place you want to go.

“We don’t want to rip down buildings to make more parking.”

Finfrock and Brumley joined other council members in March in engaging the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association to help evaluate candidates to succeed former Greensburg police Chief Shawn Denning — as a result, promoting Charles Irvin, an 18-year veteran of the city force, to lead the department.

Denning resigned after being arrested Jan. 24 on federal charges of serving as a go-between in purchases of drugs from California. In the wake of an evidence room audit completed following his departure, Denning was charged by county detectives with theft and tampering, accused of taking a backpack containing suspected steroids and psilocybin mushrooms.

While resolution of the charges against Denning is still pending, Finfrock and Brumley indicated they’re satisfied with the steps the city has taken to help the police department move forward.

“Everybody is doing what they need to do,” Brumley said, including Irvin. “What happened in the past is done and over with.”

“We’ve recovered from that,” Finfrock agreed. “I have complete faith in the structure of the police department. Chief Irvin has done an excellent job and has the respect of his officers.”

“I think we need to continue to improve relations between the community and the police,” Hamley said, “giving (officers) opportunities to interact with children in a non-threatening situation, so the children learn to trust them. We have so many fine officers.”

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