Election Preview—Swissvale Council

 and  all won the Democratic nominations for Swissvale Council in the primary. There is no contest in the race for three seats.

Gionta was ecstatic after winning the primary and glad that she will have the chance to serve another term.

“I think that it’s so important to make changes. I think that we have come a long way, and I know that we can go a lot further,” Gionta said.

She is thrilled to continue doing what she loves to do. Her first order of business will be building up the business district, and continuing to keep crime off the streets.

“We don’t want to raise taxes, we want to be able to keep Swissvale affordable, and a great place for families and businesses to move to,” she said. 

Rapp, a newcomer in the election, initially became involved in the improvement of Swissvale while working on activities with the . The organization was completing a street tree inventory in Edgewood, and he helped to bring that program to Swissvale in 2006. Rapp has been attending borough council meetings for the past five years.

“I think that I can bring my own set of experiences and my own ideas to make the borough operate as efficiently as possible,” Rapp said. “The borough does a lot of good things, but some things could be done better and I’d like to be able to make that happen.”

After winning the primary, he said he was hopeful.

“I will look forward to hopefully another good result in November, and to be on council starting in January,” Rapp said.

Kuhn-Hanchett, currently a council member, went to the University of Pittsburgh and has a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. During her time on council, she has been very involved with the Mon Valley Initiative, whose goal is to get all of the communities in the Mon Valley to work together to get things accomplished.  She has also been working on getting more properties back on the tax roll.

“We have a considerable amount of blighted, dilapidated, or vacant properties. We can’t function as a borough without an adequate budget, and our budget is formed from our taxes. If we have a vacant property, then no one is paying taxes,” she said.

She wants to keep the community safe, make sure properties are up to code, and keep the neighborhood looking nice. Kuhn-Hanchett's number one priority is finances.

“We have a very large budget, and we’re still providing quite a bit of service to the community, but we have to find creative ways to do it,” she said.

The election is Nov. 8.