Tom Krieck has gone from working as a senior executive in several nationwide corporations to wanting to hammer some cost-cutting measures into the Annapolis city budget.
He’s running as an unaffiliated candidate in Ward 1, which includes the city’s historic downtown, against sitting Alderman Harry Huntley, who won the Democratic primary this month.
While Huntley, a former member of the Annapolis Democratic Central Committee, has a wide array of support from his fellow Democrats, who make up the entire City Council, Krieck has himself and his neighbors.
“They’re putting the [yard] sign up because it’s me, not because of my party,” Krieck, who will be 66 on Election Day, said in an interview with the Capital Gazette.
Krieck grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where his dad was a pipe fitter and his mom was a waitress. He said he worked to fund his own master’s in business administration from Rutgers University.
He was a top executive in several large companies during his career, he said, including as an executive vice president at Circuit City. After a basketball injury, he shopped for a brace at a medical device company and ended up buying the company, called Living Free Home, eventually turning it from a side business to his full-time job growing the company across the country. The company merged with National Seating & Mobility in 2019, about 15 years after his purchase.
The unaffiliated candidate moved to Annapolis soon after he sold the business, Krieck said, and became interested in the City Council about a year and a half ago after talking to a neighbor who was tuned into local politics. Now, he watches nearly every meeting in person or online.
“I saw a weakness, that there was a skill set that wasn’t there, that people weren’t challenging from a business perspective, from a finance perspective, what was going on,” Krieck said.
While Krieck hasn’t served in city politics, he says he has shown up as a leader in the community by starting an initiative to get flood mitigation funding for homeowners along Spa Creek. Krieck said he noticed constant flooding along the creek and decided to reach out to other municipalities after being told that Annapolis couldn’t step in to help the homeowners.
“That was at that point where I turned around and said, ‘Look, either I get involved and try to help things, or I could just be quiet,’” Krieck said.
Krieck said he sent a brochure to people who live along the creek, where he does not reside, to set up a meeting about how to help homeowners. They’re still working to solve this issue — some grants they were looking at have been pushed back due to larger changes in the federal government — and are now eyeing localized grant options.
“He’s looked at the city; he cares about the city,” said Rob Schneider, one of Krieck’s neighbors who is helping out with the campaign. “Here’s someone who was not in office at the time, had a good idea and went forward with it. … That’s the kind of initiative that we need in an alderman.”
Krieck’s top policy priorities are implementing a 2% assessment rate cap on property taxes, controlling short-term rentals, shrinking the city budget, and opposing a proposal from Huntley that would allow for duplexes to be built in more areas of the city.
With his business background, Krieck said he is used to looking at the details of contracts and budgeting, and believes these skills are lacking in the current City Council.
He wants to look into ways to reduce spending in the city budget, which has ballooned in recent years. He’s considering such options as merging some city services such as the department of public works with the county and implementing a zero-based budgeting strategy.
Krieck owns a short-term rental in Ward 1 where many candidates, including himself, have lamented that these rentals have diminished the neighborhood feel of the area. The candidate said he would support a moratorium blocking additional short-term rentals, increased occupancy taxes, a requirement to post the contact information for the short-term rental owner in the windows, and enforcement of ordinances that could revoke short-term rental licenses.
Krieck backs the City Dock Resiliency Project’s park and flood mitigation designs but opposes the Maritime Welcome Center as currently designed. The city project awaits FEMA funding that has not been delivered, and the candidate said he wants to reexamine the plans to ensure that they don’t go over budget.
Huntley said he believes that Krieck’s ideas wouldn’t get passed on the council, or could risk delaying progress on some top city issues, such as revisiting the City Dock Project to rein in spending. The Democratic candidate worries that if Krieck won, he would possibly be the only non-Democrat on the City Council, and would therefore likely not have a committee leadership position, which could de-prioritize Ward 1 issues and put the prized finance committee leadership position out of the hands of the ward, which brings in a large share of the city’s revenue.
Krieck has recorded no contributions besides his own donations to the campaign.
The current alderman salary is about $18,500. The current City Council is considering a raise to alderman salaries to $32,000, starting for the next council.
Krieck said that if he didn’t think he could make the city better, he wouldn’t be running.
“I’m not in this to get this job so I can go to the next political job or the next political job. I’m in this because I want the city to be better,” Krieck said.
Have a news tip? Contact Katharine Wilson at kwilson@baltsun.com.
Annapolis candidatesThe Capital Gazette will be profiling candidates for mayor and City Council in coming weeks. Go to capitalgazette.com for more candidate profiles and to view a voters’ guide.
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