Kimara Snipes

Creating New and Better Jobs
Kimara Snipes previously worked in the job placement field, helping persons with limited means and experience find gainful employment pathways. Her responsibilities included training job applicants basic work skills and work ethic, expertise she continues to share with jobs professionals. Her primary focus took her to businesses, where she performed workforce needs assessments. While most mayors support these efforts to employ the working poor, Kimara adds actual hands-on experience helping people obtain the dignity and financial security of a job. She knows Omaha prospers best when more of Omaha prospers.

As an elected member of the OPS Board of Education, Kimara helps govern one of the nation’s largest urban school districts, with more than 80 school buildings serving a diverse population of nearly 52,000 students who speak over 100 languages. Few candidates for Mayor can fully appreciate the challenges and opportunities in ensuring our economy embraces and lifts all our families.

Beyond making our students job-ready, Kimara supports community college and labor-based training initiatives that meet the needs of a growing city. Expanded training bolsters our economy, brings new health to our trades and industry, and opens new avenues to prosperity for our workers.

Investing in Our Youth
Kimara Snipes recently left a position with the Omaha Public Library to run for Mayor. When she worked at the Washington Branch Library, Kimara saw the boredom and frustration of youth who lost many of their activities because of the pandemic. She knew these young persons had often faced other trauma in their lives. She created “Teen Talk About,” to promote literacy and reading as a path to grow through trauma and to replace despair with hope. The program was successful and librarians from other parts of our city came to observe and learn from her efforts.

Kimara knows a lack of gyms and other recreational options contribute to misplaced energy and lost opportunities for young Omahans to learn essential life lessons through sports and other activities. We know greater access to community centers will help all Omahans find expanded avenues for personal growth. Kimara has faith in an even better Omaha, where young people experience hands-on learning that fosters a sense of community and shared responsibility.

Public Safety
Kimara rises above the candidate field through her experience working with the community and police to improve contact and relations. As a neighborhood leader, her association has won awards for public safety programs. As president of the South Omaha Neighborhood Alliance, Kimara includes Omaha law enforcement representatives in her meetings and sees command officers at meetings of Omaha 360. She serves on the Southeast Police Precinct advisory council and is active with the South Omaha Violence Intervention and Prevention (SOVIP). This unique experience provides her with insight and adult leadership to identify problems and see opportunities to improve. And, among the candidates for Mayor, Kimara alone already asks tough questions to hold officials accountable.

As a person of faith, Kimara believes people are better than their worst moments. She has the unique ability to speak from a faith perspective about redemption and people’s capacity to set a right and better course for their lives.

Under Kimara’s leadership, the City will work with the non-profit sector to address homelessness, chronic unemployment, and other root factors contributing to lapsed behaviors.

Sadly, our police-community relations have degraded under the incumbent Mayor. Kimara personally lives with those results because the worst consequences impact communities in South and North Omaha. She’s committed to improving those relationships and restoring mutual trust making Omaha neighborhoods safer for citizens and officers. Public confidence in law enforcement opens lines of communication, helping prevent and solve crimes.

Kimara offers a bold vision to move Omaha forward. As more people lose faith in local law enforcement’s accountability, Kimara will implement her plan to improve our current structure.

For example, Kimara will lead an all-civilian oversight and review commission for her first year in office to assess how to restore public trust in our system.

There are no easy answers, but the status quo has failed to make our city safer and preserve faith in our institutions.

Moving Through and Beyond COVID-19
As the pandemic moved from a global to national concern, Kimara Snipes immediately went to work locally, organizing task forces in both North and South Omaha to address the threat the virus posed to high-risk populations in our community. Viewing her success, the City of Omaha would follow suit with a more focused response to the virus.

Still, among America’s 100 largest cities, Omaha was the last to adopt an ordinance related to wearing masks in public buildings. And even then, there was no leadership from our current Mayor, who said she would allow the City Council to act without facing a potential veto from her office. Kimara’s response to this severe threat to the health, safety, and livelihood of her follow Omahans is an example of leadership, which stands in stark contrast to the hesitant and uncertain response of Mayor Stothert. Kimara Snipes is the trusted leader who can move Omaha through the end and recovery from this pandemic.

Connectivity for All
As a School Board member, Kimara endorsed and addressed the importance of providing computer technology and Internet access for students learning remotely from their homes during the pandemic. We know that modern society has evolved to the point where Internet access is an essential need for people to conduct their daily lives, from lifelong learning, banking, applying for jobs, commerce, and social communication. Our economy revolves around communication and the Internet is a key component to the connectivity of Americans.

Disparate access to the Internet separates rural from urban, affluent from poor. A growing number of cities have made modest investments to implement free public WiFi, particularly in downtown city centers. This helps local citizens gain more connectivity and aids tourists looking for restaurants and destinations. Among the cities that have implemented public WiFi in downtown districts and other areas are Cedar Rapids and Dubuque, Iowa, Houston, Indianapolis, Miami and San Jose, to name a few. Omaha has always been a national leader in communication infrastructure, but we have failed to be bold in this arena. A Snipes administration will prioritize development of a WiFi access program that makes Omaha a 21st Century city.

Kimara is committed to a transparent and responsive City Hall, that always strives to make more services and more information accessible online.

A Focus on Sustainability in City Services
Kimara Snipes will lead our city to a more sustainable future. As a Board Member for Mode Shift Omaha, she knows we can make additional progress improving our transportation infrastructure. That includes the continued modernization of our bus system. It includes restoring street paving standards to match our climate zone, so our improved streets last and potholes will not appear with as much frequency. This also means our transportation infrastructure and trails should be safe for persons to walk, jog or cycle. In a 21st Century city, people expect to have easy access to multiple modes of transportation, including those alternatives that are more sustainable and less costly. Snow removal should enhance efficient mobility, not create additional hazards. Placing snow gate arms on plows will clear the end of residential driveways, not create frozen walls of packed snow where your driveway meets the street.

Kimara will prioritize our parks and boulevards once again. Dead or dying trees pose a threat to property and public safety. By restoring Omaha’s recreational areas and tree canopy, we enhance the quality of life for our residents and also present a more inviting destination for visitors. Seeking green solutions to the unfunded federal mandate for storm water abatement will not only produce more environmentally sound alternatives, such efforts can also reduce the long-term costs this mandate poses for taxpayers.

Omaha becomes a more complete and sustainable city when we fully address chronic homelessness. Our non-profits continue to lead the way in providing shelter and outreach to this vulnerable population. Kimara Snipes will work with these providers to make sure City Hall is cooperating and facilitating their efforts, including application for public and private grant funding; and connecting those in need with existing housing assistance programs. The Mayor and city leaders should participate in a robust effort to address homelessness in our community, and Kimara will bring greater focus to this important issue.

Waste collection and recycling remain contentious issues in Omaha. Change has come with loss of repurposed yard waste, reduced or limited collection of recycled items and yard waste, and bulky containers for trash. Kimara will ensure service does not suffer and that the Mayor’s office on her watch will respond promptly to complaints about waste pickup and recycling operations. ^[2]