Dems pick Danielle Polivka to complete Warren council's 5th Ward term

Staff report

WARREN

Danielle Polivka says the voters in the 5th Ward who elected her Thursday to be 5th Ward council member for the next 18 months have allowed her to “follow in the footsteps of my father.”

Her father is Dan Polivka, chairman of the Trumbull County Democratic Party and a Trumbull County commissioner who was first elected to Warren City council when he was 18.

Danielle, who lives with her father on Country Club Drive and plans to attend Kent State University at Trumbull this fall, also is 18.

“I grew up with it. It’s in my blood,” Danielle said of politics and government. “I really just like helping people the most,” she said after four of the six Trumbull County Democratic Party Central Committee members for the 5th Ward voted for her, giving her the majority she needed on the first ballot.

She was one of four candidates running. Each gave brief talks before public votes were cast with the help of two employees with the county elections board.

In her talk, Danielle said she hoped people would see her youth as an advantage, saying she will have quarterly meetings in her ward and always will return calls from constituents.

She will serve the remainder of the two-year term vacated by Vince Flask when he was selected Warren auditor by members of the party’s Central Committee.

Flask replaced Anthony Natale, who resigned when he pleaded guilty in federal court to conveying false information related to use of a weapon of mass destruction for sending a white powder in an envelope to a former employer, causing an evacuation in November 2014.

The other candidates for 5th Ward were Bill Dolan, who worked as a manager for ValleyCare Trumbull Memorial Hospital for 27 years, has worked for ValleyCare Northside Medical Center 10 years, and served on city council four years in the 1990s; Ken McPherson, who has an accounting and business background and did consulting engineering on water and sewer projects; and Lisa Mamula, who works at H&R Block and stressed the need to focus attention on the drug-abuse epidemic.