By Steve Svetovich

Dunmore Councilman Michael Hayes, now in his second term, strongly believes there is no community like the one he serves.

“I’ve lived in Dunmore my whole life,” he said. “I was born and raised on Foote Street. I live on Rigg Street now. There is no town like Dunmore. I would not want to live anywhere else in the world.

“We always pull together as a community here. Dunmore is a great place to raise a family. There is no better place.

“We have the best service departments. We have the best DPW, fire department and police departments.

“There is a great community feeling here. We are thriving as a borough. We got ourselves completely over the stagnation from a few years back.

“When someone from Dunmore needs something, this whole town pulls together. You can see that with the turnout whenever there is a benefit or a charitable function.”

Son of Peggy Nardozzi Dee, R.N., and the late William Hayes, the Dunmore Councilman is a graduate of Penn State University where he received a B.S. in political science. Hayes, 38, is co-owner/operator of Dunmore’s famous Nardozzi’s Pizza.

Married to the former Virginia Capo, the couple has one daughter, Bella, 6, a first grade student at Dunmore Elementary Center.

Hayes talked about some of the future goals in the borough as a Dunmore Councilman.

“Well, first we want to increase public safety. We want to make sure the town is environmentally safe by monitoring water, air and soil.

“We want to expand on programs for the youth such as the summer recreation programs which currently serve over 300 children. We want to continue renovating and fixing our borough parks.

“We want to continue bringing businesses to Dunmore such as two recent ones, the Case Quattro Winery and the Spruce Time Mead and Cider Works.”

Hayes talked about the borough’s biggest accomplishments since he became a Councilman.

“The biggest accomplishment has to be the borough becoming fiscally sound. And this happened through very savy financial management.

“Borough Council was especially fortunate to have people like Mike McHale. With his finance and accounting background, he helped the borough in the past decade become financially responsible and stable.

“McHale is a financial brain. The topic of the town a few years back was the borough filing for bankruptcy. That never needed to happen. Now the town is fiscally in a great position. So that is a huge accomplishment achieved in the past decade.

“Another nice thing going on in the borough are the home town hero banners. Vito Ruggerio, of the Dunmore Borough clerical office, and his staff are doing a great job distributing them. There were 300 banners hung in the first round and it will soon expand even more.”

Hayes said his mom, a state inspector in the health care system, is currently battling Lupus. He said the community has also shown strong support for his mom.

“This is a great town to live in and to serve,” he said. “There is no place like Dunmore. Everyone knows each other here. We are all out to help each other. That’s a fact. The community rallies behind its residents all the time.”