Suffolk native Don Goldberg is challenging for the Suffolk Borough seat on City Council because he believes there is a compromise for problems the city faces.

“There’s got to be a compromise,” he said. “I just think we can make this work.”

Goldberg is a former teacher, savings and loan officer and insurance salesman before he found his calling in economic development, first on the regional level for eight years and then moving on to work for the city of Chesapeake. After retiring from there, he joined on with the Norfolk-based Harvey Lindsay commercial real estate firm.

Goldberg said he brought more than 27,000 new jobs to Chesapeake during his time there. He learned how to build a coalition by having regular meetings with people in the community such as the school superintendent.

“You never do any of this by yourself,” he said.

Education is one of his main concerns, he said.

“The jobs are not going to come unless you have an educated workforce,” Goldberg said. “How do you help the kids more? The most valuable part of a school is the teachers.”

Goldberg said he is also concerned about the city’s tax structure. He especially wants to look at the city’s water rate and trash fees.

“People are having a hard time, and we need to be careful about what dollars we charge them,” he said. “It’s not an open book. Are we charging fees that we don’t need to be?”

He noted that when a new monthly fee for waste disposal was instituted, the real estate tax — the former funding stream for waste disposal — didn’t go down.

“What happened to that money?” he questioned.

He said he’s concerned about the city’s level of transparency and the perception that issues are decided before they ever come before the council, as well as public employees who are afraid to speak out when there’s a problem.

“There are things that bother me from the standpoint of being open,” he said. “I’m talking about the meetings before the meetings.”

He also said he wants to address pay compression within the ranks of firefighters and other public servants.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to do that,” he said. “I think we can do that within the tax structure we already have.”