Candidates face spate of tough questions
A crowd of more than 100 Ashlanders hammered a field of 13 candidates Saturday with questions on everything from the economy and growth to city-university relations and the candidates' leadership style and ability to get along with others.
Even with one-minute time limits, audience members said they were able to get a sense of candidates' personalities and how informed they were on city politics during the League of Women Voters candidate forum held at Southern Oregon University.
The seven mayoral candidates quickly distinguished themselves with the first question, asked how they will address what they perceive to be the most pressing issue for Ashland in the next decade.
Art Bullock declared the disconnect between the people and the government most pressing and highlighted the need for majority votes on all major decisions.
Jenifer Carr traced problems back to water, a resource that will allow the city continued growth if properly protected, and Tom Frantz said good transportation planning was needed to continue supporting local merchants.
Peter Gross named the economy and the need for more sustainable, living-wage jobs to strengthen the local market; Steve Hauck emphasized forming a shared community vision to determine which issues to address; and George Kramer stressed the need for an efficient government before trying to tackle any specific issues.
John Stromberg wanted to focus on sustainability to ensure Ashland can handle whatever unforeseen problems may spring up in the next 10 years.
Questions from the audience centered around growth and the appropriate use of infill, expanded transportation and a proposed rest stop on Interstate 5, a question that seemed to surprise several of the candidates.
Stromberg outlined his desire for a new land use plan with walkable neighborhoods clustered around transportation hubs as part of a sustainable Ashland.
"What we should be looking at for future development is to concentrate residential development in specific neighborhoods so that we can preserve land in the city for urban agriculture," he said, making use of development rights transfers to maintain the economic value of land. He declined to take a position on the rest stop, citing the need to remain impartial as chair of the Planning Commission.
Kramer said he supported increased funding to RVTD in the short term and moving away from a 1950s planning philosophy in the long term.
"We have concentrated too much on building single-family detached residential dwellings," he said. "We should be looking at live/work situations and interspersing commercial and residential areas so people don't have to get in their cars."
On the rest stop, he said he saw an opportunity for all parties involved to engage in conversation and perhaps turn the existing weigh station into a rest stop while providing tourist information within the city.
Hauck said he also supported compact urban design and transit-oriented, mixed-use development. He said he supports the rest stop project, noting the negative effect on tourism in Ashland when the previous rest stop closed due to safety concerns.
"It's definitely a big part of how we promote ourselves and work ourselves as a community economically," he said. "There are things we can do to make it safer, but I believe we should move forward with that project."
Gross said he would like to see more consideration go into building elements such as net energy consumption, building materials and aesthetics.
"When it comes to actually building under the philosophy of new urbanism, we look at how and why we're building what we're building," he said.
He also said he would like to see more encouragement of bikes and alternative transportation, and that the rest stop project did not seem like a good use of funds from what he had read about it.
Frantz said the city needed to look at transportation as an opportunity rather than a problem and make it easier to get permits for transportation-related businesses, as well as to build extra housing such as mother-in-law cottages.
"We need to look at more conditional-use permitting to adapt to a changing environment here so we can really have affordable housing that comes from property owners," he said.
In regards to the rest stop, he said the changing modes of vacation travel led him not to support the project.
Carr said infill must be done carefully and would hate to see a spot like the Croman Mill site filled with only housing. She cited her work on public transportation in Aspen, Colo., remarking that Ashland needs a system that is "fun, fast, free and frequent."
She said she knew little about the proposed rest stop, but disliked the idea.
"I think it's a dumb idea to spend money at Exit 14 for a rest stop when you have a city coming right up that has gas stations and other amenities," she said. "The state of Oregon and ODOT has far more important priorities than a rest stop."
Bullock expressed his desire to maintain bus services and stop the bus budget from being "pilfered" for concrete projects, but stressed the need for majority votes on most issues and the need for a citizen's advisory committee to set the agenda for land use planning.
"It's not the mayor's job to push an agenda," he said. "It's the mayor's job to find out what the community wants and do exactly that."
City Council
Council candidates were asked to explain how they differ from their opponents on major issues, their short- and long-term solutions to prioritizing services and how they would encourage cooperation among council members.
Carol Voisin, running against John Gaffey for council position no. 1, said her biggest priority was reducing city debt and deciding by means of a town meeting what services should be cut.
"As a councilor, I would have my own ideas, but I firmly believe in democracy," she said. "If there's not ownership in what services we want to keep, we want to have, it's not going to happen."
To support cooperation on the council and other commissions, she said she would focus on finding common ground and finding solutions for the common good.
Gaffey said he agreed with Voisin that the budget needs to be balanced because revenues are not keeping up with expenditures. Services exist because residents have asked for them, he said, and residents should have to decide what will go.
"I'm a fill-the-potholes kind of guy and collect the garbage and that sort of thing," he said. "We're not necessarily keeping up with that."
He said he developed people skills through restaurant and retail work, and he suggested a four-hour work session on Roberts Rules of Order for all councilors at the beginning of their terms to foster efficiency.
Cate Hartzell, running against Greg Lemhouse for position no. 3, said 18 years of experience in politics and her willingness to listen to people who ordinarily aren't heard distinguished her. In prioritizing services, she said she would first look for potential efficiencies and ways to bring in more revenue, such as lobbying the state to allow more fee-based charges then decide as a community what services can be reduced.
To encourage cooperation on the council, she said she would focus on civility, and not scapegoating or personality politics.
"The idea that there be conflict in politics is not a surprise," she said.
Lemhouse said he would work on improving relationships between the city, the university, the forest service and Mt. Ashland, among others, then focus on creating a revenue-based budget.
"I believe we need to streamline our budget," he said. "We need to cut our waste that we incur by having a high staff turnover and recruiting costs that come along with that."
To create a collaborative council, he said he would encourage councilors to work as a team to accomplish what the majority voted for, even if one voted in the minority.
Pam Vavra, vying for position no. 5 against Russ Silbiger and Ben Chew, said voters could count on her to be strong on protecting water, parks and government ethics. She said supports revenue-based budgets and would look to staff to suggest reductions. In prioritizing, she said she would seek to "satisfy the irritated without irritating the satisfied."
She cited a Harvard negotiation project that determined most group members spend 80 to 90 percent of the time accusing others or defending themselves from accusations of being selfish, controlling, irrational or naïve.
"I would get away from all of those four things," she said, ""¦and actually talk about the issues at hand. I think that that's what we need to do as citizens as well as working on commissions and on council."
Silbiger said he supports service-based budgeting and cited his research on other cities with budget crises. Most filed for bankruptcy, but he said the city could benefit by following the successful example of Menlo Park and go through a community process without needing to hire a consultant and spend more money.
During his time on the council working on communication and cooperation training, he learned to get away from split votes requiring a tie-break from the mayor by working across lines of division, he said.
"Yes, we had some dysfunction working with each other," he said. "We dealt with it and I think after that, things improved considerably."
Chew, the third candidate for council position no. 5, did not attend the forum.
The Parks and Recreation Candidates did not speak because only one candidate, JoAnne Eggers, attended. John Jory spoke in favor of ballot measure 15-88, which he petitioned to require restaurants to post letter grades based on health inspection scores, and Drew Baily, a representative of the Oregon Restaurant Association, spoke in opposition. Supporters of ballot measure 15-87 to extend the library levy for enhanced services did not speak because no one volunteered to speak in opposition.
Audience members said they were pleased with the overall turnout.
Sam Wheeler, a sophomore at SOU, said he came to hear where candidates stood on issues that affect students, such as transportation and pedestrian safety.
"There's kind of been a distaste between the Ashland community and the student community," he said. "I would like that to change and I guess it would start here."
Jan Boggia, a 10-year Ashland resident, said she appreciated the depth of knowledge she could gain in an hour and a half and was particularly impressed with the mayoral candidates.
"They each had something to offer and I think there are one or two here that I could trust and would like to spend more time with," she said. "My big issues is how do we make this a sustainable place, and it's all tied into what are the ways we can find to raise money besides taxing the homeowners."
Staff writer Julie French can be reached at 482-3456 ext. 227 or jfrench@dailytidings.com.
