ASHTON — Those running for various city positions met in the Ashton Community Center to present their platforms and answer community questions on Tuesday, Oct. 20.
Each candidate was given time to introduce themselves and present their platform.
After their individual presentations all the candidates gathered together to answer community questions.
The candidates who participated included Sheryl Lynn Hill, Chad Cherry, S. Jerry Funke, Teresa Hansen, Marta O. Smith and Matt R. Brady.
The debate was moderated by Garth Blanchard, who presented questions from the audience to the gathered candidates.
Candidates’ responses addressed various issues, including growing the city of Ashton, problems within the city and the need to raise taxes.
Candidates were asked about what they would do about specific city problems, including stray dogs, dirty drinking water and helping existing businesses.
Brady said he felt it all came back to improving the basic services a city is tasked with providing.
“We need to ensure that those are being provided, and you’ve got to balance out how do you do that because there’s this much need and normally there’s that much budget.” Brady said.
As an example Brady used the difficulty in paying for snow removal in Ashton.
“Last year I was on the council. There’s $57,000 for snow removal. In a big snow year that goes pretty quick. And that’s not an excuse: We need to ensure that we maintain the quality of service or improve what we’re doing. I think we do that through oversight,” he said.
Brady also addressed stray dogs, noting that in the past he has offered to work as animal control officer.
“Stray dogs I can address directly. Last time I was on the council I volunteered to work as the animal control officer for the city. That was the only way it was going to get done.”
Funke said he felt the key to solving these problems was open government with more people attending city meetings.
“I think communication and transparency with city government is a very important issue. I mean, you should have this many people at every city council meeting. Good turn out tonight. We have concerned citizens: Let’s keep it going,”
Hill said it was a matter of enforcing city ordinances that already exist.
“One of the issues that we do have in this community is enforcement of city code and city ordinances. And we definitely need to do a better job of enforcing those ordinances,” she said.
She also felt decisions were being made too rapidly in city council meetings and vowed to ensure the council operated under proper parliamentary process.
Hill said she also felt it would help to encourage more participation from the citizens through various means, including public comment during city council meetings.
“But we also need much greater participation at city council meetings, and I think the reason people have gotten away from attending city council meetings is that there is no provision for public comment. I would put public comment on every agenda so that people would have the opportunity to come to the city council meeting,” Hill said.
Hill was the only candidate to address the issues of dirty drinking water, saying that she was concerned because Ashton had recently spent a lot of money on a good drinking water system.
Smith addressed the growth of local businesses, stating that she felt one major concern to address was signage.
“One thing that I’ve heard a lot about because people have argued about it so much is all the sign ordinances — what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable,” she said.
She said she studied city ordinances and felt they were confusing.
“I’ve been trying to read through the city ordinances, which are online, and have a hard time making sense of what’s there as far as how big your sign should be and where it should be located. Just what people can do — I think that needs to be clarified. I would be in favor of letting businesses have better signage,” Smith said.
Candidates also shared their views on reasons to encourage growth in Ashton.
Hill argued that growth was needed in order for the city to better provide needed services to its residents.
“We need the population base to support the services that the city is expected to provide. It’s just simple mathematics. You have to have a certain number of ratepayers to support a drinking (water) system and wastewater treatment plant.
Brady said although growth was important, a plan is needed for the city to develop at the right pace according to its needs.
“We’re not talking let’s double the size of Ashton in the next five years. It was interesting when I was on the council because I realized the rule of unintended consequences,” he said. “If we put in a sewer line in a particular place folks are going to have to deal with that for the next 40, 60 years. We need to plan our growth, and if we don’t plan, we’re going to fail.”
Another question submitted for discussion addressed concerns about the accumulation of water fees even when the water isn’t being used, and whether or not to lower water fees to ease burden on citizens.
Hansen responded that the base rate was necessary in order to pay off the water system.
“There definitely is a base rate in Ashton for water,” she said. “The base rate is what pays the bills. There’s not just an extra $2 million, just ‘poof’ every year we get this $2 million put in this fund — There has to be revenue, and that is the revenue. That is how we pay for things, and it is: It is a pain.”
She said she felt that although she sympathized she felt property owners should still be responsible.
“I don’t mean to be mean or rude, but sometimes that has to fall upon the person who’s property that is. I think the city gets blamed for a lot of things that maybe the city has no real control about,” she said.
Funke said although waiving such fees would be nice, it wouldn’t be fair.
“It would be nice for some of us that go away in the wintertime, we just turn our water off and we wouldn’t have to pay those fees, but that’s not fair to everybody else that’s carrying the burden of the water project. So I feel like that’s why it’s here. Everybody has to share to get this paid,” Funke said.
Brady said state law requires that water or any public utility be run as a business.
“The funds used in the project come out of that water fund. If we’re not putting the money back into it. We can’t sustain the system.”
He also noted that the bills of those not using water fees actually are not as high as those who use water.
“It’s a pain, but that’s why water’s also metered. If you’re not using your water your bill shouldn’t be that high. But if the city gets to decide whose bill to forgive or not, guess who gets to pay that? So that’s not okay either,” Brady said.
Hill said that when bills are forgiven all the other residents of the city pay the price.
“The city council has forgiven some pretty large bills — at least one that we know of. Again, that creates frustration among those of us who ultimately are paying that. One person gets their $3,700 bill forgiven, and the rest of us have to take up the slack,” she said.
Hill said despite the need for fairness there might be instances where the city needs to be flexible.
“We need some flexibility,” she said. “On the one hand, I believe very strongly in consistency of application of ordinances, in enforcement of ordinances. On the other hand if its not working for us as a community, we need to look at it again. We can always change city code; we can change ordinances. We can make them work for our community.”
Candidates were also asked about whether or not they would raise taxes.
“Simple answer: No. I don’t think its necessary,” Brady said.
Cherry said he felt taxes should be kept low to encourage growth in communities and businesses.
“In order to get people to come to this kind of a community, I think keeping our taxes as low as possible is probably the best idea. Get government out of our lives as much as possible and out of the businesses. Let them take care of their responsibilities and keep their taxes low — that invites business.”
Hill said she felt that other funding options should be explored before taxes would be raised.
“I think before we look at tax increases we’d have to look at all the other tools that are available to us, including grants that might be available to us,” she said.
She said there are resources and opportunities to make changes in Ashton without a tax increase.
“There are people in town who are trying to get high-speed internet here,” she said. “That will do a lot to facilitate light industry, light manufacturing — I mean, these are realistic things we can do here in Ashton. We haven’t even begun to tap in to our agricultural services. We have train service to and from Ashton. That’s huge. So anyway, we need infrastructure; we need services. There’s a lot we can do without just raising taxes. But we’ve got to work at it. It’s a challenge.”
Smith said she felt the most important consideration was attracting more residents by creating more employment opportunities in Ashton.
“Before considering raising taxes, the city’s got to have money, but maybe more important is to allow people to make a living so that we can afford to pay for the water. We can encourage others to come here, families, and we might have something that they can do,” she said.
She said another untapped option for revenue was tourism, which she felt was another reason to improve business signage.
“We get a lot of people passing by on the way to the park,” Smith said. “How could we encourage them to come here, stop and hopefully leave some of their money and then go on their way. And I think that would go a long way to kind of increasing the quality of life here if the businesses are more successful. In order to do that, people have to know what’s here, and that falls under the signage and advertising again.”
After the meeting, citizens present had a chance to enjoy refreshments and discuss issues with candidates.
The elections for Ashton mayor and city council will occur Nov. 3.
This article was originally published in the Upper Valley Standard Journal. It is used here with permission.
The post Ashton holds first mayor and city council debates appeared first on East Idaho News.