No surprises at local candidate forum

By Janet DelTufo, Assistant Editor

Candidates from left are Rui Pereira (council), Paula Hartwell (council) John Cook (incumbant council), Tim Zobel (council), Darrel Stadel (council), Kelly Blunt (mayor), Ron Badowski (incumbant mayor) and Scott Colbath (council).

There were no surprises at last week’s council and mayor candidate forum at the Del E. Webb Center for the Performing Arts, nor did friction exist between the candidates during the two-hour question and answer session.

The forum, sponsored by the Wickenburg Chamber of Commerce and the Wickenburg Chapter of Business and Professional Women, gave the six candidates running for three seats on the Wickenburg Town Council and two mayoral candidates a chance to speak directly to the public.

Each candidate answered five prepared questions, and after a short break they answered a few questions from the audience. Just one candidate utilized the forum as a platform to complain about town policy or personnel, and that was council candidate Paula Hartwell.

“The skate park has four drug dealers and they each sell something different,” Hartwell said to the audience when asked if elected what she would address first as a council member.

“A neighbor has called the (Wickenburg) police for four years and has never gotten any help,” she added. “I am working to get people in here, to get information to (Maricopa County Sheriff) Arpaio and the (Arizona) Rangers. They (Rangers) are more qualified than our police department and they pay for their own cars, gas and supplies.

Later in the forum, the Wickenburg Police Department was commended by a number of candidates. When asked through an audience question how each candidate felt regarding increasing funds to retain good officers and for providing more drug enforcement programs, candidate and Planning and Zoning Advisory Commissioner Darrel Stadel said the police department is under tight budget constraints and additional funding is needed.

“There are certain benefits in being a police officer here in Wickenburg rather than in a city like Surprise,” Stadel said. “We have a good police force, but one that is restricted by its budget.”

Most of the candidates agreed that the police department needed additional funding, but all seemed to agree that a healthy economic development strategy was the key to obtaining these revenues.

Another question from the audience referred to the council and an official code of ethics, a proposal that has been bantered back and forth among the council and residents for a number of years.

Mayoral candidate Kelly Blunt said he was in favor of the council adopting a code of ethics. He said this promise to the community should be in writing. Candidate Tim Zobel agreed with Blunt, saying that a written code of ethics should be one of the first orders of business once the new council is seated this fall.

“My daughter in elementary school has even signed a code of ethics,” Blunt said.

Mayor Ron Badowski said that it should be sufficient when an elected official puts up his or her hand and swears to uphold the duties as a council person, but that he would be willing to put his word on paper.

“I don’t think it is needed, but there seems to be a few malcontents that want this,” Badowski said. “So I would be more than happy to do this if these people would give of all their time in bringing this policy forward.”

A number of candidates agreed with Badowski, saying that signing a piece of paper would not force an elected official to be honest or ethical. Councilman John Cook said that a person can sign anything but that the signature could mean nothing. Stadel said that if a person is not ethical, he or she should not be elected. Council Candidate Rui Pereira agreed that a signed piece of paper does not change behavior. Candidate Scott Colbath said he would support the idea if this is what the constituency wanted, and Hartwell took it a step further by saying the entire council should undergo polygraph examinations.

When asked about affordable housing and how to create affordable housing in Wickenburg, most of the candidates said they are in favor of affordable housing but that the meaning of affordable housing is really in the eye of the beholder.

“The definition of affordable housing has not been clarified,” Blunt said.

Cook said that affordable housing in Wickenburg would require higher density, which Stadel said was a “dirty word” in Wickenburg.

“I know there is a need for affordable housing, but builders are not going to build $150,000 homes if they can build $300,000 homes and make twice the profit,” Stadel said. “We will have to give incentives for builders to build affordable homes, or the other option is high density. We are faced with a lot of things, but should the town be in the real estate business?”

Hartwell said that there were already neighborhoods in town that could be made charming and affordable, but that these neighborhoods had been neglected for some time by the town.

All the candidates, with the exception of Hartwell, were in favor of annexation saying that annexing to Morristown and the Forepaugh areas represent future revenues for the town.

Hartwell is not in favor of blanket annexation, saying the council should talk to every resident that is in a proposed annexation area to see if he or she would like to be annexed.

When asked what past council issue each candidate would have handled differently, a variety of answers were given. Blunt said that the council has a bad habit of commissioning studies and spending a lot of taxpayer dollars for these surveys, but not following through with the recommendations of these surveys.

Zobel said that the council should have removed former Town Manager Shane Dille from his position long before Dille resigned. Hartwell said the town should have listened to resident Darrell Singleton regarding the Sols Wash. Colbath was not pleased with the BBB (Bed, Board and Beverage) tax, saying that the tax has not been spread out equitably throughout the business community.

The panel was then asked about taxes such as the BBB tax, sales tax and property tax. The overall consensus appeared to be that the group was in favor of the BBB tax, but perhaps not at the current rate of three percent. No one in the group was in favor of raising sales tax, and most realized the need for the town’s portion of the county property tax.

Another item the candidates all seemed to be in agreement with concerned the lower rate of sales tax local car dealers charge customers on transactions greater than $10,000. The group felt that the local auto dealers were able to encourage buyers from the Valley to shop in Wickenburg because of the lower rate, and that raising that rate would not be beneficial to the town because of the potential of lost sales.

The last question taken from the audience was in regards to an equine trail system. Candidates were asked if they were in favor of such a trail system, and each candidate said he or she was in favor of maintaining an equine trail system in Wickenburg.

Pereira closed the equine question by painting a picture of the town.

“There is nothing more Wickenburg than a man on a horse,” he said.

For those who did not attend the forum, the Town of Wickenburg will air the forum on Cox Cab le channel 4 on Friday, Aug. 22 at 9 a.m. and again on Thursday, Aug. 28 at 2 p.m.

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