Candidates address community questions during forum

The Chelsea City Council candidate forum started off with what many would call an easy enough question:

“Who loves Chelsea?” asked State Sen. Slade Blackwell, emcee for the night. The question solicited raised hands from the more than 200 audience members as well as candidates.

Throughout the rest of the forum, Chelsea’s 11 candidates for city council addressed questions about traffic issues, economic growth, city amenities and public safety. The forum was put on by the Chelsea Business Alliance, which gathered questions from the community in the weeks leading up to the event. Each question was placed in a hopper 11 times so that each candidate would have an equal chance of getting each question in the shotgun-style forum.

Traffic issues

Discussion on traffic issues during the forum included topics ranging from speed limits to improvements at the railroad crossing.

When asked his plan for road maintenance for the city, Place 1 candidate Cody Sumners said he saw a need for addressing traffic issues on U.S. 280 and Highways 39 and 47, including a decrease in speed limits.

“If we can slow down the traffic on 280, we may be able to increase the businesses, decrease the deaths and injuries that are happening,” Sumners said, “but we need to have a plan where the city sets out a plan for growth, where we have the rules and regulations for buildings that are to come and plan adequately to address these future businesses without impacting traffic any more negatively than it already is.”

Other candidates also placed traffic safety as a high priority, including Place 5 candidate Elizabeth Cooley, who said road safety is something she would like to address in her first year on the council. As someone who has driven a bus for the city over the last three years, Cooley said she has experienced several of the traffic issues at popular intersections.

“I do believe that we are going to need to put crossing arms at the railroad track by city hall,” Cooley said. “I think we have got to come up with an idea that is financially able to be done without tearing up the center of Chelsea to make that traffic flow better.”

When asked which committee he would most prefer to serve on, Place 3 candidate Gary Isbell said he was unsure of a committee, but recognized traffic is an issue that needs to be addressed.

“I think Chelsea has a big traffic problem in the old town of Chelsea, and I think that’s the place with room for improvement,” Isbell said.

Another submitted question posed the possibility of requiring service roads off of U.S. 280. Place 2 candidate Chris Thomas and Place 5 candidate Tom Holcombe each noted service roads are a possible solution but recognized they might not be immediately feasible.

“There’s not a magic solution that’s going to fix the 280 problem. It’s going to take a coalition of the cities and residents here working together to find the solution. Service roads or frontage roads on 280 along our business district may be one of the solutions, but there’s got to be many more solutions to solve the 280 problem,” Holcombe said.

Thomas said while those roads might benefit the city, they are also another cost which might not be feasible. He also noted the importance of bringing new businesses to the city so that projects such as new roads could be funded in the future.

“I don’t know if we have the finances to build those roads, and I know our citizens are not in favor of ad valorem tax, they don’t want to pay that, so if we were able to get more businesses in our city where we had more tax dollars, we could build those and work with the county to help us with that,” Thomas said. “Because I don’t believe as Chelsea now we could afford to build that.”

Economic growth

Candidates seemed in agreement that bringing new businesses to Chelsea is an important first step to maintaining the city’s growth, especially because sales tax is the main source of revenue for the city.

Bringing in more businesses would allow the city to offer more amenities as well as complete ongoing projects without adding to the city’s $13 million in debt, candidates noted, and without having to increase taxes.

One answer that received applause from the audience was from Place 4 candidate David Calhoun to the question, “When should Chelsea establish property taxes?”

“I hope never,” Calhoun said. “I’m not a proponent of property taxes. I do realize that some cities have them, they’ve implemented them and they can justify the reason why, but I would much rather be able to operate our budget and pay for the things that we need as a city through the sales tax.”

When asked the most pressing issue facing the city, Place 5 candidate Casey Morris said economic development is a top priority.

“Putting in a strategic plan of how to recruit new businesses to this area to increase our revenue to pay for the parks and recs and the public safety, the fire department that all of our community’s wanting is the major issue,” Morris said.

Candidates also addressed the issue of high sewer costs, which Place 4 candidate Tiffany Bittner said was one of the most pressing issues facing Chelsea. These high costs deter businesses from coming in to the city, she said, which cycles back to affect which amenities the city can fund and offer.

“There’s a huge gap between new businesses coming to the city of Chelsea and being able to tap into the sewer system,” she said. “The way I understand it, and I’m not an expert in this field, however, the way I understand it, it costs so much money for new businesses to come to Chelsea and to be able to tap into the sewer system and that’s prohibiting the businesses and keeping businesses from coming into the city.”

Place 2 candidate Scott Weygand, who built a commercial building in Chelsea, said he has seen the issue sewer fees can cause firsthand.

“I successfully recruited a restaurant to Chelsea to open up in my building,” he said. “Once we got to the sewer tap fee, the deal was dead.”

City amenities

Discussion of city amenities and new businesses were intertwined during the forum, as Chelsea is a growing city with several projects underway. Candidates agreed new businesses could help support the wants and needs of Chelsea’s citizens.

Place 3 candidate David Ingram, the sole incumbent in the city council race, said while he is proud of the city’s accomplishments throughout the last four years — including repaving projects, the Chelsea Community Center, new tennis courts, improved parking at the youth baseball fields and the first phase of the new Chelsea Sports Complex — there is more to do.

“Looking to the future, we have a lot of unfinished business in the city of Chelsea,” he said. “Status quo in a city of our growth rate is nothing but moving backwards. We must continue to look for ways to improve the city revenue, operate more efficiently to do things in order to improve the life for our citizens.”

Bittner said there are many wants in the community, from a splash pad and pool to new tennis courts, in addition to ongoing projects, which require a responsible financial plan.

“I believe to continue to grow, and of course we all want a lot of bells and whistles and amenities in our city, but in order to move forward with that and to be able to have the opportunity to do that, to get new parks and to put out whatever we want to bring to our city, we have to pay for it,” Bittner said. “So if we don’t have new businesses to come to our city and money from those businesses, then we don’t be able to move forward.”

Thomas noted it is important for the city to not go further into debt for new projects, something which new businesses could help ward off. With the number of ongoing projects and future wants, he said, Chelsea would benefit from the revenue brought in by new businesses. This was a point Weygand also made.

“As we grow the business base, that’ll grow the income for the city,” Weygand said. “I guess the biggest challenge would be we all have a lot of wants, and more wants than we have money. So we’ve got to figure out a way to schedule out those wants.”

Place 1 candidate Robert Barnes, who described himself as a “conservative at heart,” said it is important for the city to keep long-term finances in mind when discussing projects.

“I want to make sure that when we do things, we’ll be able to afford it down the long haul and not cut any other department short during the process,” he said.

Anyone unable to attend the forum can listen to the full audio on Kool 96.9 at 7 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The next forum will be held for mayoral candidates at Chelsea High School on Thursday, Aug. 11 at 7 p.m.

For a full list of candidates, as well as links to candidate biographies, click here.

For 280 Living’s election guide, click here.