 Hello. My name is Ginny Schuster, and this is an installment of Longmont Public Media's Candidate Interview series. I'm here with Gary Hodges, Candidate for Longmont City Council, Ward 3, Running Against Incumbent, Susie Hildago-Fairing. Hello, Gary. Welcome. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. You'll have time for a summation at the end, but since time is limited, I'm going to start right off with the first question. Are you ready? Yes, I am. If you are elected, what is the biggest issue that you want to address, and is that issue actually within the control of City Council, or is it something that requires a ballot measure or state-level action? Oh, the biggest issue I'd like to address. You know, I have a number that I'm thinking about, but I'm going to go with what is maybe the biggest issue on my campaign platform, and that's what I believe is an idea to get rid of our 0.4% tax that we pay for fast tracks. I was on transportation board for seven years, and back then I had doubts that it would come, and today I think we all understand that fast tracks commuter rail is not going to arrive in Longmont. So I believe RTD fast tracks also understands that, and they are continuing to push forward with the idea that they're going to bring a train here. I think if we come to the negotiating table, and we tell fast tracks that they don't have to give us a train, they're going to be relieved. This is going to be a big burden off their shoulders, and I think we will all agree that we can relieve ourselves of the 0.4% tax in lieu of the train. Now this doesn't mean we walk away with nothing. What I would bring to the negotiating table is we want greater headways, more frequent headways to Denver and Boulder. We would like to see a return of specialty rides for sporting events and maybe even concerts and other special events that happen in Denver. Maybe an airport run, direct airport run. If you try to ride RTD to the airport from Longmont, it's long and it's burdensome. It's not practical to do that. So ultimately what the train was going to give us was transportation from point A to point B. And I know there's a lot of allure of train. I get it, I understand it, but ultimately we want to get people to where they want to go. And I think that's a big idea and I think it's something that we can get done. I think the majority of Longmont would be supportive of it, and I think RTD fast tracks will also see the wisdom in this idea. I would ask you about the airport, because that's a fascinating concept that people hadn't thought of, but I don't want to run out of time. So keep that in the back of your head, all right? Okay. Question number two, there are several safety and crime reduction measures the public has asked for, such as vision zero, restorative justice and increasing the police force. Which of these solutions do you think are effective and what else should the city council do? Well, off the bat, I would go for bolstering our police force. There's been pushback against police over the last few years that we're all aware. And that's had negative consequences. Senate bill, I guess two, two one three or two one seven. A couple of years ago got rid of qualified immunity for our police officers. That has had a very real impact on police officers across the state. I know a police officer that gave up on the profession and that was that was part of the reason. So I would like to see us. Well, an idea I have on my solutions based platform is to restore this qualified immunity. So the city of Longmont pays for liability, liability policy to protect police officers that are operating in good faith. And that is something tangible that they can hang their hats on. It's not a meaningless platitude like, oh, we support our police officers. It's something meaningful and it's something real and it would show our police officers that we stand behind them. And I think it will also help with recruiting. So if you're a veteran officer in a surrounding community, save four Collins, Thornton, Broomfield, wherever, right? And let's say you've got 15 years experience, 10 maybe, and you're not happy where you're at. You'll look at Longmont and you'll say that's a city that supports their police officers. That's where I want to work. And I think that would help bolster our police force, give us a good mix of veteran and rookie officers and make the Longmont police force the crown jewel of the front range. There are other ways that we can approach this that relate to retention ideas. So we might look at bolstering medical payments or coverage between retirement age and Medicare. That's, I know, something that's an issue for our police officers. We could look at maybe even housing assistance. So I know a lot of police officers, I know they say they don't want to live here, but a lot of police officers don't want to live in Longmont. That's something I found out. They want to live removed from the city so that the people that they're interacting with and sometimes arresting that they're not running into a restaurant or what have you with their families. So we look at retention. We look at ways to make our city more attractive to work in. And I think that that's where I would head first. Thank you. Good response. And I would have a follow up question on that something to that you can keep in the back of your mind where community involvement might get in there. So let's move on to question number three, though. What is your vision for the future of Longmont's transportation network of vehicles streets sidewalks and multi use paths. Well, I'm in favor of all of that. Okay. But a truth to transportation. We are a car focused community state country. We're not going to get rid of the car. So I would do what we can to facilitate car traffic around the city. Now that doesn't mean we pull back on other other options. For example, public transportation. Public transportation is on the minds of a lot of people and a lot of people have a lot of support by it. I spent seven years again on the transportation advisory board. A lot of history and knowledge of RTD. One of my favorite ideas on my campaign platform this year is a way to encourage youth participation and public transportation. If you have a driver's license and you have a car. It's tall order to get you out of your car and onto a bus to drive to work or wherever you want to go. You know, as I rode the bus for one year to Boulder, it increased my commute by two hours a day. It's a hard thing to get someone to do who doesn't have to commute. So I'd like to reflect back two decades on Mary Leona stackers wildly successful painted goose project. I floated this idea while on tablet got good response. I don't really remember why we didn't pursue it further. But I would like to see us partner with art and public places. To put out a request for proposals for area artists to submit. Designs for bus stops along that we would install along Main Street and we can take the models that they submit. Maybe there's a dozen or so models and then we're trying to pick between 6 we have all the models in the library. And then we put these really colorful, interesting bus stops up and down Main Street. So imagine now a child 6 year old child is driving down with their parents are like mom that you know, what is that? Well, that was a bus stop. What's a bus stop? Well, can we go to this bus stop and see what it's like? You know, so maybe they take it and okay, well, let's get on it right. So is this going to be the be all end all for youth participation? Probably not. But it's a smart way to start and it also meshes right now. Our TV has a youth ridership promotion that they're working on right now to encourage youth ridership. And they're there eliminating fairs for 19 and under. So it just happens I put this out there and I opened up a letter from RTD a few weeks ago. I was like, look at this, you know, RTD has the same idea I have. So it meshes exactly with what RTD wants to do. And I think it's a smart move and it would be a lot of fun. It would be really fun to see, you know, a really funny bright little house or a big mushroom or something along Main Street. It would be. I like that idea. I like looking at that art. Yeah, I do too. So question number 4, the high cost of housing makes it difficult for service workers to afford to live here in Longmont. Do you believe that they should be able to and how do you believe that would impact the lives of current residents if they could? Well, this is coming under the category of affordable housing. You asked it in a different way. This is really what we're talking about. And one thing that really concerns me in the city's pursuit of affordable housing is 12% goal. And I'll just say in the side, you know, what is the angle? Do we think if we reach 12% it'll be magic and everybody will be served perfectly. But the truth of it, I believe is it doesn't eliminate a burden. It just shifts that burden to another group. So you take a property away from market housing and you put it in the affordable housing pool. It's going to increase the cost of that market rate housing. So in effect, what you're doing is you're taking a dollar from one person and you're giving it to another. But it's a bit more insidious than that because there's inefficiencies in the system. So you have to take a buck and a quarter from someone to give a dollar to someone else. And so, you know, some portion of that is disappearing. And so what that means is the burden you eliminate for one group. You've shifted to another, but not only shifted it, you've now expanded it. And it's particularly insidious because you can identify, you can even shake the hand of the person that is sitting in the house that was affordable because they met some income limits or what have you. But the other group, though larger, you can't identify those people. So it also, what it does for that person, that service worker, what have you, right? Maybe they get into this house and, okay, nice. But we've increased that cost of market rate housing. And so at some point they probably want to transition out of that, out of their affordable housing, their deed restricted house or whatever it might be. But now they're kind of trapped in this affordable housing because we've amplified and accelerated the housing costs of the market rate. So I'm not opposed to pursuing affordable housing. If somebody comes to me, if I'm fortunate enough to be elected and a proposal comes forward that I don't, that I... that I analyze and I believe it's not going to have a negative impact on market rate housing and just shift the burden to someone else. I would listen to that and I would support that, but I think we really need to be careful. You know, it's the tantalizing allure of a simplistic solution. And it's not so simple. That's a good description of how you describe that. Thank you. All right. Now we're going to go to question number five. And this is about the ballot issues, the three questions on November's ballot. We're going to go over each of them one at a time. And what I want to know is, do you think that the public should support each of these and why you feel that? So 3C, new branch library and library funding. Well, I'm going to have about the same answer for all of these. I haven't said all of them though. Would you like all of them? I'm glad they're on the ballot. I'm glad the public is voting on. Okay, because that's going to give us the true measure of should we do this or not? They're coming in a particularly bad moment. Our property taxes are going to be a lot higher beginning next. They are now, but we're not seeing that pain in the moment. So maybe, you know, for those that are supporting it, it's good they're on the ballot right now. Should I go ahead and tell all of them? Yeah, yeah, right. So we have the rec center, the 1LCA and the, okay. All right, so 3D is arts and entertainment center and 3E is recreation facility. So if I'll let you carry on here. And I don't want to gloss over your original question and I'll go get to that. But I just want to say in the scope of where we're at with this property tax and our state legislator. Completely dropping the ball. Not putting in structural change like they promised and instead given it's this horrible. H H everybody should vote no on. So this is going to be a problem and this is going to be problem for municipalities like Longmont in the future because his taxes become more burdensome. It is going to get much more difficult to get measures like this passed in the future. Well, you mentioned H H. Can you expand on that? I'm not sure. I know what that is. That's that's okay. So our property taxes are going up and that's because of the valuations in the end of Gallagher and there's a few other things in there. And this is this is governor polls in the state legislature tried to do a last minute thing to say, oh, they're going to. This will actually reduce your property tax, but you have to give up your taber. So in the end, you're actually out more money. You might reduce your property tax. Negligibly, but all of your tabers gone. And so in total taper. Can you expand on what? Bill of rights. It was it was in part it limited the limited tax increases that you had to vote on them. And that's why we have fees now in our car. When we go to renew our tax of so many fees instead of taxes. It's topic we can get into, but I would like to get back to, to the ballot issues. So it's likely I don't know how I'll vote. It's likely I'll vote no on all of those, not because I don't think they're good ideas. I just am concerned about the taxing issue right now. And how that's going to impact me personally, my family that live, live in llama and other residents along now. I love the idea of a rec center. I love the idea of expanding the library. I love the idea of swimming pools and all of this. I don't think these are intrinsically bad ideas. I think the moment is an opportunity. I know a couple of council members have said there's never going to be a great moment. But man, this is a particularly bad moment. So, again, to finish where I started, I'm glad it's going to the voters. If the voters are going to decide on this and if they choose to pass these right now. Wonderful. We'll move forward with them as laid out. Okay. Do you, is there anything that you'd like to add to any one particular one on, you know, the library or entertain arts and entertainment center or recreation? The, the arts and entertainment center, I think. This is where we, it's my understanding it's envisioned as being 800 to 1200 seats. So I think the size of it is right. For a city the size of lawn lawn, you know, it's against the backdrop of 1st bank center on 36 that is going out of business or they're going to close it down. However, you want to characterize it. That was a venue that went in and they anticipated about 200 events a year there and they were only getting about. I've seen many concerts there actually that's so concerts. For a long time was 1 of my primary forms of entertainment and I've been a venue lot. I like that venue. It's a great place to see a concert. But so I don't know. I don't know what it would mean to have a 1200 C venue here when we have the Boulder theater in Boulder to compete with my son in law is in a band of popular band on the front range. And I asked him about this and he was pretty negative on a concert venue. My daughter plays flute. She teaches in public school. So does my son in law. So kind of having the idea for a little more classical kind of music I think is interesting. So again, I'm not opposed to the idea intrinsically. I just the timing of it is really tough. Okay, super. Thank you for being thorough. Now I'm going to let you allow you the rest of the time for a summation. Okay, thank you. Now let me have a sip of water before I head into that. I guess I'd like to get into why you want to vote for me even if you think you don't agree with me ideologically. Alright, it's some people are going to watch this and they're going to go. I like him fine. And some people are going to watch this and go. I don't like what he's bringing to the table. Alright, that that's going to have a simple fact of life. If I'm elected to city council and I'm sitting there the other 6 members. The 5 members in mayor and I'm in the minority. Just. Likely if I get on there, there's a lot of ideological alignment on city council. I will be bringing different ideas and different discussion to the important issues that they're facing. And I've seen this by attending council meetings. And I see 6, 0 votes. On topics that I think are rather important that I feel like you have not addressed significant important points of this. And I will address those points and I'll bring it I'll bring it up and I will even if I'm in the minority and I'm out voted on a particular issue. I will I will force the policy to be better articulated. Better written and have a better impact than it would be without me on council. And so if if the idea diversity is important to the voter. It's really what we're getting at there is diversity of thought diversity of ideas. Okay, and we use skin color and other things as kind of a proxy for political thought the idea that diversity is going to lead to better ideas. That can be debated whether that is in fact true. But that's what I will bring to the table is diversity of ideas and and I'll make city council better. I'll make our policy better. I'll make resolutions better whether or not I'm in the minority minority on that on that front. So that's what I'll offer to the voters and that's that's my way of suggesting why you should vote for me. Even if you don't think you agree with me ideologically it will be a way to get better policy. Super. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. Thank you for all your input on all these questions. I'm Jenny Schuster, and I'd like to thank all of you for watching the Longmont public media's candidate interview series. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. It was a pleasure being here. Thanks.