 Welcome to Longmont Public Media's conversation with the candidates. I'm Richard Lyons and I'm here today with Greg Harris, one of the three candidates for mayor. Welcome, Greg. Hello, Dick. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you. Greg, tell us a little bit about yourself so Longmont voters can get to know you a little better. Sure. I've lived in Longmont over 50 years. I've been married over 32 years. I have two sons. They both graduated from CU. They went to Front Range Community College, which is a wonderful college in Longmont. And then they went to CU for their bachelors. So they had associates and bachelors. The oldest one is married. He graduated two years ago, got married, moved to Seattle. The youngest one just graduated a couple months ago from CU. So he's planning on either teaching Japanese in Japan or maybe moving to Canada. Really? Yeah. They're anchored in Longmont, which is a wonderful, wonderful town, as you know. But you know, it's time to grow up and be their own man. So, you know, me and their mother will miss them dearly. But anybody with a family knows that's how it has to be. So I'm 60 years old, just turned 60. I was a maintenance man recently, you know, the last few years. But mostly I grew up doing construction like everybody else. I moved here in 1970 with my family. I have five brothers, two sisters. My father died years ago. Mother's still alive, was just outside of Boulder. I have had many jobs, which is when you finally get to the end of your construction career, you turn into a maintenance man. So I've been serving the last 20 years, the public, you know, the church. I do many things. I still, you know, we take meals to seniors, you know, every other day or so, you know, help out. Snowplow the neighborhood when it snows, you know. Help take care of their house when a fixture or something breaks. You know, I go over there and take care of that, you know, help them with their cars, stuff like that. Just things you help around the neighborhood to keep your neighborhoods functioning good and take care of our seniors. Yeah, that's great. What is the one thing that you want the voters to know about you? That I love Longmont so much. I think that we can really fix it. I think it's going in the wrong direction right now. And I think it's had a great leader, but it needs another great leader to get things done. There's so many things that need to be fixed. We have no, let's see, there's no mid-income family housing, you know, and you know, we all know that the upper higher end jobs are created by tech companies and stuff like that. And the middle income families have no housing, attainable housing in the, let's see, inventory or development. So how do you get these people into town to take care of that while they're all commuting from out of town, which creates a great deal of pollution. You know, if they were living here, you get that tax base. So I see things like that that need to be changed. And, you know, I want to change it. So being someone who fixes things and gets things done very quickly, I think I can add to the Longmont, you know, political scene. Very good. I think you explained this, but when I ask you again, what brought you to Longmont in 1970? Was it with your family move here? Well, we were in Chicago and it was getting bad, which is kind of funny when you say that now with the way it is. But it was getting bad in 1970. So my father, who worked at IBM at the time, moved this all to Colorado. So, very good. And what do you especially like and don't like about Longmont? I love the small town feel. And even though it's grown, you know, jeez, back in 1970, there was maybe less than half of us here. You know, now it's almost 99,000. And it still has that wonderful small time feel. And I think Longmont can still build. Longmont is going to grow no matter what anybody else does. It's a great town and people want to live here. It just needs help, you know, growing responsibly. You know, our infrastructure hasn't grown at all. But you know, we're tons of affordable housing, but you don't see any middle income housing. So how do you get the workforce in here? And if you train them and they live outside of town, you know, what are they going to do? They're going to keep commuting for three hours on the road, bumper to bumper, or they're going to find a job closer to home once you've trained them. And that then is a detriment to the businesses because businesses can't find employees, let alone if you train them, you can't keep them. Yeah, that's a good point. Let's assume that you are elected to City Council. The mayor is part of the City Council. Let's assume that the city received a million-dollar grant with no strings attached to use in any way that the council so choose. What would you do with it and why? Well, I would like to... Well, the million-dollar grant, that's... I want to get my hands on that infrastructure if it comes through. And I would like to expand on Highway 66. You know, back in 57, they moved the fences back to expand that road. And it was never done, and probably that money's gone. Just like the train in 2004 when, you know, taxpayers gave it like $150 million or so for the train that never came, and that money's gone. So if I could, I'd like to expand 66 so we don't have bumper-to-bumper traffic that would take care of many problems. One, the commuting. Two, pollution, as well as people can spend more time with their families instead of an extra three or four hours on the road. I would like to see the city needs to... It's expanding greatly, but it needs to start maybe growing up upwards. You know, when you see a little parking lot maybe over there by the Civic Center, you know, maybe that thing could be raised to a three or four level. So, you know, when we have gatherings, people can actually park in town instead of, you know, fighting for parking spaces and stuff. I'd like to see, you know, especially attainable housing do something to get the construction crews in here, you know, developers, you know, some kind of incentives so that they can keep building attainable housing. Because like I said, we have none. How do you bring businesses in the long run if they don't have a place for their employees? So that's where I'd start. Okay. Greg, did you have a person that was your mentor or someone that influenced you and helped you along your way? I take every employer I ever worked for. They were the best influences in the world. You know, serving the Catholic Church for many years. I have many priests that are deacons of wonderful men, all the businesses in construction. There's nothing harder than a construction owner. You know, they have to work for themselves plus they have to train you. I think construction is underrated, you know, a lot of realtors. I have so many friends, professionals, I think each and every one added to it. Very good. Are you paying it forward? Are you mentoring or influencing some young person's career or life? Whenever I get a chance to, yeah. I say every day is a mentorship for people and stuff. If you're kind to someone and help them, I think that does a great deal reaching out. Like I said, I do a lot of volunteer work. And when you do that, other people see that. So you lead by example. Colorado and Longmont have many recreational opportunities. Which do you enjoy and how do you spend your leisure time? I love spending it with family. You know, I always say God family work and everything else after that. So, you know, I like to walk around the neighborhood, meet all the neighbors. That's one way to really take care of your neighborhood. If everybody knows everybody else, you can kind of keep the crime out in the riffraff. Vandalism, you know, you're always going to have that. I see it popping up everywhere. Graffiti is popping up more and more lately. But you know, if you, I like riding bikes with my family. I walk in my dog. I used to train service dogs and give them away because those are, they're very expensive. I mean, just the basic service dog is $14,000. Really? And you don't meet very many, yeah, the more expensive are around $40,000 or above. So, and you don't meet very many handicapped people that just, you know, have big bat wallets. So, you know, anytime, anytime you can do something in kind and have fun while you're doing it, you can't beat that. That's true. Looks like Longmont, at least from the latest map, will switch from the fourth U.S. congressional district to the second. What impact, if any, do you think that will have on Longmont? I wish I could answer that. I don't have enough information on that to give you an intelligent answer on that. Okay. Fair enough. So, how do you learn and stay informed about local, state and national issues? Well, like most people, I watch many news channels. You pick up a paper here and there, you know, the main times call, the Denver Post, I think it is, and the Daily Camera. They're all owned by the same conglomerate. So, you know, you pick up one, you can pretty much get the gist of all three and stuff. So, that and, you know, staying in tune, you know, I'm a people person. I like to talk to people, and, you know, you can always hear different things from everyone else. So, serious radio, you can get every channel in the world on that, so you can listen to a lot of things in public television, of course. So, Greg, national politics, as you know, are very divisive in our federal and now our state governments. Although the city council is supposed to be nonpartisan, some say it's becoming more political. What would you do to keep the divisiveness from occurring at Longmont City Council? Well, I definitely would favor some of the new people running for city council. There's Tallas, there's Jeremy, there's Diane Christ. There's three really good balances that should go into the council, I think. I think they're wonderful people, and I think they do a good job for it. Also, I think with a good leadership, which is what is something I'd like to provide as mayor, I think we could bring this into balance more. I mean, they just passed an ordinance last night that I didn't think was in the best interest of Longmont. It takes itself and it shirts itself between parents and the children, and I think that's the wrong direction right off the bat. So, if you were elected, how do you plan on involving residents more in the decision making for our city? Well, I think reaching out before they do things. Last night at the city council meeting, it seemed like they didn't reach out to any of the restaurants. They named merely a couple, and I know Longmont has a great deal of restaurants in it, and a great deal of business owners, and none of them knew what was going on from talking to a lot of them over the last few months. No one had an idea what was going on, so I didn't think they reached out to anybody. I think it was a left block, you know, just stopping everybody from hearing about it, trying to push it through quickly. I mean, you could hear the answer from the city council, half of them, before they even listened to the public speak, and I didn't think that was right. So, if you could change one thing in the current Longmont municipal code, what would it be and why? I would change whatever keeps attainable housing. Something's blocking it. I don't know what it is. They asked for a report. There was a motion passed to ask for a report, an annual report on all projects that were under development, and it ended up being just affordable. They wanted a report on affordable housing instead of everything. I'm requiring a quarterly report from the staff on what's going on with the projects in development. So, things aren't in a standstill, you know, static. Well, Greg, I think I heard you mentioned attainable housing several times in our review. Correct. Between affordable housing and attainable housing, which do you prioritize as being the greater need facing the city of Longmont now? Definitely attainable housing. Like I said, there's nothing in inventory, nothing in development. So, where do you move? How does anyone move up? I mean, we have plenty of affordable. I'm lower income. I love affordable housing. You know, I think it's a great thing, and we're totally focused on just that. You cannot have a well-rounded city unless you include all three, you know, upper, middle, and lower classes. Thank you. Greg, that concludes our conversation. I thank you for your participation here today and wish you luck in your campaign. Thank you very much. Nice meeting you.