 Hello, my name is Steve Pittman and this is an installment of Longmont Public Media's candidate interview series. I'm here with Diane Christ, a candidate for Longmont City Council as representative from Ward 1. The incumbent from Ward 1, Tim Waters, is not running for re-election. Hello and welcome Diane. Hello Steve, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. You'll have time for a summation at the end, but since our time is limited, I'm going to start right off with our first question. Okay. If you are elected, what is the biggest issue you want to address and is that issue within the control of City Council? Or is it something that requires a ballot measure or state level action? The biggest issue I want to address, well, let me give a little back story. We have three at-large seats on the City Council and we have three Ward seats. That's one for each Ward, Ward 1, Ward 3, and Ward 2. And I think the big issue that got me to run for the Ward seat is the idea that no one is really advocating for their neighborhoods. It seems like everyone is looking at the city as a whole in a centralized fashion. But I'm a big believer that not only do we start with family, but after we're satisfied with family, we work into our neighborhood and then community. And I see, particularly on the northeast side of town, that we've become a little disjointed with the growth that we've had. And we need a little more support in our commercial areas as well. So, I'm advocating for community commercial centers to bring the neighborhood together to foster more economic and business development in our area. And also to give a place for people to hang out. On the northeast side, we don't very often get downtown to some of the events down here. It's actually 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes to get all the way down here. And it's just something that I think will bring our city together and also is necessary as our transportation changes. We've committed to vision 0 and we really need to have more local traffic. I mean, keep our traffic local rather than drive across town. As a habit. I think people will be more satisfied, especially if they have city services. Easily available to them. We're talking about recreation and library extensions. And I think that's very much needed on the northeast side of town. And my word actually goes south and to the east of Weld County Road. And all through there we have a lack of available transportation or alternative transportation. But we're building more destinations without any ability for people to get there. We have some senior living out on our area and we have some high density that's coming in and people need to be able to access some city services. And rather than try to bring all the housing downtown, which we don't have the land for that, we need to bring services out to where people are living. So that's that's my plan for Ward 1 and the reason why I'm running and some of that is under the purview of the city council and some of it would just be supported through private partnership. Private public partnerships in the area and and the rest would be something we'd have to work on as a community. Well, thank you. That's a good place to stop. So second question. There are several safety and crime reduction measures which the public has asked for such as vision zero that you mentioned restorative justice and a larger police force. Which of these solutions do you think are effective and what else should the city council do. Well, that's a very thoughtful question. I'll, I'll front for a vision zero first. I'm the vice chair of the transportation advisory board in Longmont. And when we saw vision zero on the list, we very much wanted to see it implemented vision zero where first of all, let me say, we're in favor of keeping our cars. We're not trying to get anybody out of their cars, but we are trying to make travel safer and just more pleasant. Wouldn't that be lovely. Okay, so the idea is to get commuter and through traffic to go around the city on the major thoroughfares and then traffic in the neighborhoods would be able to stay at 25 miles an hour, which is what residential speed limits are. You know, nowadays, sometimes you get on on the street and you're trying to go 25 like it's posted and people are trying to go 40 miles an hour around you. So you with vision zero the idea is you would not have that pressure and it would be a safer safer for pedestrians safer for children safer for bicyclists and also safer for motor vehicle drivers because we're seeing just a lot of accidents. And if you want more information on this the transportation board meets on October 9. And that's the day that we get the crash report and it will stand your hair on end when you when you hear how many accidents are in town. So that's the vision zero initiative and refresh my memory. Oh, you know, yesterday I actually had a nice north business owner meeting with public safety officials. And I was very interested to hear I don't know if everybody knows that we have 10 police officers on a day shift and six police officers on a night shift. The police officers were very. They gave a very good presentation they were very kind very community oriented and I say we have some of the best police officers in the nation. We probably need more of them. They're saying that their police force is getting younger. So we need to make sure we have good police development. But I also think having community centers where they're there's kind of an epicenter for them to to program drive buys would be helpful. You know, there's some optics on where they, you know, where problems could occur and in talking with them they're all already aware of properties where, you know, where people hang out where there's, you know, a lot of dark corners and mayhem can occur. So I feel very confident in our police force and we need to support them as much as possible. Now, what was the third thing you mentioned that's it we've run out of time. Okay, well thank you that was a good answer. So third question. What is your vision for the future of Longmont's transportation network of vehicles streets sidewalks and multi use paths. Well, this is this is a question made just for me. I ran for office in 2021. Because I was upset that people weren't talking about the hyper loop, which is a statewide transportation solution. It's a fifth mode of transportation. So it doesn't eliminate any of these any of these others that you mentioned. And since that time, since the 2021 election, Swiss pod has is announced and is building a hyper loop test track in Pueblo, Colorado. And this was a TTCI, which then changed their name to MXV if you want to look it up online. And MXV is put out a few videos of everything they've done. They're up to 500 million in investment. And they're not only just working on the hyper loop, but they're also working on making rail faster and safer. Because physically speaking, just the physics involved trains can't go faster than 140 miles an hour 145. They just they vibrate too much. So right now, if we were to use just rail from Longmont to Denver, it would be an hours commute. And that's just not going to be adequate in the long haul. So we need to keep rail more regional. We need to have something statewide. So the hyper loop is meant to go from Pueblo to Cheyenne and from DIA out to bail and all the areas that we really need some statewide help. So, for the next four years, we need to work on local transportation and something that we've done on the transportation board is, you know, we've, we've asked for vision zero, but also we're instituting microtransit, the system. It's a bus. I always say it's a call them in and they tell you to meet me on the corner of close and soon, because it try to aggregate as many riders as they can at once, but make each trip a 15 minute pickup and a 15 minute to your destination. And there would be a small fee, but I think we're thinking $1 to $3 each way. It seems really affordable if you're going door to door to your destination and, you know, on demand. One of the problems we've had with RTD is they really do regional much better than they do local. You know, the buses are much bigger than our long monsters that we used to have. And, and, you know, and they don't, they can't do as many routes and particularly on the northeast side, we have two routes and they're not sure they can support them. And the one route doesn't go to where the high density housing is. So, if you are elderly or in firm, you know, if you have an accident or injury or just young, you know, if you're young, I think you could walk to it, but not everyone can access that service at this time. Thank you. That was a great answer. So fourth question. The high cost of housing makes it difficult for service workers to afford to live in Longmont. Do you believe that they should be able to and how do you believe it would impact the lives of current residents if they could. That's an interesting twist on the question. So, my area of town and particularly in my neighborhood is a very multicultural area. I think we're over 50% persons of color if you look at the demographics. And we don't really think that way in our neighborhood because we're all just a bunch of immigrant families. I'm second generation here. And so, I also want to add that we have a 1% unemployment rate in my area. So, it would be also very industrious people. And those that own their homes. Often, some of them are their zone to be duplexes, and a lot of those that are zoned to be duplexes do rent out to others. But the problem we're seeing is that they used to be able to rent, maybe two bedrooms and a bath for $1,200. And now, just with property tax and only property tax being higher, they're having to raise their rates to 1500 a month and not making any money on that. So really, if they were going to make the same $500 that they did at 1200, they would have to raise to 1900 and that's just not affordable anymore. So we're, we're one of those. I think the city manager Harold Dominguez talked about, you know, the naturally occurring. housing that's in that area is diminishing is what he said and a lot of that is due to property tax. So we have to come to the table and talk about a structural change to our property tax code. We had the Gallagher amendment and that put a break on it, but it wasn't really great policy. Well, I'm an accountant and in our profession we've been talking about, you know, how do we get the math to work out and we have some really good ideas. What we're trying to do is partner with policymakers just to figure out how to write the law, I guess, to make it work so the math works out. But property taxes have got to be, there's got to be another break on them, like Gallagher allowed, it wasn't perfect. We need something better. I'm not a fan of proposition HH it's a bit of a hot mess. But if we could get the time to come up with something better we have the ideas of we just need to write the policy. And I think that would really help with the affordable housing and yes I'm in favor of having all levels of workers in town. I think that's what makes a community. Thank you. So this question is, we're going to allow seven minutes so I have to change my timer. This has been fun Steve. Glad you're enjoying it. There will be three measures on November's ballot. Do you think the public should support each and why you will have two minutes and 20 seconds to comment on each measure. The first measure is 3C on new branch library and library funding. So, I think all taxpayers should have access to library and recreation services. In fact, I think they should have access to any taxpayer provided services. I think I'm against the measure at this time. And I'll tell you why. A lot of the capital improvement projects in the city right now are are coming in at double what they were anticipated. Just because of inflation and supply chain issues. Now, the way this fund accounting works is once you collect the money, you have to accumulate it in the fund until you have enough to do the project. And the city has had to scramble in a few places to, you know, just do repairs where they wanted to do full restoration because they didn't have the funds for that. And I think if we pass these now, we're going to find that what we're asking for is not going to support the actual projects. I think we need to put it off for about 3 years actually. In the meantime, how do people get services? I'm advocating for extension services. And that means like a storefront or, you know, on our side of town, we have a blighted safe way. You have to see the city rented. Put a library extension. That means a computer where you can order your supplies and a van brings them up to drop them off there and you pick them up in your neighborhood. And we have a guy on on main and we're the old big five. In their parking lot and he has the weight pile and people can come and just walk up and use his weights. Well, it'd be nice to give him a place to stay over the winter, I think. And there's other recreation services in that area and it's a city where to subsidize and I'm not big on subsidies, but in this case be 5 years before they came came up to a capital improvement type expense. You know, they subsidize say a drop in rate at a, at a local business that offers recreation. That would be helpful. Let's move on to the second. Okay. Thank you. Second measure is 3D and arts and entertainment center. I've heard good things about arts and entertainment, but I sat through the, the program about the sugar mill, which I think is what they where they want to put between the steam and the sugar mill building. It seems like there's a lot that needs to happen there. So, and then also I believe there's a contingency that the arts and entertainment is coming up with maybe 36 and then they're expecting 43 from the city. And I believe those are millions of dollars. And I think, once again, I'm saying property taxes, we need to get those situated first. So, I'm in favor of a cultural center. I think it'll be fantastic, especially when we have transportation to it. But I think raising taxes, property taxes or sales taxes at this time are not advised. Give us about 3 years. People are still small businesses are still recovering from COVID. It's just clear. And you need to give them time to do that. Thank you. So, the 3rd measure is 3E new recreation facilities. Okay. And is that the YMCA? It includes that, but it's a new recreation center on the Southwest. Okay. Well, I kind of refer to my 3C answer. Once again, one of the problems with the YMCA and I've heard, I've heard from my people in my area that they really love the pool at Centennial. They really love the YMCA for exercising. They hate to see either one of them go. I think one of the reasons why that is not so viable for the whole city is that 9th Avenue goes East to West. But it's a little trickier to drive and that it narrows in places and the transportation from the West side to the East side is a bit tricky. And like I said, I'd like to see that more up on 17th. We're on that lighted Safeway building because 17th is a more major, you know, arch, arch, artery, as they say, where you can easily get all the way from Weld County Road to all the way out to Weld County Road. So it's really a lot more available for many more neighborhoods than where they're suggesting these be placed. And I have to give it to the Parks and Recreation Department. They did reach out to the Transportation Board. We meet at the same time and same day and same time. So we don't get to interact with each other much. And I was just explaining that I think with Vision Zero, we need to reduce cross-town travel. And I think we really need to look at placing these within neighborhoods where they can walk, bike, or have short 25-mile-an-hour trips to do this. And I'm thinking about, if you remember what the mall was like where you, you know, mom and dad could take the kids over and they can play some indoor soccer or maybe there's indoor pickleball courts because that building is big enough for that. And then you can get your grocery shopping done and you can, you know, stop at the mailbox if you've got postal there or you can stop at a salon or you can stop and have dinner before you go home. And you've really gotten five things done in one transportation destination. So, I say I think it's not time to raise taxes at this time. Give us about three years. So I'm not fond of these initiatives, but I like where they're going. So I support their initiative. I just don't support the passing of that at this time. Yes. Thank you. So we have about a minute 45 seconds left if you'd like to deliver any final remarks. I would. I think one of the things that I hear around town, not just in my ward, is that all of our children are moving away. And I think as a community, we would like to redevelop and rebuild Longmont the way we loved it, the way we all have always loved Longmont. So our children can stay here, but also prosper. And I think there's a few facets to that. I think we need to really look at the structure and fabric of our neighborhoods and communities. We really need to come together as a community, not be so divisive. And there is a there is a middle road there. I think on all these on all these topics. And build places where the young people want to go where they have some entertainment available to them in a safe environment, which is close to home where it's easily policed. And police officers also need to be a member of the community. I know we also when we discussed the issues on the north side with the police officers that there's only one police officer that works here that also lives here. And I would like to see them not saying that they have have to live here if they work here but I'd like to see more police officers live here, even if they're well County police officers and they want to let, you know, live different than where they work. But it just, it just when my kids were young, it was helpful to have that presence in the neighborhood. Well, I want to thank you for your time here today. I thought this was great. And I really appreciate you being here. Well, you've just been lovely. Thank you, Steve.