 Hello, my name is Steve Pittman and this is an installment of Longmont Public Media's candidate interview series. I'm here with Steve Altschuler, a candidate for Longmont City Council as an at-large representative running against the incumbent Sean McCoy. Hello and welcome, Steve. Hello and thank you. We'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. 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? Well, I hope it's within the power of the city council. I think city council can do a lot more than they've been doing. And number one item on my list is probably crime because it affects everybody. And I've been talking to some police officers. What I've found out is they keep telling me there's nothing more they can do because the jail is full. And the jail is the one in Boulder off of 55th. That's where anybody that gets arrested has to go to. There is no jail in Longmont. And I think we're getting to be a big enough city that we may want to look into changing that. We're talking about some bond measures where we're talking about spending 12, 42, and more millions of dollars. And perhaps instead of doing that, we should look into opening up a jail in Longmont. I don't know the right location yet. This is kind of new on my radar. But if you look at all the big box stores, for instance, the King Supers, the Home Depot, they're getting shoplifted to death. And you look at San Francisco, stores are leaving because they can't keep inventory on the shelves that people are going to pay for. So like, forget this, let's just leave. So if you start getting the Home Depots and the King Supers and other stores to leave, you're going to have a lot more unemployment in Longmont. And I don't want to see the case where to use an old expression, the inmates are running the asylum. We have laws for a reason. Every decent civilized community or city or township has to abide by those laws or else you've got complete mayhem. And I don't want to see you get to that point. Thank you. Excuse me. There are several safety and crime reduction measures which the public has asked for, such as Vision Zero, Restorative Justice, and a larger police force. Which of these solutions do you think are effective and what else should the city council do? Sort of follow on to the question. I was going to say I was trying to find out the difference between these two, but one of the things that I would like to see city council do and other cities have done this. So maybe it's not right for them to do it, but it has been done. There is a precedent. The first thing I'd like to do is see city council pass an ordinance that homeless people have to stay at least 100 feet away from a retail location and 500 feet away from a school. What that would do is allow more customers to keep going into shops, let them do more shopping, let the store owner sell more product, which will increase the sales tax, hire more people, which will decrease unemployment and help increase income tax. So instead of taxing the businesses and then the city takes the money and puts it towards their pet project of low income housing or subsidized housing, help the businesses grow and then you get more tax revenue from that end of it. And again, as I was saying with the first half, the problem is that the police are handcuffed. They can catch the criminals and they can't take them anywhere because the jails are full. There is a police process. I don't know if that's the right word for it. There's something called broken windows. And if someone sees a window is broken and does not ever hear if anybody going to jail over it, then they're more inclined to pick up a rock and have the pleasure of throwing a rock through a window too. So the more people see crime happening with no one being punished, the more likely they are to commit a crime too. And while we're talking about crime, it's not just shoplifting. Car theft and catalytic converter theft is going through the roof. There have been cases in Denver and I think Longmont also where someone was arrested in the morning, released before lunch with no bail and arrested again in the afternoon. That's just ludicrous. The city of Aurora about nine months ago passed an ordinance that anyone that's arrested has to spend 72 hours in jail while they're being processed. That right there is enough to make the criminal go to Arvada instead of Aurora where even if they're caught, they'll be released right away instead of three days later. So we need to find things that we can do to have a deterrent to crime. We can't just keep accepting it and saying, well, that's just the way society is nowadays. Thank you. What is your vision for the future of Longmont's transportation network of vehicles, streets, sidewalks and multi-use paths? Ready? I'll restart that. No, that's okay. What is your vision for the future of Longmont's transportation network of vehicles, streets, sidewalks and multi-use paths? To be honest, I haven't looked into it that much. I do know the current city council is gung-ho for high density condos or apartments or whatever. Three-story buildings everywhere where people are more crammed in. That will make buses more efficient. I think most people, I mean, we're not China. Most people do not want to ride a bike back and forth to the store, back and forth to work. I do understand the whole concept of a 15-minute city, but I'm not sure that's real doable out here. People in America are used to covering more territory, going more places. In many cases, well, when I was a kid, just going out for a Sunday drive. You know, sometimes my wife and I drive up to Estes Park just because it's so beautiful. So we don't want to be confined just within 15 minutes of our home. It's always a great thing to make things more accessible. People should not have to drive half an hour to go to King Super's. But to force people to stay in one tight location, I don't think, I don't think that's why people move to Longmont. I think most people moved to Longmont years ago to get out of Boulder because they wanted more space, more of a bedroom community, a little more open space, parks to play and things like that, rather than being crammed into one area. Thank you. The high cost of housing makes it difficult for service workers 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? By service workers, would you like to expand on that a little bit? Well, it means like... Everybody is a worker that's servicing something. Well, service workers mean people that deliver services rather than manufacturers. So people like the baristas at Starbucks or the people that bag your groceries at King Super's or people like that. Okay. I can see a lot more of helping police and fire have a break rent-wise or mortgage-wise so they can be closer to working here. I have to drive down from Loveland or something like that. Again, I grew up in a different era and one of the stories I can tell you, and this is getting a little off topic, but one of my favorite stories from Mark Cuban is when he graduated school, he shared a three-bedroom house with five other guys. So there were two guys in each room and his philosophy was he wanted his rent as low as possible so that every time he made, he could take and invest and you see where that got him. So I think a lot of the younger people, to be honest, aren't used to... I hate to use the word suffering, but compromising a little bit. And it's kind of natural. I mean, when I was 20, my dad was 50. I could not afford the house at 20 that he had at 50. But naturally, younger people entering the workplace want to live in the kind of house they grew up in, if that's the case. And they're not used to having to so-called struggle or start at the bottom and work their way up. I think... And again, this is a little off topic, but I think a lot of our schools need to be educating kids about saving and investing and building for the future, instead of thinking that your first job, which is often minimum wage, should provide you with the housing that your parents were able to provide you with. Thank you. I have to change this. So this is a three-part question. There will be three measures on November's ballot. Do you think the public should support each and why? Two minutes and 20 seconds to comment on each measure. The first measure is 3C, a new branch library and library funding. I was talking to another candidate, Diane Christ. And I think she had a very good idea. We were talking about in North Longmont off of 17th, you've got that huge Safeway building that's been shut down for a long time. And instead of looking at building a new building somewhere, why not take over a building that's already there and just remodel the insides of it? You could provide some library space for a lot of people. And you could probably fit several other things into that North Longmont Safeway also. So I don't think we need bond measures to tax people for millions and millions of more dollars. And if I can expound a little bit, even if I go over my 220, okay. So I've talked to the city council about this and right now, next year's budget is $444 million. On the surface, that's $4 million for every man, woman and child. But the children and the low-income people aren't paying taxes. So the reality is it's about $16,000 per tax-paying person in Longmont per year. If you add these three bond measures that they're talking about, and the bond measures, when you take out the YMCA, they want to build another 100-unit apartment building there. And if you figure $300,000 per unit, that's a $30 million building. They want to build another 100-unit building over where Centennial is. That's another 30 and maybe $40 million, depending on how nicely they build these units. So you're looking at roughly $70 million to build those two buildings, plus the $12 million to buy out the YMCA, plus the $42 million to build the other rec center. You're up to another $125 million. So now instead of $16,000 per taxpayer, you're up to about $22,000 per taxpayer. And that's, you know, the first $16,000 is every year, because our budget's never going to go down the way things are being run right now. So I just think that's ridiculous. We need to say no to those bond measures and put the money. Well, we're going to talk about each one. Okay, sure. That was the first one and that was about the library. Right. And you didn't speak to some extent of the other two, but I'd like to focus on the other two. Sure. The second measure is 3D, an arts and entertainment center. And again, I apologize. I'm not that familiar with where they want to put an arts and entertainment center. I know they're looking at spending $8 million to refurbish the museum. And the museum is not really well visited. I am a free market person. I don't think the government needs to micromanage everything. If there is an industry or product that is not working, it should close down. You know, again, for instance, right now in Chicago, the mayor wants to have the city set up a supermarket because there's so much you know, stealing going on that all the markets that have ever gone in this area close and leave. So instead of doing something about crime, he wants to put in a government run supermarket. And then no matter how much is stolen, they have an unlimited budget just to keep bringing in more and more food. They don't have to even break even let alone make a profit to stay in business. And that's capitalism. Our country is built on free market. So if the museum could sustain itself, it would. If there was a need for an arts and entertainment center, then some industrious person would come along and say, hey, city of Longmont, I think there's a need here that I could fulfill. I would like to rent a piece of land, build a property, charge $8 a person or $28 a person, whatever. And then you have the free market running an industry instead of just taxing people to build something that probably only very few people even really want. And of course, the Dickens Opera House was like that, but it's out of business now. And the question would be, why is it out of business? Not enough people went there. So that tells you there's not a big enough market for it. Okay. Well, thank you. The third measure is 3E new recreation facilities that include a new recreation center and kind of a renovation of the YMCA expansion of it. And again, in all fairness, I have to tell you, I live right near there where they want to build a new YMCA. You've got Silver Creek High School. You've got Altona. You've got Eagle Crest Elementary School. And then you've got this plot of land that's pretty much in the middle. And there's a big field for soccer field right now. And every Saturday that parking lot is stuffed full. So you want to build a rec center that's going to bring in hundreds of more cars every day. And every morning from eight to nine and every afternoon from three to four, you can't even drive on Clover Basin because of all the schools starting and stopping. So even though I would use it and it may or may not help my property tax value, I don't know, but I'm totally against it with all the traffic that's already there. I think that's a terrible place. And again, I don't think that our local government should be owning and building rec centers. We have Gold's Gym. We have 24 hour fitness. We have all kinds of other fitness places that somebody can come in and say, I think there's a market for this. I'd like to rent this piece of land and put in a building. And if I make money, I make money. And that's the way the free market is supposed to run. Our government is way too big. We have way too many governmental employees living off of not enough workers. Do I have. Yeah. Well, actually. You. You have five minutes of open time for summation. If you look. Okay. Is that like right now? I'm looking at Jenny's. Oh, I can't even see that far without glasses. Okay. Well, I'll give you, you want me to give you a warning of how much time you have left. Or you can set that for five minutes. Yeah, I'll do it if you don't mind. I'm going to set it for four and a half because we've. Okay. We've chewed up some time here. I think four and a half is enough. Yeah, I thought you might be editing out this part. Good point. So I will set it to five minutes. And then that timer is going to go off the 21 minute timer. Okay. Oh. Did I not get it started? Oops. Okay. Good. So as I believe I stated at the beginning, and I do tell all the people when I, when I meet, when I tell them that I'm running for city council, I'm a constitutionalist and a free market capitalist. The entire city council, when they took office, they swore to uphold the constitution. And there have been times that I've seen them not allow people their first amendment rights. They've gone to. They want to do red flag was. And they want to raise an age on gun purchases, which is absolutely against our constitution. And even a few months ago, the whole Supreme court made a ruling about that. So no matter what your opinion is about guns, I don't agree with the city council going against the Supreme court, setting themselves up for lots of lawsuits, spending millions of dollars of city taxpayer money to defend something that we all know is unconstitutional to begin with. So before we ended the last session, I was talking about the size of government and to put it on a very simple focus. If you had a thousand government employees and 2000 workers, you would have to tax those workers 50% of everything they made to pay for the thousand employees. If you can have a thousand employees and 10,000 workers, then you only have to tax those workers 10%. So our city government, and it happens for state and federal too, but right now I'm concerned with city. Our city government is getting larger and larger. They want their hand in everything. The amount of people that are involved in construction and section eight housing and low income housing is growing like crazy. So if you allow the free market to handle low income housing, you could reduce the size of the government workforce tremendously. And those people would get jobs in the free market. And then you wouldn't have to tax everybody as much because you'd have a smaller nugget that you have to pay. And to expound on that a little bit in the July or August state employment roles that came out, the state was proudly saying, we have 800 new employees this month. Well, what happened was the federal government hired, I got to get my numbers today, I might be doing this backwards, but the federal government hired like 2,000 more and independent workers, sole proprietorships, whatever, lost 800. So the net gain was 1200 for the month. But the majority of it was all government employees. It's going backwards. We need to have fewer government employees and more independent workers so the taxes could be kept lower. And let's see, I have another two more minutes. So you want to help me out here? Well, you could talk a little bit about how businesses should be regulated to make sure they don't endanger the public through various activities. And again, there's so many laws about that. And to kind of answer that, I'll move over to housing a little bit. I've got a rental property and in the last year I had someone destroy the heck out of my rental property. He paid the rent every month so I couldn't evict him, but by the time he left I had to spend $15,000 to replace broken doors, broken windows, carpet that was just trash like crazy, holes in the wall, repaint, all kinds of stuff. And at one point the government was looking at, well, we want to make it so a renter doesn't leave unless he wants to. Fortunately that bill didn't pass. But the point is, in business, you have someone, in this case I had a rental property and in this case you had a renter that wanted to rent it. So the two of us came together and made a deal. And there's plenty of laws that say I need to do X, Y, and Z and plenty of laws that say he needs to do X, Y, and the government can stay the heck out of it unless some law is being broken. So if I took my daughter to the music store and bought a guitar and it was broken and he refused to do anything, I could take them to court. There are laws set up everywhere. We don't need more laws. So the government can stay out of a lot of things that they keep wanting to get their hands into and just use the laws that are already on the books. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Well, I appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you for the time to get some of my points out. Okay, you want me to do a closing album? All right. All right, here we go. I'm extemporizing this. Okay. Something of a challenge. I didn't write one because I wasn't told I needed it. I didn't memorize one, so or even. Okay. Again, my name is Steve Pittman, and this has been an installment of Longmont Public Media's candidate interview series. I appreciate you're viewing this episode and in that way participating in the operation of the community of Longmont.