 Hello, my name is Ginny Schuster, and this is an installment of Longmont Public Media's Candidate Interview Series. I am here with Ron Gallegos, Candidate for Longmont City Council, Ward 3, running against incumbent Susie Hildago-Ferring. Hello and welcome, Ron. Hi. You'll have time for a summation at the end, but since our time is limited, I'm going to get started right off with the question number one. Very good. Number one, if you are elected, which is the biggest issue 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? What I'm really interested in is a comprehensive approach to economic planning for business and for mixed residential building. We have a study that the City had done, the North Corridor and the South Corridor, and then in the middle is the current Main Street. My plan is to talk about development on the North End, talk about development on the South End, and then close the Main Street from 3rd to 9th, reroute the traffic, and work with the state. This would have to be to change the designation of 287 from Main Street to Airport Road, because Airport Road is oversized and very underutilized. With that said, eventually we'd have to work with the county to try and get a link from 17th around the lake to get to 66th. If you did that, I think you would begin to address a lot of the major traffic congestion issues downtown, because a lot of this traffic is going east. A Bertha, Cheyenne, Fort Collins, Montana, I don't know, but they're not coming here and they're not shopping here. That's good. They're going someplace. They're going someplace. They're not here. All right. Well, I don't have a question, follow-up question to ask you about that, so I'll move on to question number two. There are several safety and crime reduction measures that the public has asked for, such as vision zero, restoration justice, and increasing the police force. Which of these solutions do you think are effective and what else should City Council do? In my discussions with probably over 300 people now that I've been walking, at least in Ward 3, the big issue is traffic mitigation. A lot of these streets are residential streets and, for instance, North Spencer is taking a lot of traffic, big trucks, 18-wheeler trucks, going through a residential neighborhood. When you could easily use Francis, which is oversized, has no driveways of budding. So little kids and people aren't trying to back out. So the neighbors I've talked to, their big issue is really traffic mitigation. They want some bumps, humps, whatever you want to call them, and some roundabouts. People near the park have expressed the same concern. Even though they have some bumps over there, they need more, in terms of signage, to get people across the park. So they're asking maybe for flashing lights or something. If not, a stoplight. Okay, well, what's your thought about increasing police force? I think we could better utilize the police force. I don't know if we need to really increase the numbers. Okay. If you look at the budget, which I haven't passed, the largest percentage of the budget is for personnel. And when you add a police, when you're not adding a salary of, say, 50,000 or 60,000 a start, you add a salary, you add a car, you add vacation time, you add pension time. So when you fully load that FTE, you're talking about 100,000, 120,000. So in order to get 10 additional police, we may have to spend a million or $2 million. So I would say that we would need a time and motion study to see if we could better utilize what we have today. Spending more money is not always the answer. Do you think that we have a crime issue here in Longmont? Crime is one of those things that's kind of relative. If you talk to folks in Longmont, some of them say, yeah, we have a crime issue, and then I talk to other people who've lived in the town for 40 years and say, no, we don't. We may have a traffic issue. We may have accommodations that have to be made in terms of the major thoroughfares north and south, east and west and whatnot, but that isn't a crime issue. Yeah, there are isolated pockets of crime that we have to deal with, but I don't think we need to buy tanks and a hundred more officers, you know. Hmm. I'm glad you feel that way. Let's move on to question number three. What is your vision for the future of Longmont's transportation network of vehicle streets, sidewalks and multi-use paths? I can see that you're big on transportation, so this is a good question for you. I think we need to have a fuller discussion of transportation. That may mean we do a charrette community-wide and get everybody to talk and come in and talk about what their needs are and what their concerns are. If I talk to the neighborhoods, it's traffic mitigation. If I talk to bicyclists, it's access to trails and sidewalks and whatnot. If I talk to walkers, it's dogs and bicyclists. Everybody has a host of issues. So I think the only fair way is rather than a top down, really I think we need to do a bottom up and get the citizens involved in what they want and develop a real new traffic pattern. That doesn't mean we don't have to address the physical infrastructures, streets and whatnot and traffic patterns as I alluded to earlier. Do you have a good idea of how you could involve the community a little bit more and get input from people? When I was on the council and we built the rec center and the museum and did the senior expansion, we did have a community-wide charrette. And a charrette basically is modeling where people come in and play with the little houses and cars and street signs and crossing and whatnot. And then people are recording, staff is recording their observations and then people have a chance to make comments too as to their desires and needs. So I think that's what we want. We want a full hearing on the part of the community. I like that. Good idea. Okay, question number four. 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? How do you believe it would impact the lives of current residents if they could? Up until the last maybe 15 years, Longmont used to be a net importer. In other words, people came here to go to work. Now we're a net exporter. So people are leaving to go to Denver and Broomfield and points south to go to work. There are some people I knew who were driving in from Cheyenne to go to work on a daily basis, which is insanity. I think there's a tremendous opportunity to do two things. Two, again, address the needs of the commercial and retail and also housing. So we need to get out of the mindset that the only kind of house we can have is a single family ranch style house. We need to go up and really, I mean, people have always been opposed to it. But I think, you know, there is a place for moving multi-story buildings in existing commercial areas and beginning to change the nature of those areas so that people are living and working. You would have retail on the bottom. The next maybe three or four floors would be residential. You could also at that point have a set aside for a working affordability. We're not talking about homelessness here now. We're talking about the people you were addressing, people who are in the service industry but can't afford to live here. We've sort of priced ourselves out of the area and the environment. Two things, two positive things, but the county's open space program and the city's open space program, which means that we don't have additional product. And now I'm talking about land in which to build. And when that happens, you're seeing houses in 1985 went for 45,000 that are going for 400,000 and the nature of the house hasn't changed. It's still the same house. So we really need to address that. But if you did some infill on the north end and some planning on the south end, we could begin to change the nature of the community. You just have to look what happened at Denver when they suddenly started building, you know, they're building skyscrapers. Yeah. But some of those condos go for a million, two million, three million dollars. Ooh. Yeah. So I'm suggesting is maybe we can get some moderately priced. And moderately priced means, you know, 200, 250, as opposed to 400, 500,000. Now, would they, the people own those? Yeah, I would. Yeah, these definitely would be as opposed to rent. Yeah. No, there's a lot of rental activity going on. Yeah. But I think in order to change the kind of course of the community, we need to begin to get housing for people who will own and live here. That way they can build some equity and then move up and whatnot. Okay. Great. And now we're going to move on to your question number five. And that is about the three ballot questions on November's ballot. Now, we'll go over each one 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 is the new branch library and library funding. Let me say this. I'm an advocate for building the rec center with a component of a branch library, a bench, police station, meeting rooms in an auditorium and garden acres. We wouldn't have to buy additional real estate. We could incorporate that 25 that they're talking about for a branch library and do it there. Northwest is severely underserved in terms of recreation, in terms of policing, and in terms of the library. So if we can incorporate all this into a site that would lend itself to a larger multi-story building, plenty of parking. It wouldn't disrupt the park. It wouldn't disrupt the ball fields and I think would be an added benefit. So I'm not positively predisposed to the existing proposals because I don't think enough planning went into them. I don't think enough buy-in went into it. And the city was kind of, again, a top-down approach delivered a bill of goods. And I don't think we understand the implications. And from my perspective, there is a rec center in south right now, but southeast, not southwest. There is nothing in northwest. And I think we've been talking about at least a northwest a branch library and we would like some kind of a police substation. Interesting. Okay. Good response. 3D, Arts and Entertainment Center. I'm a little cool to this. And that's because Arts and Entertainment Center are like golf courses. They're red lines. They're cost-casters. You never make any money on a golf course. You're never going to make any money on a city-wide swimming pool. These are services for the community. So if you wedded the Performing Arts Center to a convention center, convention centers usually are in the black. In other words, they make money. I think my vision is the long watch should become an end destination, a tourist destination. We are so close to the park. We're so close to the university's CSU really. Boulder, we're centrally located. Boulder cannot take one more person in their convention array. So we ought to take advantage of that because if we don't, Loveland will. Interesting concept. So we'll move on to 3E, Recreation Facilities. I think you've heard my argument there. It really ought to be built at Garden Acres. Because I think there's some efficiency. We wouldn't have to buy real estate. And we can also then incorporate the library as well as a police substation. Maybe an auditorium and meeting rooms too. And would you involve, say, the community to get input from them? Definitely. Because the last thing we want to do is build a big rec center and find out that the community didn't want it. There are probably elements in the community, and I know because I've talked to some, who say, well, I kind of like the rec center, but I like the park being passive and green. Okay. Well, everybody's got to make a choice, right? Then I read, talk to 10 people who say, no, we need to have a rec center in Northwest. So can you give us an idea of how you would involve the community to get their input? Okay. And I would use the charrette model. Get people to sit down and sit down with the architects and the planning people and say, this is what we propose it look like. This is what the building would look like. I was involved a while back in, I won't say the site, but the architects came in with this horrible rendition and it looked like a milk carton turned on its side. Well, unfortunately it was next to a historic church. So you really needed to mitigate the design of the building to fit within the neighborhood confines and they weren't doing that. Consequently, that project never went any place because the neighborhood really opposed it. Was that here in Longmont? Yes. Oh, that's all I'm going to say about. Okay. Well, that's all I'm allowed to ask and respond anyway. So I'm going to give you the rest of the time to do a summation. Pretty good. I think the council right now is short of people who have a lot of business experience. I was a line manager, a process manager for US West for 18 years before I opened my own mortgage companies, residential and now I'm a commercial mortgage broker. So I think there's a need because I talked to the business community and they feel like they're shut out. Right now, the composition of the council is really heavy on educators or heavy on retired people. So I think we need to begin to change the composition and we need to really maybe look at these positions more as full-time positions and compensate them appropriately rather than part-time positions because right now, you get some councilmen, council people who are really pitching and really doing a lot of constituent work and there are other council people that you can't even get them to attend coffees. They feel like their charge in life is to make policy and after that they don't really want to do anything else and it's a different approach. But I think a more comprehensive approach where council people did more case management, solve some of the problems of the neighborhood. Right now the impression I'm getting from the neighbors that I'm talking to is that City Hall is not listening to them. They've never met their elected council person in four years and those that have tried to contact the existing structure have fallen on deaf ears. So the city is really the citizens. It's not the staff, although I think the staff does a good thing, but they are not the city. The citizens and their needs and desires and sales tax they pay, that is the city. So I think from that perspective I would bring it a good match. Plus previously I was on the council and when I went on the council, I had 10 things that I wanted to accomplish. I accomplished seven of them. Wow! One was next light, one was Sandstone Ranch. The museum had had three previous ballot proposals that all failed. So we were able to come together and come with an approach that we did a new museum, did the expansion of the senior and did the rec center. Additionally, there is the whole next light thing, which I think has been a real positive success. Everybody I've talked to likes it. So I think those are the things we can do if you've got a thoughtful, mature, experience leader. I guess my take right now is we get a lot of people running for council who've never been on the planning commission, who've never been on the library board, who've never interacted with the police. So it's going to be hard to make policy in areas that you don't understand. It only stands for reason. Yeah. Good point. Well, thank you, Ron, very much for all your responses to all these questions. I'm Ginny Schuster, and I'd like to thank all of you for watching Longmont Public Media's Candidate Interview series. Thank you. You're up. What if they want to come and deliver an address to the council? They're not allowed because it's not residence. I just think that's wrong and we should be valuing the input of everyone who wants to speak to the council. Well, thank you for your responses, your thoughts on this issue. And again, voters of Longmont, I'm Faith Halverson Ramos speaking with... Can I get my website? Yes. Website ethandforlongmont.com. Got lots more information on all these issues. I really tried to take a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to the issues. And I hope that you go to my website ethandforlongmont.com, check out my ideas and vote for me if you think that may need change in the city. Excellent. Thank you. So again, this is Faith Halverson Ramos speaking with Ethan Ogreen, candidate for mayor. And thank you for watching this installment of Longmont Media's Canada Interview Series.