 Hello, my name is Steve Pittman and this is an installment of Longmont Public Media's candidate interview series. I am here with Joan Peck, the current mayor of the city of Longmont, who is running for re-election. Hello and welcome Joan. Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. You'll have a time for 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 action? Well, that's a loaded question. I just think about one. At this point it's probably housing. We've been working on affordable and attainable housing and our staff has done an incredible job of moving forward with that. It is a challenge. It's a challenge to work with developers and to have a good relationship. I think we've done an incredible job and we have given with direction to staff to build six affordable units within a time frame and so far they have built two with several in the hopper, but it takes a while. So that is the most pressing issue at the moment. And do you feel that's within the control of city council? It is because of the codes and zoning that we do as policy, but we should always be looking at those codes because things change and sometimes we have unintended consequences of the policies we make, so we should be renewing those, refreshing, tweaking, looking, making sure that those policies let us help work with developers and take us to the goal that we need. Thank you. 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? Thank you for that question. Restorative justice is very effective. We have a great staff on that. Vision zero can be effective. It is going to be a challenge as we have to be able to work with within our RTD district to help us with that as we need more more transit within our city to get cars off the road and to help just help reduce the congestion so that people are not in their cars. To that end, our city staff has been working to, with RTD, we got a $400,000 partnership grant to put an RFP out for a private vendor to offer a shared ride, a shared ride option. So we're looking at that because we don't have local transit that actually covers our entire city. The other thing is with our justice department, we have some issues with the state legislation that it is putting kind of a stranglehold on local police enforcement in some of the state laws. To that end, council has had discussions and invited state legislators here telling them the handicaps that we have and asking for amendments to those laws to look at them, et cetera. So we are working with state legislators to help us overcome some of those barriers that we have to policing in our city. Well, that's good to hear. Thank you. What is your vision for the future of Longmont's transportation network of vehicles, streets, sidewalks and multiuse paths? According to vision, oh, I'm sorry. According to our comp plan, we are building for walkable, bikeable neighborhoods. And to that end, we are extending our bike paths. The 119 corridor that we got a $12 million raise grant for to finish has a bike path connecting us to Boulder right down the middle of 119. So that is going to be a great help for us in our multimodal vision. We are still working to connect to we've had other municipalities contact us about how do we connect the municipalities? Can we do IGAs with them? And so we have a good plan for that. Can you repeat part of that question? Well, it's a question about the transportation network and everything really including the paths and not just the roads. Okay, so I'm very confident that we are building a interconnected multimodal city through our transportation department. As far as the regional, I hesitate here because I've been working with our DD for so long that I don't know what to actually say about them except for that we're fighting and fighting is the right word to be quite honest with other municipalities to get our TD to honor their their our commitment their law to be honest because of our vote in 2004 to give get us our northwest corridor which is going to be helping us with what the governor is saying we need to have transit oriented development so if we don't get the transit from our district it's very hard to comply with transit oriented development but as I mentioned before we did we are putting out an RFP to help us with shared ride so it is something that I have been working on Phil Greenwald has been working on and for going on nine years. Wow. Yes it is it is hard if you know if we can't get our TD to actually work with us I am committed if elected to working on a strategy to exit from our fast tracks commitment for the vote of 2004. Okay, well thank you. 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 the current residents if they could? I do believe that they should be able to they should everybody should have the option to live where they work. It doesn't mean they have to of course but I think that if we don't continue to work with developers on getting affordable housing through our inclusionary zoning ordinance that we will lose our essential workers we already we already don't have enough housing for our school teachers and just the basic even even our waiters in waitresses and dental hygienists etc. If they can't work here they will find work closer to where they want to live or have to live or where their kids go to school. So I think we've got a great plan with working with our Longmont Housing Authority and not only that just open book working with developers and partnering with them. I know that doesn't go that doesn't translate well to a lot of residents but it's very expensive to build. However I do want the residents to know that we don't control the market you know it doesn't really make sense to to blame counsel for for the high cost of living. I also think that they need to look at what it costs them to get into a unit. If you have a three or four hundred thousand dollar property that you want and can afford to pay for if the bank wants fifty to sixty thousand dollars down to even give you a mortgage that's a handicap not to the city but to that resident. If you don't have a good credit rating then that is a handicap to getting a mortgage. So I believe that the apartments that we're building will allow a resident I mean we started my husband and I started in apartments I think most people do. So the apartments gives the resident time to figure out how they can manage their own budget to get into a unit for sale. So yes thank you. So there'll be three measures on November's ballot. Do you do you think the public should support each and why and and you'll have time to comment on each measure. The first measure is 3C a new branch library and library funding. Can I make an opening statement about all three before we start. OK. Yes. Yes. I just want the public to know that we put out surveys the whole time I have been the eight years I've been on council. Every year we have residents coming to us asking for certain things. They need a new or a better community room for senior services. We're running out of room. We want a recreation center. We want the pool to be fixed. We want different things. There is just a whole list of things and as a council we don't want to pick one over another because you have winners and losers. So we put out a survey with all of the asks on and said what is it that you really want us to work on. And then we chose the top three which are on the ballot measures. OK. So let's go on to the actual ballot measures. And you'll have a time at the end to talk about this bigger picture if you want. OK. Or come back to that. Thank you for pulling me back. So a new branch library and library funding. Do you support it. I absolutely support that. That is one of the heavy asks that we've had. And we've been transparent about the cost. Should people vote for it. If that's what they would like us to spend money on. OK. Thank you. The second measure is 3D an arts and entertainment center. It's basically the same answer. We have had I would like to say first of all no site has been chosen for the arts and entertainment center. And we will not even tax people for that until the arts community comes up with thirty five million dollars which was our negotiation. They have five years to do that. If they don't come up with that then that is a renegotiation with the public to be honest. And again if that's what you would like us to spend money on then vote for it. OK. Thank you. And the third measure is the new recreation facilities. So this I'm not sure I have time to go into it. Yes. I think that if you want a recreation center then vote for that. Do you need to vote for all three. No. Vote what you personally would like to see us spend your money on. The ballot measures are actually council asking you are you willing to tax yourself to build these. We are not taxing you. You will tax yourself or give us the permission to tax. So the rec center is a it's a two part question. OK. So go ahead. You have a little time. Yeah. So the YMCA is on there because as with the recreation center because the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board which advises council asked us to put it on the same measure that came to us because the Y asked about a year ago they called and asked me if they could have a talk. So Harold and I and a few other people sat down with them. The YMCA building is falling apart just like our centennial pool is falling apart. So it is a good deal for us because we need affordable housing. We are going to have a land swap. We're going to swap the ninth and lashley property for the centennial pool property. We are giving them 12 million dollars for the affordable housing portion which is very inexpensive considering the price of land today. And then the Longmont Housing Authority will after it is built take on the management of those affordable units. Thank you. So we have some time left and so you now have an opportunity to make a closing statement and you could go in more to the whole initiative process if you'd like to do that. OK. First of all I'm running again because of all of the things that we've been working on that are exciting and I want the opportunity to finish them or move them ahead. I am very pleased with our council. We work together well as a team and I feel that we work well with our staff as a team. The again the ballot initials sound very convoluted and they are if you look at them as a whole package and if you look at them as council is taxing you to do this. We have listened to the residents for years on where we should be and I will use the rec center as an example. We have had residents come to us saying when we purchased this property we were told that there would be a rec center in this area and the city put aside that land years ago for a rec center. So that's why it is going to go in the Clover Basin area. We already have that land. It's been deck designated for the rec center. The costs are only going to continue to rise. We have not been able to buy it or build it. The rec center to this date because of finances. That's why we want you to know through a very transparent financing which is maybe difficult to understand. We want you to know exactly what you're going to vote for. The other thing that I the other reason I'm when running I'm sorry I'm getting my brain is not working well with my mouth. The other the other reason I'm running is that we have a lot of issues that the residents don't understand the back story or the domino effect of what you want. For example I am going to talk a little bit about the roads. We've had a lot of residents saying why aren't we fixing the roads and complaining about the state of repair. There really is a reason for that. Every time we have a every time we figure out our budget at the end of the year we put dollars into the street fund for road repair. They are on a grid so that a certain part of the city is looked at for repair every year so that we don't have the whole city to work on at the same time. When the 2013 flood came we have many bridges that were totally destroyed and we needed to be able to have upfront dollars to repair those. Yes we got dollars from FEMA we got dollars from federal grants but the way those dollars work is that we don't get them upfront. We have to build the at least in segments our project and then give that bill to the grant funding entity and if we follow their parameters they will reimburse us. So where do we get that upfront money came from the street fund which was set aside for street repair and as you know it's taken years to get three of those bridges done and we're still working on one. Then we had the pandemic happened which really cut the the ability for staff to work on things they were people working from home we had staff quit etc but during the during the pandemic we also found we had potholes in the street and with our huge rain that we had this spring we were having asphalt disintegrate so what was the cause of those potholes it had to do with partly with some of our pipes water pipes or lines that are years old very in some areas of town they're a hundred years old we're disintegrating falling apart leaking so how do we fund those before we fix any cracks in the street it makes sense that we should fix the lines under them that are allowing the potholes they're leaking so again we took dollars from the street fund and as you can see as you go around town we are digging up those streets putting in new infrastructure the good news is this year in our budget we put eight million dollars into the street fund to start fixing the problems that are causing frustration to our residents and then by 2025 we will have ten million dollars into that fund to fix our streets so I asked for your patience it isn't because we don't care it's because of just unintended consequences so I am glad in a sense for the potholes because now we knew that we had a problem and we're fixing it so thank you for your patience it's very difficult to tell residents too bad we just can't do it now but there are underlying reasons I'm going to ask for your vote again so that we can as a council move forward to continue the work we're doing to build more affordable housing attainable housing and be able to have a city that we can bike in walk in go to our library have our children be able to go to a library without us having to drive them there to have equity in the transportation that not everybody has to drive to the one rec center that we've got part of the city can stay in their neighborhood and go to their rec center which relieves congestion which allows us to bike to where we want to go and together I think we're working toward an incredible town and I ask you for your vote so that we can continue the work thank you very much and thank you for your patience with me well thank you Joan and thank you for being here again my name is Steve Pittman this has been the Longmont Public Media's candidate interview series we appreciate your watching and informing yourself so that you can encast a an informed vote in November thank you thank you