If she'd been at the Durham County main library downtown last night, Goldilocks would have immediately understood the terms of the League of Women Voters candidates' forum for Durham's City Council and mayoral seats:
The candidates were essentially split between those who thought Durham had been doing too much (from a spending and taxes perspective), not enough (from an inner-city neighborhood and "people" perspective) -- and those who thought things were just right (the incumbents.)
Challengers Allan Polak (Ward 3) and Matt Drew (Ward 2) stressed their concerns on City spending, taxes and fees, with county Libertarian party chair Drew in particular arguing that Durham should cut back from services beyond basic public goods like water, sewer, roads and policing.
And while Donald Hughes (Ward 1) and Steven Williams (mayoral) also raised the hot-button issues of fees and taxes, they tended to stress that Durham wasn't doing enough, particularly to renovate inner-city neighborhoods and to develop Durham's people through workforce training, community education and outreach, and engagement.
The incumbents stressed their experience, generally delivering the deepest knowledge on the sausage-factory details of local government -- educating the audience and even challengers at times on details of how the City runs, though some of the challengers repeated frequently-heard thoughts on the benefit of new leadership and vision over experience.
"If elected to City Council, what I'll bring is a breath of fresh air, a different way of thinking, a new way of dealing with old problems that have dogged Durham for decades," Drew told the audience of a couple of dozen citizens and activists.
"Voters want change, but they don't want risk," noted Ward 3 incumbent Mike Woodard in his closing statement; his suggestion to the audience that they look deep into the readiness of what he called "the most important hired hands in City government" to serve seemed aimed not simply at his challenger, but at all four who would replace incumbents this cycle.
(You can download or listen to the forum from BCR's digital recording, or move past the jump below for a rundown of the event.)
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It was a fairly civil forum, with little of the heated emotions that have dominated some of the other debates this election cycle.
One key reason: the presentation of written questions to a moderator, who recombined and selected a half-dozen of them for the use by the group. (Other forums have seen everything from campaign managers and supporters like the Rev. Mel Whitley and Jackie Wagstaff to social-issue stalwarts on gay rights and abortion pepper the candidates with shots across the proverbial bow.)
In fact, perhaps the most controversial moment happened at the forum's end, after Mayor Bill Bell noted his 26 years of County Commission and eight years of City mayoral experience, a time which included the merger of city and county school systems.
"There's a parable that says, 'Let they work speak for thyself.' If you have to talk about what you've done, it is obvious you haven't done a thing," long-shot challenger Steven Williams retorted immediately thereafter in opening his own closing statement -- a statement that drew audible gasps from the audience.
Hughes also raised the specter of Cora Cole-McFadden's long alliance with Mayor Bell, a closeness acknowledged in the Herald-Sun and elsewhere (including here at BCR) as often translating to a solid vote with the mayor on most issues.
"I won't be a guaranteed second vote for our mayor, while I do respect him and his leadership," Hughes said.
That point drew a direct response from Bell at his first opportunity. "Much has been said about the mayor pro tem's support of the mayor. We are all independent thinkers on this Council. We are all elected by the city at large," Bell said.
"But I would ask you, would you expect Vice President Joe Biden not to support President Barack Obama? The mayor pro tem sits in that position by virtue of the mayor, and the consent of the Council. Why would the mayor choose someone that would have opposite ideas... [who] would not be supportive of the mayor?"
"I don't know why that's a big deal to understand that the mayor pro tem and I might be on the same page at certain times. There are other times that we aren't," said Bell.
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On the issues, the debate saw a decent set of questions over nuts-and-bolts issues before the Council, including questions of infrastructure and basic services.
On water service, for instance, the challengers raised concerns over price increases and over how much investment the City had made relative to other priorities.
"We've had eight, one per year, water and sewer rate increases," Hughes said, though he went on in the next question response to note that he didn't expect any of the challengers to disagree with the Council's approach to water infrastructure investment.
For his part, Williams criticized the Council for giving millions of dollars in economic incentives to firms and for downtown development efforts at a time when water investments were needed. Drew made the same point, saying it's always a "tight budget year" for water/sewer but "we can find millions of dollars for developers. This is a matter of priorities," Drew argued.
But Williams' and Drew's comments at least came after Mayor Bell pointed out that property taxes (which provide funding for economic incentives) aren't used for water and sewer programs.
"Not any of [the challengers] came up [during public meetings] and said, 'Don't raise my water and service fees,'" Bell said. "But I bet you when we had that drought, everyone was complaining about where our next water was coming from."
"The water and sewer is an enterprise fund. Property taxes don't pay for that. Fees and services pay for that," Bell said.
(The Herald-Sun's coverage of the forum also noted Williams' claim that Durham faced the highest taxes in the Triangle, a point that isn't correct relative to Orange Co., and which also blurs the fact that Durham has a lower property tax base which is thus compensated for through higher millage rates.)
Both Woodard and Ward 1's Cora Cole-McFadden pointed back to the policies of their predecessors for some of Durham's municipal government challenges; in Cole-McFadden's case, the insinuation to Hughes' mother Jackie Wagstaff, whom the mayor pro tem defeated in 2001, seemed fairly obvious.
"We've been trying to catch up from years and years and years of policymakers who have not seen fit to deal with that whole infrastructure piece," Cole-McFadden said.
Woodard praised the incumbent Council's work in what he described as "careful use of bond funds to repair our lagging infrastructure," noting that while best practices would call for the City resurfacing 30 miles or so each year of its municipally-maintained streets, "by the late 1990s, that number had fallen" to less than a dozen miles per year.
He noted his pre-Council service on a capital improvements priorities committee that drove the 2005 and 2007 bond planning, which the Ward 3 incumbent cited as a key towards catching up on street paving. "This year, that number of resurfaced roads will be back up, almost 50 miles," Woodard said.
"I do not apologize for the progress that the City of Durham" has made with its water supply, Ward 2's Howard Clement noted, calling Durham's "one of the finest water systems in the state of North Carolina."
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Challengers Allan Polak and Matt Drew found their greatest distinction from the incumbents around questions of spending.
Drew took the most unique positions out of the crowd on government spending, decrying in general the Federal stimulus package as the equivalent of credit card debt that all Americans would have to pay down. When the moderator asked Drew to clarify if he had really said that Durham should reject all stimulus dollars, Drew concurred. "The bill's going to come due," he said.
Polak expressed for his part a concern over tax priorities.
"Barring fiscal emergency or just normal rate of growth, I would generally not support raising fees or taxes," Polak said. He noted that a priority for him would be a review of the priorities expressed by citizens and taxpayers, and to review whether services were being delivered as efficiently as possible.
Polak's view was a clear contrast to Cole-McFadden, who suggested that the current level of taxing and spending reflected community priorities.
"Citizen participation is at the root of our budget preparation," the Councilwoman said, an allusion to the very public process Durham uses to get community input on programs and needs. "So many of the decisions that we're making are driven by comments from our citizens. And so I'm proud of what we've done."
Polak also criticized Woodard for participating (along with Mayor Bell) in a Sister Cities trip to Toyama, Japan that the incumbent said cost $3,000. In a discussion at Polak's Facebook site, Woodard stressed the knowledge gained on environmental, planning and transit purposes and that Toyama's own delegates are coming this week; Polak needled Woodard as to whether any real tangible benefits to residents emerged from this trip.
The candidates also varied on their responses to approaches to gangs and crime.
Cole-McFadden, Hughes, and Williams all stressed the importance of intervention with youth before they become possible criminals. Williams complained that the City has cut back funding on recreation centers, which he held forth as a linchpin to solving the problem. "These are our kids, and we have to give them every opportunity to turn around," Williams said.
Hughes called for bringing employers and jobs to Durham "that meet the skill sets of the people we have already," an implication that some of the high-tech and professional positions drawn in with incentives like the EMC package this week might not fit those criteria in Hughes' view.
Polak praised former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani's approach to crime, and advocated for a "zero-tolerance" approach to crime, allowing police officers to do what he called their job of preventing crime and arresting criminals; he added that gang activity should be treated "at the highest criminal level," and said that while youth workers, teachers and others should be working on youth intervention, those priorities should not be the police's.
Woodard and Bell took a blended approach, noting that crime prevention, youth intervention and crime suppression were all relevant factors to reducing gang activity and crimes.
Bell noted that Durham is ahead of other North Carolina communities and is a statewide model for gang mitigation, while Woodard emphasized a youth mentoring program he helped found that he says serves over 500 Durham youth.
As the Herald-Sun noted, Drew attached the national war on drugs, calling it a failure and a source of much of the gang and crime challenges in Durham.
oy. the senile guy or the libertarian. yikes.
Posted by: gonzo | October 21, 2009 at 12:18 PM