DCWC/WCRC candidate forum – March 18, 2009 (part 1)

Part One will cover the ground rules and Mayoral portion of the forum; Part Two will deal with the City Council races.

It makes for an unwieldy post title, but tonight’s candidate forum was a joint effort between the Democratic Club of Wicomico County and the organization I belong to, the Wicomico County Republican Club. As far as how the show was performed, the two bodies split questions down the middle (two from each group for each race, plus two from the audience) and moderating duties were shared between the DCWC’s Michael Farlow and WCRC’s Dustin Mills. Perhaps the only mild complaint was registered by District 2 Council candidate Muir Boda, who is a card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party here in Maryland.

Tonight’s forum involved all six remaining candidates in Salisbury’s upcoming election, but a former candidate made news prior to the event by endorsing one of his opponents.

In stating that District 1 challenger Cynthia Polk “offers the people of District 1 the attention and the change they hunger for”, Tim Chaney claimed that the change was made clear by the fact that over 2/3 of the primary votes went against the challenger. (It’s worthy of noting though that each voter was allowed to select two choices in the March 3 primary election.) Chaney also charged that incumbent Shanie Shields has allowed “Taj Mahal” buildings to go up “while District 1 neighborhoods are left to crumble” and endorsed Polk “with both my head and my heart.”

The format of the forum itself was quite simple: each set of candidates was to have a two-minute opening statement, two minutes apiece to answer the four questions selected from the respective clubs, and one minute apiece to answer the two audience questions prior to a two-minute closing statement. It made for a briskly-paced evening; all told the forum lasted just 70 minutes.

We began with the Mayor’s race, as City Council Vice-President Gary Comegys spoke first against rival and onetime Council member Jim Ireton.

In his opening remarks, Gary Comegys apologized in advance for not being able to stay after the mayoral portion of the forum was over, since he’d previously scheduled a fundraiser he needed to attend. But he was “happy” to be running for Mayor despite the fact the city was “at a crossroads” with a number of challenges facing it in the days to come – the national economy would play a “big role” in what fate awaited Salisbury. He cited some of the big-ticket infrastructure items completed during his Council tenure, particularly improvements at the wastewater treatment plant and the new fire station.

For his part, Jim Ireton was running in part because of the “many opportunities” Salisbury has given him. But he vowed to work on a number of his priority issues including fiscal responsibility, crime, neighborhoods, and cleaning up the Wicomico River “within ten years.” We “need to protect Salisbury as it is”, concluded Ireton.

The first question had to do with crime, embodied in the recent shooting of Wicomico County Director of Administration Ted Shea at a local ATM.

Jim Ireton recited a number of FBI statistics, which he said “tell a story” about local criminal activity. To him, the Shea shooting represented a “reduction in order” and it called for a new vision for community policing.

Gary Comegys agreed that crime was a problem, but not just on a local scale – county and national trends were also on the upswing. He also noted that the substations Ireton favors “would not have helped Mr. Shea.”

Next was a question about downtown businesses and revitalizing the economy.

Infrastructure was the first thing which needed to be looked at, argued Gary Comegys. He spoke about the impact the Northwood development had on the city in the 1970’s and compared it with the prospective impact of the Westwood development and the water and sewer line extension to Wor-Wic Community College east of the city. Infrastructure investment needed to be kept “alive and well” and Gary also vowed to work to make the city more “business-friendly” by eliminating some of the red tape common among permitseekers.

Downtown was indicative of the condition of the close-in neighborhoods, countered Jim Ireton. Businesses would be drawn to the city by having a cleaner river, safer schools and neighborhoods, and better relationships with both the local colleges and economic development leaders.

Question number three dealt with transparency in government.

For the most part, Jim Ireton stressed the annual audit needs to be done “on time”, but conceded that the city’s record was improving on that front due to the efforts of the current City Council. But he pledged to make it easy for the public to see where the money comes from and goes without the need to do Freedom of Information Act paperwork to do so.

Gary Comegys too claimed that the city had made “great strides” in recent years with putting items online and opening meetings to the public. However, we had to “invest in people” to place that information online. “We operate in the sunshine,” claimed Gary, and told the gathering of about 60 people that he welcomed further suggestions in that effort.

Where would the city’s spending priorities have to be? was the next question.

Again, Jim Ireton began with a number – the city’s debt was $2,888 per person the last time he had checked. It was time to return to a line-item budget and for City Council to do its due diligence – once he completed the budget it was Council’s responsibility.

Once again, Gary Comegys didn’t argue the main point – the city’s debt is “huge.” But he approved $50 million in debt (for the wastewater treatment plant and new fire station) not because he wanted to but because he had to. Under his watch, the city would “set citizen priorities ahead of all others.”

The first of two audience questions asked about revisiting the city’s “4-to-2” rental housing ordinance.

Gary Comegys flat out said no, as he didn’t want to relive the whole experience of pitting neighbors against each other. We have a “good system in place,” he stated, and it hadn’t been legally challenged despite being the most restrictive in the state.

4-to-2 “will stand if I’m mayor” vowed Jim Ireton. Part of it was for the protection of Salisbury University students, but most of the reason was to let the communities in Salisbury know that politics would not divide them.

In his closing statement, Gary Comegys borrowed from Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s vernacular and promised a “One Salisbury” initiative because right now the city is “fractured.” We need to “bring Salisbury together” for a common cause such as fighting crime. He also wondered if the city was doing enough to embrace what he called “disenfranchised” neighborhoods.

The final words belonged to Jim Ireton, who told those present that on April 7th Salisbury has a “choice of direction” on tackling issues like crime, housing codes, cleaning the Wicomico River, and passing an adequate public facilities ordinance. He concluded by relating the story of a lady who had voted for him and would again next month but didn’t want people to find out because “you know how Salisbury is.” The city needs to become a “free place”, concluded Ireton.

Personally, it didn’t seem to me that Comegys landed any sort of knockout blow in his bid to make up the 300-vote margin he needs to gain on Ireton. At least on this evening, the format of short answers meant that Ireton didn’t necessarily need to get very specific on his proposals – particularly on how to pay for cleaning the Wicomico River in 10 years or what impact an APFO would have on development locally.

On the other hand, Gary did bring up some good points but the lack of time hampered his efforts to elaborate should he have cared to. That $50 million debt hanging over the city is an issue, and perhaps explaining just why the wastewater treatment plant needed $40 million in bonding would help soften Ireton’s fiscal criticism – particularly when many of the cleanup measures Jim favors for the river may well fall under the same burdensome state and federal regulations which have driven up the cost of the wastewater treatment plant.

Overall the forum was fairly amicable between the opponents, without many charges or countercharges directly leveled at either contestant.  My next post will cover both City Council races, which surprisingly took about the same amount of time as the introduction and Mayoral forum. Most of those answers turned out to be short, sweet, and to the point – although there were exceptions.