organization which means we do not support specific candidates or specific parties we do take positions on issues but that is a different kind of situation if you're interested in knowing more about t when voters you can go to our website which is l w v m n dot org ok so the order in which the candidates will speak to begin with has and so we will start with them after that it's totally random we have this really interesting grid and it just kind of goes all over the place so nobody gets prepared for how it's my turn next you just never know  actually when i first bought the property over there right i came out to the community in one thousand and sixty seven working at the spell's farm over there far as community involvement in our city i was on the steering  gateway trail when they came out i helped the d n r on the design of it and at fratton construction and the final completion of it i also built a replica of our town hall and  school years so i'm looking forward to i also want to thank the forum for letting this be here tonight and say been a pleasure i work with town the other day we go head you're up to the second candidate for mayor is tom connor thank you very much i'd like to thank the league of women voters for allowing us to be here tonight i think it's always a good chance to meet people and kind of get a little bit more information out there for everybody been proud to be mayor grant for last six years and decided to run again i think i'm proud of what we've done we've had many different council people and i've been on many different councils and i've always been able to work with whoever i've been with started doing some stuff steve bowen has done a real good job of continue to do some of those things and so we're trying to get the roads and different things and grant more attention which is what everybody has said they want and so i'm looking forward to a good fall election but looking forward to seeing more people out in the community as i go around visiting and i just look forward to being there again thank you ok now we're going to turn to the consul candidates in the first one to speak will be tina logan logan good evening thank you to the leader and daughters for sponsoring this event this evening and for all of you for coming out tonight and i am a new face to grant politics so a little bit about myself my husband and i and our two children moved from ana me die to grant six years ago and we've always wanted a place in the country moving to grant has enabled us to enjoy privacy lots of space low taxes keep our kids in the same school district and we have all of this just a few miles from the city one great thing i share with our neighbors and grant is the respect for private property or close enough to be neighborly yet distant up to kind of enjoy our own privacy i began attending grand council meetings years ago and recently became more regular attender i was pretty shocked at the attitudes and childish behavior of some of the community activists here after witnessing this behavior being rude and disruptive at meetings i decided i would run for council i believe that i can bring common sense to the council and help maintain our rural and natural setting my husband and i both are small business owners and i work with various other organizations including other cities i believe that my experience will halt in running small organizations on a tight budget to such as grant house i like rant a lot just the way it is and if you do i ask you please running for reelection to the grand city council i would first like to thank the league of women voters for hosting this discussion thank you ladies over the last four years i've got an education i've learned operate a city in a modest budget we run the city and one of the lowest per capita budgets in the state our community activists say taxing such low amounts is a mistake and a higher taxes and more employees is the way to go i disagree in my view a small budget is a blessing i believe city should spend less just like families do it hard economic times we should not raise taxes simply because we have the power to do so in these times we all be services like fire police and roads are in the public interest and we will continue to provide these i sometimes hear folks say that they deserve more from their city i'd like you to look at the person next to you because that person is the city that person and yourself are paying the bills grant has one part time employee with no benefits received no outside financial assistance it is you and other residents paying the bill no one else this is a choice great residents must make maintain the successful s reliant city that we have now or choose the opposite a bigger government in ever increasing appetite for taxes that never stops we become just like the neighboring cities most of you are here for that i ask for your support and oversexed invite you to visit my website for more i'm retired business teacher coordinator displaced hundreds of students in local business over the years the last twenty years i've owned and operated a horse farm and granted for the last five years i've been voluntary in my time giving back to the community that i love so much commissioner for the last two years three years ago the state started changing the laws as far as taxing stables i was one of the organizational members of the stable owners association and there we got a bill passed to  i think i've made a lot of contributions to the city and if you allow me to serve on the council i feel i can accomplish even more so please consider voting for me larry we do on november sixth and will continue to increase this community spirit the interesting thing about grant is like most agricultural communities there's one high school and two coffee shops to bring people together we don't have that and so we're divided so we've done the spring clean up and we've also done the h had sixty eight hundred people in a lot of people got to rub elbows renew acquaintances ok thank you candidates i haven't really interesting question i think for the first question and gets to probably let everybody in the audience would like to hear from me on it is what do you believe to be two or three critical decisions to be made during the next four years that will govern the future of grant and how do you believe you're different from the other candidates and i'm going to now read i'm going up let you know when you're coming but that's kind of for an area there so we're going to start with you one ok we have a couple things in front of us one of which is we have to maintain our infrastructure now there's got to i'm a middle of the road guy i'm a moderate you know we last year you know we started the dangerous president attorney atar road back to gravel now that's insanity it takes eighty cents of the dollar to turn back to grab if you spend the whole dollar we tart and i'm not for raising a whole taxes but i think that if we're paying thirteen percent of every cents of every dollar on roads we can certainly maybe spend fourteen or fifteen and do a little bit more because the roads are a real issue the other issue is that we seriously have been grant is we have to fight off me at council we do not want to end up like the city of lake elmo did and it's worrisome already when i was on the planning commission they brought sewer and water into the school and i was very worried about that but i found did research and find out found out that no one would be able to hook up to it but we still that's still a great issue that we have to worry about ok second time care i think a couple of the issues that that we have to talk about are just strictly the roads i mean the roads are always going to be a topic of conversation but i think the issues ever really have to talk about are the issues simple plan and i think as long as we stay with that plan and we don't change it we're not going to have any big issues we do have some smaller issues and you know a couple of them could be any one of our  just like raising layers which did not change the grazer blakers anybody had it was unclear because of the language and i think we have to work diligently to go through the ordinances look for those issues and fix them  mind that there's plenty of retired senior citizens in this community that are already on a fixed income now think they could bear the burden higher tax our roads are always at the center of scenes of every conversation when i go door to door we're all and i don't believe in cranking up our taxes to repave roads or reconstruct throw ins and states right in some of the goals that we have in our page in that and on the website that we are all and if you would like your road paved or overlay then that's something that you need to take care of yourself it's part of what we're all means one way that i'm different i would assume from everyone else here is obviously one woman i think a little bit differently than the guys i'm very open minded and i work with whoever and whatever we can accomplish i'd like to keep it the same as possible the next four years ok and we'd like to hear from you larry lienau all right to start out with we are very the roads are biggest issue o their and they are to the point they are feeling they're starting to go we don't have a road there's gonna last another thirty years if we fix a one mile road a year we don't ever odetta last thirty years but there are different ways  fix our roads there is grant money that's available out there jeff recently wrote a letter to gray vanderveer and mad dean to ask them to lower our state gas tax money that number of residents and that's not going to work they're not our representatives but there is a local money out there and funding to be available if we do shared i think that's what we should be doing i know jeff recently put in for the dry high ground and two years later we lost a grant money that was available for that money so there are grant monies out there we work diligently and search we can get our road repaired they are in need of it website you can take a look at it it points it out very easily perhaps you can call and verify that tomorrow number two you know i might stand out a little bit but i think we have a bit of a successful room policy now i see a couple of folks here from the sunnybrook neighborhood ac to folks here from jasmine the pave the road they took it upon themselves to pave the road in they did it successfully most of our city entries on to county or state roads within a couple of hundred yards that's the difference here rural our policies have worked with that issue right now ok here it is the biggest budget item in grants is roads what policy for assessing the cost of paving or repaving is fair to residents are already paid paying for paving their road to those who live on gravel and to those whose paved road has deteriorated do you have a proposal better than the current policy of each paying for paving in their neighborhood and going to start with you  consequences of that were that all of a sudden we have a large frontage properties and the thought of any city participation with helping to pave or overly erode the kind of got shot because there wasn't enough money to do that you know we have a fair policy now we have several people that have volunteered to pave roads we have several people that have gone around with a petition to pave roads i think would be totally unfair for those people as young people that live on a gra road which paved roads when i grew up here a perk for all the state and county highways they could be inappropriate to change that will posse currently because it would not be fair thank yeah i i disagree with that position i live on a dirt road but in order to go out there i get on a black cap road as far as soon as i can see is an immediate goals there is government funding out there and if we can get matching funds i think if we work with our engineers and find out how other smaller cities seem to accomplish the same thing and yes it may be a fifty percent participation along with grant funding money that is out there that we have state we have federal aid we all and those we should be looking into those resources and along with that maybe we'll get some of our roads every place it's time to work on it jointly ok and then lauren will drones are usually interesting pursue can under really because you look at me township we've done some research on this they have thirty miles they do three miles a year well that may be one option there is grants are available but the interesting thing that i think would be nice to find out is what are the people think of this whole thing what did they want we have you know they keep saying developing road policy well that's wonderful but what are the citizens actually think and want so maybe we should have some proposals out there and let the people tell us which direction to go rather than five people sitting in back of a table telling everybody what to do that might be a novel idea get some input from citizens if they say hey we want to do grants or we want to develop a policy where we're going to be like me and do three miles a year and every ten years do the whole thing that's fine but again i think we need the input from citizens to actually find out what they well you know they're paying they're electing us and that's fine but there's several factions out there and i think we should find out from the citizens you well you know stephen i in as was a former roku is your talk about this a little bit and we have thrown some ideas around that there is a basic fairness question equity fairness for folks for example again like sunnybrook in the folks in jasmine who've already done this of their property taxes go to pave new roads have done quite a bit of writing in on road policy and again visit my website for more of that but we've got a very low density we've got one hundred fifty six people per square mile you might think lake an almost like us they were over double the density far over double the density over eight thousand people so they get gas tax money like most of the other new receipt is we don't get that so fairness is going to be tough we can certainly look at taking ongoing maintenance funds and putting goes toward helping some folks get the roads done well we're talking fair here i'm not sure how many of you realize that recently that three majority of the council right now actually voted to pave  there's seven hundred and twenty you've got residents that drive that road daily we have one grandma is telling me this resident came to a council meeting and specifically asked to have the traffic control because the speed was too high well you and i just paid twenty one thousand three hundred eighty dollars and twenty seven cents to pave the road for hugo residents this man on the road that's a grant resident was not a sassed he did not have to pay petition this is the policy that i do not think is fair if i get on the council i am definitely willing to work with everyone to try to come up with something that's fair but it's going to take all of us to figure it out thank you ok let's change the focus for a little minute away from issues but more personal about what you would bring to the council so what are your team skills that you could bring to work as a city council member or mayor them in both positions i think to please give us an example of how you would work as a team member to help bring along compromise or consensus among the group and probably among the citizens i guess we'll start with you tina i would really actually like a lot of input back in the city i feel as a resident who's never been on a city council that some of the communication in our city just isn't there i don't believe the city has the funding to actually get the word out efficiently to everybody in time but i would like input from the city if i am a like ted and i would take that into consideration on anything that we do i am on a actual legal water ski team i have been president and vice president i've had to work with the city of central park and wrecked apartment and i was able to work with the city and get us our brand new and show a site so i do have experience working with other cities i work with several cities throughout the state of minnesota for our water ski team working with the d n r city admirals anybody that has to do with anything on water  and i can work very well with others whether we agree or disagree so i think i can bring that to the council jeff huber you get how to develop compromise within the city and within the council well first i  have quite a bit a man as you mentioned experience lived i've development teams and marketing teams used to head of international development for several firms so i was in charge of really taking a team of product development specialists engineers accountants in developing these products to make sure that we could get them into emerging markets whether it be the middle east or near east wherever so i was in charge of these teams would all work together everybody had input there we can do that at the council too in fact right now the council right now although i may not agree with some of their votes a good view on tell you what i can work with these gentlemen most of them are very commonsense we can fact based discussion we can move forward and i think we can do that too in the next council i look forward to doing that and again communication with the citizens  i don't hear enough from the folks in grand i don't get e mails oco vocal get phone calls and i sure would love to have them to know what you're thinking i've also been on the planning commission for a couple of years and this year we've really covered a lot of ground we've done a couple of review a couple of ordinance such as we've helped develop a complaint policy that's the standard so there's a proper procedure we've also  reviewed the grading policy previously they've changed the grading policy where if you wanted to grade your driveway if was over fifty yards in some of these large driveways take that it was a three hundred dollars permit in a three thousand dollar escrow and in one of the meetings i was at one of the engineers said well yeah but we don't like to give us grows back and i don't currently aware of a of an escrow minister in the city a grant where the former planner gave the wrong information in there that poor person has eight to ten thousand dollars in escrow when they're going nowhere it's you know so i have been able to work and i have a track record and tom carr i think over the last several years of being there that i've with again different councils i think i've tried to steer the right direction and one direction when you have a lot of people up at the council table it's very difficult to get progress and being with that we only have one the amount that that's what i try to do you know and i i think the the really interesting thing is how we can have the dynamic of many different people as jeff that said i think the current council is doing rather well but you know it didn't it wasn't always like that and it takes a lot it takes work it takes understanding it takes communication and some meetings to last all night but eventually we seem to get there so if an awful acted again i'll continue to do that on a matter who gets elected to the council lander was removed from the fire warden spring clean up and the move morial ball park name in your honor i decided at that point we need citizen participation so i along with bill david like i said started the gran restoration project and it's there to protect our legacy rights preserve our own heritage and to promote our city and we've done a fine job of that we've held three tractor braid we've drilled we fed six hundred  people we've done the last three spring clean ups we put a grant flowed together recently we had our we lander as our grand marshal will know our passed away and brought him great joy we also had a ninety one year old veteran of world war one the korean war and and two purple hearts we had representatives from the vietnam war so we are put together good float and where we believe in citizen participation ok thank you let's talk about money a little more directly self here's a couple of questions and you think kind of feel your way through these many cities need to find new and creative ways to save money and fund their budgets probably all cities do you have any ideas about how grand to can keep taxes low and still deliver quality services and one of the other questions up here was given the current economic situation how do you plan to control the city's budget without raising taxes or increasing expenditures so there's sort of similar kinds of questions i think and so we will start with you that question for me with that you're in i'm sure i was starting the first one was many cities need to find new and creative ways to save money and fund their budgets so do you have any ideas about how grant can keep taxes low and still deliver quality services and along with that there was a question about do you plan to control the city's budget without raising taxes or increasing expenditures i think that's kind of the same sort of unsettle  question ok good let me take the first one here first i was going to keep their taxes low a couple of different ways the one of our our council members right now just proposed putting a thousand dollars in your budget in order to get a grant writer so that we can go out and grab some of these grants now i've done that i have a tracker to get record of doing that i was able to secure an eleven thousand dollars grant to redo we under fields going to fences new benches new concrete going all that and we got it done through local corporation contrary to contrary to what because next to roads they're the biggest thing we have those basic service providers thank you again and tina logan that's a difficult question well actually i agree with mr huber being that most of our services are contracted out i believe there's always ways of approaching these services and see if maybe we can't find you know just as good a quality work somewhere else if we absolutely need to i would rather look into sharing and resourcing out i guess than cranking up the taxes on people especially right now as far as moving forward i guess i would just be very willing and very eager to go out and see all kinds of different ways that i could possibly save taxes and keep the same services moving forward well i think it's time to realize that we should be setting our budget according to some of our needs not so much as lake look at last year's budget hold it there cut it and move some of those figures around in our budget according to what our greatest needs are maybe not a ball field if our roads are in good shape we did lose like i said the grant money because in winter of two thousand and ten jeff wrote in a state h in our news city newspaper that soon as the ice goes out we'll put the hydro hydrant down well that didn't come until two years later and we did lose a grant money he got done recently but other than we can be doing i besides looking at graham money and that's what our city planner an engineer should be helping us do but we should do more joint ventures like the one i was done on a good view avenue we had in eighty thousand dollars proven in our city for the cost of twenty three thousand dollars that was a good deal that saved our maintenance costs for the greater going at that was at quite a ways out for the greater for that area so joint venture the letter says it would be a wise decision excuse me closing remarks ok so tom carper well i think our current budget and what we've been doing as is been good i think you know we we get no gas tax money for one thing we have no other funding other than our levy you know we we have been frugal you know if it doesn't snow we have we have a windfall you know that's just kind of how it works in grand you know if you go get five hundred fifty thousand dollars in gas tax m i gets two hundred eighty five thousand or eighty six thousand gas tax might we get nothing so every time you fill your gas tank up realize that some of the money that we could be getting if the they lowered it under five thousand people in the city we would be doing all kinds of things with the roads and we would have more money but we don't granted a living on a shoestring forever we were quite good at that i think we're getting a lot done again i think steve and pastoral commission has ever done a great job is he right fans will sitting there rick did a good  job with the roads and i think we could need to continue to do that and live within our means and spend on some of our reserves which have got high a little high and put those into the city also and so that we keep the taxes to muscle thinking learned saviors from two ways first of all i would like to compliment steve boehner who i supported in the last election he's been doing a phenomenal job in doing more with less using local contractors and one of the things he did for example in south jameco instead of bringing all the classified been in a few for me with class five it's about fifteen or twenty percent clay and the rest sand and rock he just brought clay and because the sand and rock was already there it acted as a binder so he's doing more with less that's one way to do it needs doing an excellent job the second thing i would ask you guys to go when you go home look at your electric bill they collect two dollars and thirty five cents for every is a tax a city tax on electricity we should apply and we should be able to tackle that and get that money granted it's only forty two thousand dollars a year but believe me that would cover a lot of road reading because there are some solutions out there and i think we can still use some things like that if we get creative but nor more needs to be done and we can research it more ok let's just stick with finances for a minute more and you might enjoy the heat i don't know how much enjoying this kind of question and answer but anyway what criteria should the city council use to decide when binding is necessary for the good of the residents in the grant and we will start with you tom carver i think binding typically what we do with binding is when somebody wants to do a road project that's really all we do with bonnie right now  ok well first of all one of the things i want to tell you i'm totally against is what the city of afton be if they did a five million dollar bond and peeved all the roads i'm telling you that's not the way to go but i think we can incrementally repair the roads if we take some of the savings from the for example snowplowing we escrow that we put it into we'll find in we can do a little bit at a time that's the way to go rome wasn't built over built to the day and i think it's going to we've been in a security program the last thirty years that erodes but i think we can find ways with extra funding in the seedings we have to increase them in addition to finding new creative ways like a current road commissioner has he's done twice as much with the same amount of money by being creative thank you larry in a new well i think that when it comes to bonding i'm not sure we need to get into binding  this point we should be looking at other it like it said there are creative ways to get things done there there are there is grant money of course out there should we finding long term maybe we should over the long haul but you had better understand that fifty three percent of all of our taxes go to the schools the rest goes to the county and state we only paid thirteen percent of your tax dollars their property tax collected actually go the cities so we are a very low percentage so maybe we should see if we can get some of those other funds and taxes lowered because that would help us because we're on the bottom side of it and we have a pretty good median income in our city for realistic i work with a lot of small cities and they seem to be able that you know get that job done and they don't have a large budget to work with either but they do find outside sources they get the job done huber interesting question normally most cities only ban for large infrastructure projects whether that be a road a school or other infrastructure product projects that are going to benefit a large portion of the population grant because we don't have the the large infrastructure the police stations the big community centers that type of thing bonding is normally not appropriate for most of the things that we do in these general right we've lived on a shoestring budget for thirty years i love it i think it's great that's why i moved here i think it's wonderful i would like to continue doing that if folks come before the council with a petition and the like to have the road bonded i'm more than willing to do that what i'm not willing to do is put my city in great amounts of debt like for example maple od eighty million dollars worth of debt what have they got a community center and great big property tax bills that's now a move to grant a move to grant for the privacy that mrs lowe who is talking about a moment ago thank you and tina lop i have to agree actually with the mayor and jeff and larry too i mean finding other ways to raise money for the bigger projects there's there's got to be other ways to do it and quite frankly right now i don't have the greatest ideas for that of the something that i would have to look into and do some research on i would i would i get on the council i will work with everybody here to try to come up with the best solution for everybody in the city keep our taxes low and keep us for all that's why i'm up here thank you ok let's just change our focus for a minute what do you think is the primary responsibility of the mayor and for the three of you of the console what do you think is the primary responsibility and we did have a question on the role of the planning commission i don't know if you have time in your minute you might poll that then but i really want to focus more on what you think the role is and we will start with you jeff well under the system that grant is incorporated under a city obviously the end of the week mayor system the mayor runs the really explode his vote is really no more valid than any other council members  so really the role is to move forward that the mirrors are things that are better consummate as well moving forward getting things done and he's right we meet once a month so whatever business is on that docket whatever's on there we've got to get through we don't have the luxury of continued for another month we had a gentleman last year who needed a new septic permit he needed it now if we did not have the luxury of waiting to prove that so oftentimes really the best thing we can do is cooperate a den of five years these these things that are now projects whether it be someone septic system or some other project in these we don't really know and work together to get those things done as a council planning commission that's almost too much for a minute but they are the research arm of the city council the signed projects and they do some research force and report back to us that's about as most they can get to with the stop sign ok and lauren yeah we do have a week mayor system and i think sometimes  he also should provide supervision for what's going on within the city i think that's one of the reasons the planning commission came up with the complaint procedure because we were running amok with that well we finally got that finalized and we don't have a smooth process for that come over that i think that what the mayor has to do is provide leadership and run the meetings and make sure that the motions are made passed and th followed through one of the things that has disturbed me there's been several meetings when things have been asked to be put on the agenda they've never appeared in terms of the planning commission the new planning commission we've really done a lot we've streamlined things we don't have along like the meetings that spinner wheels we've done a lot of excellent research for example for the grading permitted we had the four watershed districts in the building inspector etc and we had just you know did a lot of research provide a lot information finding out that for the grading permit you have to go to the watershed district to begin with and we pass that on and we've done a lot of positive research them well start with the planning commission first the plan commission is in the ordinance which is what we go by is there to answer and help us with zoning issues they can go do other things but for the most part that's what they do and they serve the will of council  the second thing is the role of the could you read that part of the question again then again let's hear the role of the mayor and the conwell the mayor and the council i think the biggest thing is that the mayor and the council need to look at the ordinances they have to follow the ordinances have to follow the compliment you know we're there to interpret we're not there to set policy more than if we need to say a or b usually we're there if the staff as an issue otherwise it's pretty you know what we do should be strictly following what is in in the ordinance if there's something that we need a change in the ordinance or something drastically wrong and then that's our duty to look at that correct that and move forward with that also with the help of the planning commission if necessary so well i believe that the council's job is really to follow and hold the ordinances of the city not to change them on our own basically we work for the city that's why we are elected is to work for you the mayor's job in my eyes as to oversee the council and dress any concerns or problems to keep the meetings in order and also work for the city to i mean the council's job is basically to maintain the minimum necessary level of community services appropriate lead to permanent rural community that well it is it is the duty of the mirror in the council to provide our basic services get them in place go out find our best value when contracting out our services input from our citizens take the time to listen to him recently we've limited do two minutes for public comment five people got up and spoke which came to ten minutes and then they went on and talk for forty five minutes whether we can chain down a port a potty outside directed that do our our attorney and i still haven't seen the result of whether we can change that down or not so i think we should be listening to our citizens a little bit more and and and encouraging citizen participation and put thank you let's we have so many choices here and not so much time wrestling with what would be most interesting here and you might not need a minute and on this one back what do you think about grant hiring a city administrator part time full time not at all and we will stare with you lauren will that's that's a very interesting thing because when i was down at the capitol as last year i went to the league of minnesota cities and got job descriptions for clerks city administrators cetera in the functions and what they did and brought them back and share them with the council which give me a little bit of hot water i guess he said i was impersonating a planning commission which i was which is going to be interesting but beyond doubt you know perhaps maybe that's something we have to look at find in the you know it doesn't have to be all big dollars everybody's always you know crying fire or you're going to raise taxes you know well you know we could get a young person you know see some of it's thirty five forty years old went back to school get a masters degree in city administration and we could probably get them to work for forty forty five thousand dollars a year right now i think we're playing paying almost fifty thousand dollars for a part time clerk well for the same amount of money we could have a professional someone who is familiar with it and you know makes a lot of the day to day decisions help the road commissioner you know and that's an option that's something we have to look at tom car where do you think  we have a city of minister it's the clerk and we're getting a great bargain at that we're going to do for one you don't often run into somebody who actually cares about the city knows the ordinance and actually does so many does so no i'm not looking forward to sitting at the city administrator the other thing to understand is in our comp plan we are a cut we contract everything up and we don't have any full time employees we don't want a full time employees and the  we've gone through this recession very well no infrastructure anything that we that we had to support and i don't see any need to change that so no no city minister we actually we have  i actually completely agree with the mayor i believe that kim goes above and beyond her duties she doesn't she's doing she's very good at the public and i don't really see the need to bring in another person or i kind thing possibly it was brought up at the last meeting bringing in a city administrator which would mean getting rid of him why not keep cam when she already knows the job she already does that she's great at it so no i wouldn't be interested in hiring a city administrator to remove the wonderful personally i already have larry lynn i have little bit mixed feelings on dad i realize i work with a lot of  surrounding cities and i've asked that question to every city that works properly and they say they benefit a save ministry or they will more than pay their own wages with the saving that they will bring to your city currently we're paying like you said forty seven in a way and by the time you get burned about fifty six thousand dollars for the same thing we can get a skilled person that has a background they can find some of our grant monies they can make the day to day decisions at times that we only meet once a month so they can make some of these other deals they can work with other cities and find dad joint ventures that's what they've got their education and and their background so i think a city ministry to could actually be a searing to the city and jeff huber well i'm glad to hear a community activist here go ahead and verify exactly what i said my opening statement that higher taxes more employees is the way to go that's what i just heard as far as being a city administrator will apparently that city ministers also get to do filing and everything else like kim does or no it was more employees weren't we will have exactly what i said we would have when i started this in terms of getting a professional  fifty thousand dollars my dad gave me an old saying i was referred to he said so if you think are you professionals expensive go ahead hire an amateur somebody right out of school to be an administrator will make make more mistakes and they're actually worth i look at dell would for example a similar to us they actually used the same contractor for a lot of things because actually named city administrator slash clerk because she does many of those things already just like the mayor ms logan said our clerks are already doing this and all we would have to do  would you consider having a single garbage hollering granted if it meant lower service rate for your citizens and we will begin with you larry absolutely not i believe in a free market interstate system i don't think it's worked well for the other cities that have i don't think we have an issue with too many garbage trucks going up and down our meal i've had the same guy ritchie dollar for years  i love him he picks up everything absolutely not ok tina i actually agree with larry last larry now i agree with larry because the problem that i see with going with only one garbage company and that they have complete and utter control over raising their prices if you have a pick whoever you want to you know whatever garbage company that you want to is you're free to look around and see what is the cheapest to holloway or herbage and again like i said having one garbage company for the entire city had a lock you into a hole of not being able to climb back out when they decide to raise their prices you're stuck into a few where i actually just recently changed i had a large national hauler with a green can you might know of them and i moved to a local holler i might give a little advertising moronis the service i have received is exceptional above and beyond what i got if sometimes i forget to bring it after i calmly come and get it there's no charge to the national mall or would have charged me i know that maple has gone to a single holler and boy has it made some would residents that i know don't like their choice be taken away it's not a council's decision to take your choice away whom you wish to do commerce with has nothing to do with the council no matter who's elected and i don't think it's within our power to tell you who to do business with thank you and learn absolutely that we don't want it up with the mess that the maple was in with a single hauler it was been just a nightmare i think we were city planner we had tried to change them over it is just crazy there are other options out there in changes do not mean that you're going to necessarily raise taxes look at we've done with the roads we're doing more with less money moved down this way and we start with lorne and just when your time and stark and so i think you ok ok well i've been doing a lot of work the last five years in the community we've done the sap the stable orders we do the p i been working with the cable commission for two years been on the planning commission for two years we've done a lot of positive things i think the scare tactic of all we're going to raise taxes to do whatever isn't is just that a scare tactic same exact thing i heard in the city administrator think we're paying for a professional city administrator in we have a part time clerk fine you know if we want to keep her i don't have a problem wonderful person does a good job but there are some lapses there and we don't necessarily if we went to a city administrator have to have two employees we could still have one so once again we're seeing these scared to ask if the sky is falling and that isn't the way what i advocate i'm a conservative individual and i'm not saying spend a lot of money i'm saying come up with better solutions to spend the money we have now in a better way and we can do that we've done it with the  roads i think we need some some citizen input this is been kicked around in the five people in the council been making the decisions for years we need to know what the residents think and if they don't they don't want to change anything wonderful let's keep it that way but let's see what the people want this is a democracy and that's what we should be going by we shouldn't have five people making the decisions with no input thank you i've explained the choices we face as election we can maintain grant or follower a community activist on a perfectly paved road to more government more taxes and a very different grant that simple my opponents if you listen closely over time promise a radically different structure for granted there is no magic money for your taxes have to go up you're not going to hire more people for free most of us moved to grant to avoid that now the last census reported nine and a half percent of seniors living in grant or below the poverty line the seniors attended the last fourteen and a half percent proposed tax increase workshop i'm surprised we haven't talked about that tonight the mayor and i defeated that now these senior citizens came up and told us you're going to tax us out of our homes and with inflation these folks are living with less now than they were then it's simple math my view is that responsible government should concentrate on basic solid services not providing benefits benefits or not we provided services take an honest look at our city our lifestyles are great our city budget has reserves we have good schools and safe roads may not be beautiful but they're safe we don't need a radical change what this city needs steady hands the wheel for the next four years not radical change thank you for your vote please support tom car and my fellow council person in here future council person you can visit my website a w w w dot you vote jeff you're done that's vote jeff you were dot com and i will have a couple letters coming up to address a few of the things that larry said so i really would hope you visit that check that out for yourself thank you thank you again for coming out tonight i'd like to leave us something to think about when you go home you like the city the way it is with low taxes and minimal government i love grant just the way it is even with its broad patches cracks and bumps in the road doesn't change how i feel about  are unique we are completely those around us and i'm proud of that i believe it's not worth changing grand to high tax big government city just so we can have perfect roads i fear for we allow big changes that we will lose our unique and rural character and we'll be just like everybody else around us if you feel the same way that i do then please support me with your vote in november i would love to work for you for more information you can visit my website at the moment that thank you i would just like to address a couple things that i've heard here up at the council and  inappropriate clapping from a gentleman in the audience we are here so you can vote as the public we are your representatives at the council the public input and public is what we're doing now for people that don't understand that i'm sorry i can't help you but for the people that understand that this is america you vote we represent you and for the people that vote for me they can stay home and they know they're getting represented for the people that show up at the council meeting or rabble or anybody else that wants to come and say whatever they want they're welcome to but i represent the people at home that know that i'm guarding and doing my job for them when they can't be when they're playing baseball when they're out there doing whatever it is they do that is my job that's my duty that's why i run for the office not so that i can respond to whatever a certain individual group will want to do so if elected i will continue to do that and i will join and i vote tom carr dot com so i would love to hear you know i'm i'm always open and please my phone does ring and i do answer so if you do want to participate a little bit more in the city community with me please call thank you well and closing i'd like to say i would like to put some of the boys back to the people we were promised a road a referendum the put on a ballot this year it did not happen i don't expect it to happen you know and an election year but i do believe that people have the right to vote i think let's hear from the majority not just the five people up here as a thirty year resident of grand township i've experienced an influence change i believe now the time to step up and lead the change i will protect preserve of promote your rural heritage i will not be out raising your taxes as everybody says it's going to do that's just a scare tactic you'll hear it every election year truth of the matter is we will find ways to get your orders that if you're paid lot of money to get have your roads maintained we deserve a certain level of maintenance and is we're having right now is not enough if you talk to our city engineer we do not have any roads that are going to last thirty years out there so we have to start planning ahead just as a blue ribbon road committee did in the past we ignored them our roads are cheery ating and if not all roads folks i want you to remember we've promoted the gateway trail we work with them we've lobbied with them we started the grant restoration project i believe the community spirit is the biggest thing i could bring to graham thank you ok thank you candidates not just for coming tonight but for being willing to put yourself forward in to represent a grant for running for office because that's so many people to use to do that and we really appreciate the fact that all of you have done chosen to do that we want we also appreciate the mine i mean icicle district for providing this area where we can meet which is certainly a very good place for holding on this kind of conversation and the ramsey washington suburban cable commission for taping the us and for having it be we having it more times than you probably want to watch let me give i'm supposed to give you a little idea when they're playing again cable channel eighteen starting thursday october eleventh at seven p m and saturday the eighteenth at nine and seven and then every tuesday thursday and saturday at nine and seven now if that doesn't work for you you can also go to the wildwood library and they'll be a video available so no reason not to look at this several times thank you very much  you for coming because that's what makes all of this work remember to vote on november  vote two thousand and twelve live local election results and information tune in tuesday november sixth at eight thirty pm for live election coverage on ramsey washington cable channel eighteen  november sixth then watch vote two thousand and twelve live in local your best source for local election coverage in the northeast suburbs of ramsey and washington count