Scott Dunn: Good evening, I’m Scott Dunn, publisher of the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin. I’d like to welcome you all to the 2009 Tooele Mayoral Debate between Mayor Patrick Dunlavy and his political challenger, Mrs. Becky Bracken. The Transcript-Bulletin has been Tooele County’s newspaper for more than 115 years, and we’re proud to sponsor tonight’s debate. We feel that the cause of good government is best served by voters making an informed choice on Election Day. While there have been many opportunities for voters to meet the candidates this year, there has not yet been a real forum for comparing and contrasting where those candidates stand on the important issues affecting Tooele City. We hope to create that here tonight. I’d like to begin by thanking Tooele High School for donating the use of their auditorium tonight. I’d also like to thank our two candidates for agreeing to participate in this debate, and thanks to all of your for taking the time our of your busy schedules to be here, and caring about our wonderful city. The moderator for tonight’s debate will be Transcript-Bulletin editor Jeff Barrus, and our timekeeper is community news editor Sarah Miley. Now I’d like to get started by turning the time over to Jeff and giving the state to the two candidates for Tooele City mayor: Patrick Dunlavy and Becky Bracken.

Jeff Barrus: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, Mayor Dunlavy, Mrs. Bracken. Tonight’s debate will consist of 10 questions covering a wide range of topics. Candidates will have three minutes to answer each questions, followed by three minutes allotted to their challenger for rebuttal. Following rebuttal, the candidate who answered first will have an additional two minutes for follow-up. Direct exchanges between the candidates are allowed within that two-minute follow-up period, as are follow-up questions from myself. Candidates will also be given three minutes at the end of the debate for concluding statements. Candidates were informed in advance what topics were to be discussed tonight, but they have not seen the specific questions I will ask. They are allowed to make notes during the debate but not read from prepared remarks. We’ll begin tonight with Mrs. Bracken ...

Barrus: The first question is: (Question 1) What steps would you take to stem the rise in crime in Tooele City in recent years? Explain how would you pay for these measures.

Bracken: Actually I think I have a step up on that one. Crime has risen in Tooele City 125 percent in the last 10 years. It’s no secret that we don’t have enough police officers. We need more police officers. Hi Paul. I’m speaking from personal experience here. When I first started on the road 20 years ago, we would go hours and hours without having a detail. When I retired in February, officers had no time between calls. They have no time. Proactive patrol is not possible for our police officers. All they can do is be reactive. We need more police officers. We also need to get the neighborhoods involved in helping their neighbors. I would like to see more neighborhood groups working together and we can do that by forming neighborhood watch groups to help be the eyes and ears of police officers. That’s what we need. Paying for that is another matter. If I were mayor I would go through each department and decide which one is working which one is not. I’m sure there are a lot of savings we can find there. We just need to reorganize and restructure and we can find the money somewhere.

Dunlavy: I don’t disagree with Becky with the fact that we need more police officers. We do. Every city, every state in the country needs more police officers. The challenge, of course, is how you accomplish that in today’s economic times. Things that you would normally do in normal economic times are not so easy to do anymore. In my administration, which started in November of 2005, since that time until today I have hired five additional police officers in that four years and two months. We’ve also started some innovative programs to put more officers out on the street. One of those was to increase the work week to 84 hours, which is legal. The officers agreed with that because it did allow extra time for them to be out on the street so that we have officers doing that. We didn’t just haphazardly decide to hire a bunch of people. It’s not easy hiring police officers now a days. You have to be fully certified. You have to pass our rigorous screening process. Tooele City, under my administration, is very proud of the fact that we only take the best. It’s not easy to do that when all cities around the country and especially in the state are trying to do the same. How you pay for it is just exactly what we’ve been doing. We identified those costs early on before the budget was adopted. We start our budget process, since I’ve been mayor, in January of every year. We evaluate each department, it’s effectiveness, the services they provide, how they’re done and if they are done efficiently. We identified the major needs within the city. Law enforcement is always No. 1 .That’s not unusual. That’s not just unique to Tooele City. We do that evaluation and we do it every single year, not just election time, but every year. We evaluate the departments based on the money that we have. Fortunately for Tooele City, we are a little different than the federal government in the fact that we are honest and balanced in our budget. We don’t just print money like the federal government, which got us in a lot this problem in the first place. So when you do that you must identify those funds ahead of time. You evaluate them, you prioritize them and you put them to good use and that’s what we’ve done.

Barrus: OK Mrs. Bracken the two minutes of follow-up will begin with you. And I’d like to ask a follow-up question here. Would you reorganize the police department or its leadership?

Bracken: I haven’t been in the office since I retired in February, but when I left we were top heavy. We had several certified officers working in the office. They didn’t work patrol at all. I think that would deserve to be looked at and decide if that’s completely necessary, because we have at least one position that a civilian could fill and it doesn’t need a uniformed officer to do it.

Dunlavy: Well I could tell you without hesitation because I too was in law enforcement as most of you know. When I left the police department after 11 years I was a lieutenant and proud of it. You need to understand that today’s law enforcement officer is a lot different. Their responsibility level is much higher. Their risk is much higher. So you need good leadership. In my opinion, because I support the organization as it sets up today, that the chief is one of the finer leaders in law enforcement in the state. The way he set up the department, the way it’s monitored, the officers that have been promoted and the officers that are in charge are the best there is. I can say that without hesitation. We are very fortunate in Tooele City that we have such a fine organization.

Bracken: I’m not going to argue with that at all. We do have the best officers, however, I think a little restructuring could be in order. And, I agree with you about Chief Kirby.

Dunlavy: Just quickly, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

Barrus: OK, let’s move onto the next question. To Mayor Dunlavy: (Question 2) In June, a jury in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City decided Tooele City was guilty of breaching agreements with Overlake developer Tooele Associates, resulting in a $20.7 million judgement against the city. Looking back over the seven-year history of this lawsuit, do you believe the city has handled this matter well? What type of resolution would you like to see in this case and how do you intend to bring that about?

Dunlavy: It’s frustrating. The lawsuits were in place before I took office. In fact, the lawsuits were in place before any of the current city councilmen were in office. What we’ve done is taken the information that we’ve been given, what’s transpired, the position the city took when the lawsuit came about and we have then evaluated the position that we have had. As many of you know from reading the articles in the newspaper, two weeks after taking office I met with Mr. Hall because I truly felt that I could negotiate a settlement on the lawsuit. I really did. We had a two-hour discussion. It was very frank, it was very honest, but I can tell you that the dye had been cast. There was no desire on his part whatsoever to settle the lawsuit. In his mind the lawsuit needed to go forward for a couple of reasons, in my opinion. No. 1 his business plan was flawed. You could see that by the court testimony. He was never in a position to make money and so when the economy went bad and they had less opportunity to get additional financing, because it wasn’t available to him, his recourse was to blame it all on the city, which he did. Unfortunately after we went to trial, and it was a trial by jury ... there’s an old saying in the legal community that when you go to a jury that you have a 50/50 change. Isn’t that unfortunate — that you only have a 50/50 chance? Basically what happened, the jury, after listening to testimony, they rendered a verdict that on face value and all of the news media that their attorneys put forth immediately after the trial that they just completely killed Tooele City and they won the entire lawsuit and that we only had one recourse and that was to pay them $22 million. That is absolutely not the truth. The judgement is a jury verdict. It is not the judgement. The judgement in this trial has not been rendered. That is only rendered by the judge. We have taken the appropriate action since the jury verdict to file motions asking the judge to weigh the evidence and look at rendering a verdict that we believe would be better. In this case we are very optimistic that that will happen. We wouldn’t go forward if we didn’t. How do you get to a resolution? Once it’s gone to court and the judge has it, there’s not a lot we can do except to continue to protect your interests. That’s all we’ve done from day one. That’s all we continue to do.

Bracken: I agree with Mayor Dunlavy that the $20 million was the jury award. Yes, the final award is decided by a judge. Yes I know that the city has filed motions. One of which we just lost last week, a motion to dismiss. The judge denied that. I don’t believe that two people cannot sit down at a table and work out issues and come out advantageous to both of them. I’ve read the letter that Mayor Dunlavy sent and I’ve also read the letter of settlement that came from the Overlake developers and there are a lot of inconsistencies in both sides of those stories. I truly believe that if two people sit down they can work that out. I was told just the other day that I don’t have all the information about the lawsuit. Well, I’ve done a lot of research and talked to a lot of people and I do have information on that lawsuit and you are not being told everything by city hall. If I were mayor, I’m confident that I could sit down and we could work this out and put an end to six years of arguing and over $3 million, so far, in legal fees.

Dunlavy: Of course I disagree with the fact that you haven’t been told everything. There’s no reason for us not to tell you. If there is something that we are not aware of that maybe Becky is then maybe she should share it with us. This is your money. This is your lawsuit, not just mine. It’s not just one that I inherited. This involves every single one of you. So why would you stand here in a debate and say I have additional information and then not share it if it may, according to Mrs. Bracken, solve the lawsuit. If that be the case, I believe that she is remiss in that, unless she has moved out of Tooele City and is not involved, but she hasn’t. The truth of the matter is that we are doing what we should be doing and we are doing it for the right reasons. The information that we have given you is the information that we have at this point. I can also guarantee, and I don’t guarantee often, that to sit down in a room with Tooele Associates people you could not and you will not settle this. Their only settlement is to get money.That’ s all they want. They don’t want to do what’s best for the community. They don’t want to make a good development. There are two people who are involved in this lawsuit on their side. It’s Mr. Hall, who started it, who now owns only 25 percent of the development, and Perry Homes, who owns all of the property now. You don’t just sit down with one in a room and come to a conclusion when those two people themselves have a different point of view about what they need in this. It’s that simple, but it’s that serious.

Barrus: OK let’s move on to the next question. (Question 3) If sales tax and other sources of city revenue continue to decline, what programs or services would you look at cutting first in order to balance the city budget?

Bracken: As I said before, I believe that the city structure needs to be gone through. Each department needs to be surveyed to see if they’re operating efficiently. Eliminate what isn’t working. Improve on what is. I firmly believe that the rank and file employees of our city is the most valuable asset that we have and we have to do everything that we can to protect that group of people. If it means reorganizing and moving one person to another position then that is what needs to be done. Rather than hiring new people for new positions, look and see what we have to work with already. We have a very very good group of people providing the services to this city and they need to be protected.

Dunlavy: Well, I appreciate your endorsement of exactly what we do and what we’ve done. Like I told you before, we evaluate every department on a regular basis. But when the economy started being a problem with the revenues coming into the city, just like the revenues coming into your own home, we took a very serious look at it because we had to. We had to evaluate the departments and make necessary reductions. Last year alone without losing one single employee that didn’t voluntarily go on a retirement incentive, we reduced the city budget and the projected budget for this coming year by $1.6 million. $1.6 million. Ladies and gentlemen we cut ... well, I hate to say cut. We reduced expenditures. And we did it by maintaining all of the city employees position and we did it with some innovation. We offered an early retirement incentive. That was a voluntary early retirement incentive. Mrs. Bracken was one of the people who took it. We did not force them out. We did not tell them they had to go. We did not fire them. We offered an incentive to them to retire early with the objective being that when that was completed those reductions would be in place. Nine people took that opportunity. We also stopped spending on capital projects. Every city in the state of Utah stopped spending on capital projects. We reduced travel. We reduced training, which is unfortunate because most of our departments are required to have minimum training hours. We kept those in place, but all the other things we reduced and took out. We also reorganized one department by transferring two employees out of that department without hurting that department’s ability to provide service. We did those things. They are on the record. You can look. We didn’t just talk about changes, we didn’t just talk about reductions. I’ve done it. And we’ve done it for two years now. We knew it was coming two years ago and started making some significant reductions. No one knew how bad it was going to be, but we were ready partially and we made the adjustments to get us to where we were where we could balance our budget. We did it without reducing one staff position involuntarily.

Barrus: The two minute follow-up period begins with Mrs. Bracken and I have a follow-up question. Where do you see unnecessary expenditures within the city government right now?

Bracken: Some of the upper management salaries are high and I’d also like to address something Mayor Dunlavy said about hiring new officers. Yes, he has hired new officers, but we’ve also lost several. And they have not been replaced.

Dunlavy: Again that’s something that is interesting to me because I work with it every day. The only positions that we are down are Mrs. Bracken’s position, which is part of the reduction, and we’ve frozen that position. We have officers that quit voluntarily. One is being replaced as we speak by a certified officer. He is going through the process to be replaced as we speak. There is another one who has been going through an appeals process and we are in the process of filling that position. You have that in organizations all of the time, but we replace them. Law enforcement is essential. Law enforcement will always be essential as far as I’m concerned as I am mayor because it’s so important that we have that quality of life that they provide as well as the top volunteer fire department in the state.

Barrus: OK, let’s move on to question No. 4. This one is to Mayor Dunlavy: What do you see as the city’s No. 1 infrastructure need and how would you go about completing that project?

Dunlavy: Well, there isn’t just one. We’ve been playing catch-up for the four years that I’ve been mayor and Mayor Roberts before me was doing catch-up on infrastructure. There are a lot of roads that need to be repaired. There are a lot of old water and sewer lines that need to be replaced and we are doing that. We have spend approximately $2 million over my tenure on roads and about $1 million on water and sewer. It’s essential to any organization that you identify those needs and that you appropriate the money to fix those. Now, unfortunately, we will never have enough money to fix them all in one year and so you do them when you can and you be aggressive as you can with the finances that are available. They are all very very important and we will continue to do that with all three of those major infrastructure needs. We have prioritized the waste water treatment plant in the fact that when I took office four years ago ... One week after taking office the engineering staff came to me and said, ‘Mayor we’ve got a real problem. The waste water treatment plant is at capacity.’ I said ‘Well what does that mean?’ They said ‘Well, we can’t handle anymore waste coming into the system, so you’ve either got to stop growth or move people out of their homes.’ Of course that’s not what we did. We rolled up our sleeves, went into the budgets, the enterprise funds, identified money and went out and got some additional sources and we accomplished the addition to the waste water treatment facility that now puts us in a position that we’ll have the capacity to service this community up to approximately 56,000 in population. We are currently going forward with phase three of that waste water treatment plant expansion, that when finished we will be set for many many years.

Bracken: I had a lady call me about a month when she found out that I decided to run for mayor because she had her sewer back up in her basement for the third time. So I went over to her house to talk to her and she was very upset because it was going to interfere with her family’s summer vacations and they couldn’t stay with her because all her extra bedrooms were downstairs. She said she went to city hall and talked to city officials and all they told her was that it wasn’t there problem. Now she does live in an older part of town and I have no idea how old our infrastructure is on that side of town, but she said the city emphatically told her it was not their fault and that they would have to make the needed repairs themselves. Now some of the city’s insurance money did pay for some of the repairs, but that left her and her husband having to get a $12,000 loan to pay for the repairs. Now it seems to me that if several people in one neighborhood, because she pointed out there there were other people, several of her neighbors, who had the same problem during the same time frame. So the way I look at it is so many people are having the same problem at the same time it sense to reason that it is a city problem. She told me that the city sent out some of their road people and they took a high-powered hose and blasted out the line. I think that the city needs to have a sustainable infrastructure where improvements are made before a major problem occurs to our citizens and they have to make expensive repairs.

Barrus: Mayor Dunlavy in the course of your follow-up, I’d like to add a question. Would you be willing to borrow money to complete larger projects like a recreation center or a new police station?

Dunlavy: Would I consider it? Absolutely. There is nothing I wouldn’t consider, especially when it comes to finances. Unfortunately we live in a time right now where it’s difficult to borrow money, but honestly it’s much more difficult to pay it back. And if you don’t have the ability to pay it back even though you want a rec center, and we do we’d love to have one. That’s been no secret. We haven’t hidden the desire to have a recreation center in Tooele. There are other facilities that we’d love to have. We all know that we’d love a new police facility. Our officers deserve a better building than they are in. We are in the process now of acquiring property for a new fire station because we need one of the further north end of town. Would I borrow money to get those projects done if they were prioritized by myself and the council and we had the ability to pay them back? I would, absolutely.

Bracken: I started at the police department 20 years ago and I started right after we moved into the car parts store and on several occasions through the course my career we were told that ‘Oh we are going to get a new police department. We are going to get a new building. We are going to get a new building.’ The last time location where we were suppose to get a new building is where Big 5 is now. So, that was city property and it was sold to build Big 5. Your police officers put their lives on the line every day and I agree with Mayor Dunlavy, they absolutely deserve better than what they have. I’ve worked a graveyard in that station when the floor was flooded because of the air conditioner or the heater didn’t work. So we absolutely need a new department and I would borrow money to see that they got one.

Barrus: Question No. 5 we’ll start with Mrs. Bracken. In general, are the workings of city government transparent, ethical and open to public input? Explain what you would do to increase trust and openness between the city and the public?

Bracken: Mayor Dunlavy is very proud of the fact that he has an open door policy. You can go into his office any time. I’ve done it. I know people who have done it. But there is a difference between an open door policy and transparency. I believe transparency is when citizens know what is going on in their city before they read it in the paper. As mayor I would make sure that all of the important issues are either published in the paper or online to give the citizens plenty of time to read over what is going on, discuss it with their friends and neighbors — or my husband likes to go up to Go-Fers and discuss it with all of his friends — and allow them time to let their input be heard, to let city hall know how they feel, to let the council know how they feel, to say ‘Hey I don’t think this is a good idea,’ or ‘I think think this is a great one.’ I believe that the citizens of Tooele City deserve to have a voice and I believe that they deserve to have their voice heard. I think they should know all the budget issues. I think they should know when we are about to buy a huge parcel of land. They deserve to know where all the money is coming from and I believe they want to know and as mayor I would let them know.

Dunlavy: It’s interesting that there is that perception because there is a law and you’ve probably heard about and if you haven’t I’ll explain it to you very briefly. It’s called the Sunshine Act in Utah. It’s a law. It’s not just a thought. It’s a law. There is nothing that we can do at city hall ... everything we do at city hall must be open and in the public eye. We publish our agendas in the paper. We put our agendas on the state Web site every meeting we hold. Every transaction of business that we do is in writing by resolution. Those resolutions are in written form and they explain every facet of every action that is taken at city hall. We do that because we understand know important it is for each of you to understand what your tax money is going to and the decisions that your public officials make. We can’t just do whatever we want, because the law doesn’t allow us to do that. It’s really that simple. If any of you question what we are doing at city hall check the Transcript. The agendas of our meetings are in there. Our discussions are open to the public. The council in their wisdom even went a step further and allow a public forum prior to every city council meeting. A lot of city’s don’t allow that. They don’t allow their citizens to come and just talk to the council and the mayor about anything. We do. We always have and we always will. There’s only certain things that you can have closed discussions on and those are specific by the law. The only time that we meet behind closed doors are under the law and they are to protect people’s rights, the ability of the city to negotiate contracts, litigation, which unfortunately cannot be discussed openly in the public for all to see because we are negotiating and more importantly than that you must protect people’s rights. They have a right to privacy. That is unquestioned and the law is very clear. Tooele City does not hide behind closed doors, nor do we close meetings illegally or improperly. The business of city is an open book and you are all welcome to come and look.

Barrus: Mrs. Bracken follow-up to you: Could you please perhaps give more specifics on what dealings you think have not been transparent or open to the public at city hall?

Bracken: The recent land purchase of 101 acres, which is a great idea. I believe in preserving open spaces, but I haven’t talked to one person who knew about that before it was put in the paper. Yes, council meetings are open, yes citizens have a right to go up in the open forum and ask questions and make statements before the meeting. That would be great if more people attended the meetings but they don’t. Yes they publish the agenda in the paper. It’s published in the back in a little column in the public notices section. A lot of people won’t search that out. It is there, everything is listed by number. A lot of it is in legal speak. People don’t understand it. And a lot of these older people frankly don’t know how to find the Web site online. Some of them don’t even have computers, but they all read the paper.

Barrus: OK, we’ll move on to the next question. This is for Mayor Dunlavy: (Question 6) Is Tooele keeping pace with other comparably sized cities in terms of lifestyle amenities such as parks, trails, arts, sports and youth facilities? What plans do you have to improve the city in this regard?

Dunlavy: The answer to that is absolutely yes. In fact, we lead most cities of our size in some of those areas. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, maybe you don’t or maybe you do use our parks, but they are in better condition, they more accessible, they have more amenities than ever in the history of Tooele City. We added those with funding that you approved six years ago called the Parks Arts and Recreation Tax. That was approved by each of you voters in an open transparent election. We use those funds for a specific reasons to add to those amenities and make them so you are proud to go there. You want to go there. It’s a clean, attractive place to be. Four years ago we got involved with the Downtown Alliance, which is a group of business people downtown, to try and spur new business and activity downtown to revitalize the downtown. One of the ideas that we came up with, and it was led by council chairman Steve Pruden, was a concert series in the park, soon to become known as Friday’s on Vine. Friday’s on Vine evolved from a small concert that sometimes only took a half hour or 45 minutes on Friday nights at the park on Main and Vine. The reason being that we wanted to get as many people downtown so we offered them the entertainment to get them to go to our businesses downtown, to let them know that there are businesses downtown and to help those businesses get customers. What started as a very simple, honest project to get people downtown and help our alliance is now evolved into an activity that this city anticipates every Friday. We’ve had upwards of 500 and 600 people, so many in fact that for safety reasons we can’t hold it at the park at Main and Vine anymore so we moved it down to the park down at the swimming pool, but still tied that to the downtown merchants. They do some special things that they try to get those people to do some shopping before. We also brought back something that has been missing for a long time in Tooele City and that’s an old fashioned Fourth of July. When I grew up in Tooele there was huge parades, concerts and fun games and then it got away where you were almost in a hurry because there nothing to do. Now we have the finest fireworks display of any city our size in the state and our concerts are as good if not better than most and we are very proud of that.

Bracken: Our parks are so important especially in this economy in this day in age. People can’t afford to do some of the things that they did before so I’ve noticed  — I live right up the street from the swimming pool — that a lot more families are going to our parks. A lot more families are having family functions, barbecues, birthday parties, because our parks are so nice. They are all well maintained and there is enough for everybody. So I don’t have one single thing to argue with Mayor Dunlavy on that about.

Barrus: I suppose there is no need for follow up.

Dunlavy: Amen.

Barrus: OK, we’ll move on. Mrs. Bracken, this question starts with you: (Question 7) What would you do to alleviate traffic congestion along Main Street? Do you favor promoting more environmentally friendly forms of transportation such as walking, cycling and mass transit usage?

Bracken: Any of you every tried to walk across Main Street to get from one side to the other? Any of you ever played frogger when you were younger? That’s what it’s like trying to get across Main Street. You take your life in your hands. I absolutely would favor alternate means of transportation — walking, biking. I don’t know about mass transit. I myself am a business owner, I have a business on Main Street and I have to keep my front door shut because of all the big trucks that go by. Traffic is awful, so I think we need to institute some programs that will encourage people to walk, that will encourage people to ride their bikes. Put some bike lanes in, that would be great. There are a lot of people already who like to ride their bikes. They too are playing frogger across the freeway because of the traffic is so bad on Main Street. I absolutely would approve of those.

Dunlavy: I also certainly agree with that. Mass transit is a reality. UTA is in Tooele. We just recently worked with them over the last year in conjunction with the county commissioners on getting an ‘in the valley route.’ One of the frustrations that we’ve all felt is that if you can get to the bus you can get to Salt Lake, but that’s about the only place you can get. Now with the new bus routes that we’ve got in place you can get to about 10 different major locations and it travels on a regular basis. You can come from Grantsville to Wal-Mart to the hospital to the senior citizens center, to a lot of the locations that it stops at and picks up. You can catch the Grantsville and go back or you catch the bus at the south end of town and go to the hospital or the park and ride if you are trying to catch the bus to Salt Lake. That’s a reality, that’s a necessity. That’s a wonderful thing that is just going to increase. As you know the cost of gas of gasoline and all those things, the emission the vehicles, have got to be addressed. We aren’t standing and letting that pass us by. We are taking advantage of what’s available to us. Is riding a bike a good thing? Absolutely. We just started our first trails system trailhead up by the finest golf course in any municipality —  Oquirrh Hills, right Chris? — which will start a trail system that eventually we hope will go all around the valley. Not only can you walk or ride your bike, but in some instances depending on the location you can 4-wheel or ride your horse. Those are things that are important to every community and we are not sitting and letting them pass us by. We are working them on a daily basis. One of the things that I think you all understand because we’ve talked about it is recycling, which is one of my priorities, but I’m not going to pass recycling on to you at this time when the economy is the way that it is because we can’t do it by ourselves. We will need to increase your fee in order to do that. And we will do that sometime in the future, hopefully soon, when we work out the logistics so that we can also do recycling, which is just as important as all the other things. But, we are working on those things, along with the others.

Bracken: I’d just like to touch on the mass transit thing again. When I think mass transit I think of Salt Lake where you get on a bus and go from one side of town and go to the other side of town. And that’s fine, but I don’t see that Tooele would be able to support regular bus routes that go all over the city ... if people on one end of town want to get to Wal-Mart or wherever, that’s fine, but a lot of buses. I don’t see that happening.

Barrus: OK Mayor Dunlavy, the next question is to you. (Question 8) Does the city have a reputation among homebuilders for bring anti-development? What should be the city’s role in terms of managing residential growth within its boundaries?

Dunlavy: Well I guess it depends on who you talk to. People who are required to meet building codes, who are required to meet all the statutes on home building, who are required to meet the requirements that require that your home is safe when it’s built and it’s built properly. The probably don’t like it much and we hear that on occasion at city hall that we are difficult to work with. And yet for the same amount of people that complain about that we have the same number who say ‘Do you know how much easier your city is to work with as far as your building department goes? Do you know what we have to go through in the Salt Lake Valley or Layton to do what you’ve streamlined here?’ We hear that all the time too. My experience has been that people who complain about the building department or being able to develop in Tooele are people who are trying to take short cuts, who want to save dollars instead of doing it the right way, who create their own problems. Our responsibility at city hall is to require that people who do build build properly and that they build it to the law and they build it to the code. We’ve made some innovative things in the last couple of years in relation to design, how a home is designed and those requirements. Some of the realtors were a little upset with us when we did that because it was something unusual, because it added to the cost of the home, not significantly, but it did. We felt it was important. Under the leadership of Councilman Wardle, we work tirelessly as a city — the planning commission, the city council in coming up with design standards in building new homes that changed it from the old track house type thing where your neighbor’s house looked just like your neighbor and your neighbor looked like your neighbor and they all looked the same. We changed that a little bit so your individuality is there, while not compromising the life safety issues and requirements. The one thing that is important that I want you to remember in this is that we didn’t do this arbitrarily alone. I and the city council didn’t just arbitrarily make decisions there. We involved the realty groups. We involved the builders and got their input. The reason the legislation got passed is because we came together on a plan that was better for this community and still held the developers and builders to the standard that everyone is held to. And that’s the law.

Bracken: That’s certainly not the story that I’m getting from people I’m talking to. I talked to people today about the problems that they’ve had trying to work with the building department with the city. I’ve talked to contractors and developers. I’ve talked to one man who said when he sees a bid coming out of Tooele he won’t even bid on it because he doesn’t want to jump through all the hoops. We need to encourage new growth. We need to be responsible with it, but we need to encourage new growth. That is going to build up our tax base to allow us to work on other problems that we have such as infrastructure. I too believe that the process needs to be more user friendly. It does need to be streamlined and turnaround times brought down so that people don’t have to wait quite so long. I talked to another man today who told me that he had a pre-inspection before he bought a property and the inspector that went over told him that he would only need one more fire hydrant and he would be good to go. Then he bought the property made improvements inside and wanted his final inspection so he could get his business license and a different inspector came over and told him it wouldn’t pass because the doors weren’t wide enough and all sorts of problems. There is contradictions between departments and there is contradiction within departments and that’s an issue that needs to be worked on to make things more user friendly for our citizens.

Dunlavy: My experience has been simply this. Those contractors that say they don’t want to bid a project in Tooele because we make them jump through the hoops. I don’t want those contractors in your city and I’ll tell you why. They don’t do the job like it’s suppose to be done. That’s an excuse because they can’t compete, because I can tell you that we don’t have problems getting contractors to bid on our jobs. We don’t. So there must be something right about it. It seems to me that the ones that don’t want to come have an alternative motive. That being the case, they can stay where ever they are and they can contract there. Our standards are high. They are high for a reason. We have a standard that we feel we need to meet for every one of you in the city and so why wouldn’t our departments have a high standard as well. Would you rather buy a home that you know has been inspected properly by a quality qualified inspector who made that contract follow the line and do it right. Or do you want one who tells you how easy it was to work with the city and the kitchen cabinets fall off the wall after you’ve moved in. Extreme example, but that’s what we are down to. Is there work that needs to be done in the building department? There is, there always is. If you go to any city in the country you’ll be hearing things that the building department does this and they have problems. That’s because they are required to make you comply with the law and sometimes when that is done it costs money, but we are more worried about safety and quality. That’s why we hire the inspectors that we do. That’s why they hold builders to that standard.

Barrus: Mrs. Bracken the next question is to you. (Question 9) What would you do to promote economic development and job creation? What types of businesses or industries would you most like to attract to Tooele?

Bracken: We need to attract businesses to Tooele that are going to provide careers to our citizens, not just jobs. We have enough fast food places, we have enough restaurants. We need to attract industries and business that will provide for our citizens. Jobs and careers attract people. People come to our town and they want to buy property. They buy property, our tax base goes up, we can improve our infrastructure thereby making it more attractive to other businesses and other industries to look at Tooele as a place to build or relocate. We don’t need any more fast food places. We have enough. We need real jobs for our real citizens and we need to actively pursue these. We need to look for businesses to come here. We have to follow up with them. We have to keep in touch with them. We have to bring them here and show them what we have to offer. We need to do everything we can to get new businesses and industry to our valley.

Dunlavy: I totally agree. That is exactly what we have been doing for four years. We are more aggressive now at promoting this beautiful city to businesses outside than ever before. If you look at the successes we’ve had in attracting businesses to downtown — Big 5, Sears, all of the others that are downtown — they just didn’t happen. They did not just happen. We have an outstanding redevelopment agency in the city. We have the premiere consultant that does redevelopment in any city. We are very fortunate to have him. He teaches me a lot about that and has taught me a lot over the years. I’ve learned my lesson and so has the council. What we have done in the last four years is now turn the corner and aggressively pursued business in our community. But not just business. We want industry. We want commercials outlets that provide careers. We’ve had success in that area. We do not recruit. The policy at Tooele City as I stand here today is this: We do not recruit ... openly recruit businesses that already exist in Tooele. We recruit businesses that aren’t here and that we have gotten input from citizens that they would like to have. We attend a conference once a year that puts us in touch with almost every business of every size in the United States. We work really hard for four days. My feet get really sore after walking those areas and making those contacts, but we’ve had successes because we know how to do it and we are good at it now. Our successes and our records show that we are and we’ve learned a lot along the way so we’ll get better because it’s so essential in any community that you have that base to work from so that your families can stay here and live here and they can have a quality job with fair pay and we will continue to do that. As I stand here today we have made contacts with upwards of 10 companies that were are in contact with every week. We know they aren’t coming right now, but we call then and tell them we are still here and we are still interested and we’ll do what we can to help you. When the economy turns you will see them come. We are very proud of what we’ve done in that area. I appreciate the support of the city council. It’s a team effort.

Barrus: Follow-up to Mrs. Bracken. I have one additional question. In your opinion, does the city need a paid economic development consultant to help in the process of recruiting and attracting business?

Bracken: That’s a tough question. I believe we need to do everything that we can do in that regard. Whether we need a paid consultant, that would depend on who it was and what they were offering to do. You’d have to take all of that into consideration before you decided to do anything like that.

Dunlavy: We did. We studied it. Way back when Mayor Dill was mayor. He saw the value of having someone who did that for a living. There was limited funds so he contracted with a gentleman who’s name is Randy Sant. Randy Sant is the premiere economic development guy in this entire state of Utah. He writes all the legislation for the Legislature because he is that knowledgeable and that involved. He is very good at what he does. He has contacts that none of us can imagine because he’s been in the business as long as he has. Some of the successes that we’ve had with the companies are because of the contacts he has established with businesses and development groups that bring businesses to Tooele. The investment that we’ve made there is paid back thousands times fold. Mr. Sant, without having the actual numbers here, is the person responsible for bringing upwards of $15 million of development business to Tooele City. We don’t pay him anywhere near that.

Barrus: The next question will be for you Mayor. (Question 10) What would you do to revitalize long-neglected areas of the city such as downtown and the Newtown area?

Dunlavy: Well I’d continue doing what we are going. We are doing pretty good at revitalizing downtown. Sometimes it’s not easy to do that when you are dealing with buildings that are as old as they are that require building code adjustments, but I’ll give you an example of a success. For those of you who have been to Sostanza restaurant —  those of you who haven’t I might suggest that you might want to — but there is a success story that Tooele City made possible. I can tell you that without us that wouldn’t have happened. They made a substantial investment and they did a first-class facility there. I would match them up with anybody around the state as far as the quality of their establishment and the quality of their food. They didn’t have the money to complete the entire project and they came to Tooele City through our redevelopment and revitalization and asked if we had some things that we could help them with. We do have funding for downtown. Some of the facades that you see on some of the buildings are a result grants that the redevelopment agency gives those businesses. We made a substantial investment in Sostanza, a substantial financial commitment to their success. Without which we would have never been able to get them here and absolutely wouldn’t have been in the quality that they produce there. That’s what we do. That’s part of the plan that we have in place, the mechanism that allows us to work closely with businesses and make them successful even in this very tough difficult financial time. There are other businesses that are coming. I don’t know if you’ve seen the sign on the old Arctic Circle for example —  a business that has been closed for over two years. There’s a new restaurant that is going in there, a quality restaurant that is in the Salt Lake Valley. Why do they want to come here? Why do you think they want to come to Tooele? They want to come to Tooele because we are pretty special and people know about it now. We went from being an afterthought with the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, which I am now a trustee of their board, and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. We were an afterthought for projects to be brought out here for new businesses, commercial and retail. We are now the No. 1 place that those two organizations ask clients to come and take a look at and contact us. There is a reason for that, because we do that really well and because we’ve got a great community that they want to come and do business in. They’ve seen the successes.

Bracken: I went to a Chamber of Commerce luncheon to speak to them a couple of weeks ago at Sostanza, and that is a great place. But when it was finished the owner took me aside and told me that they almost did not complete their project because of exactly what I said before. They were very frustrated with all the hoops that the city made them jump through. I understand her frustrations and I also understand, because I’m also a businesses owner in one of those old buildings, and it’s very difficult to get things up to code so you can pass your inspection and they have done a wonderful wonderful job. But I did talk to the owner and that is what she told me. As far as the Newtown area ... I believe that we should initiate some infill programs so that we can revitalize some of these old buildings, clean up the empty lots. We need to invest in our older neighborhoods and give the people in our older neighborhoods a sense of pride. It only makes sense because it would restrict growth to a point that we are reinvesting in our older neighborhoods and making use of our existing infrastructure so we didn’t have to move outside. That would go a long way toward our city’s beautification also.

Dunlavy: Just one thing about Newtown. We are currently working with a developer as we speak that is going to revitalize the area just north of the Hometown Bakery to the next block down. First stage of this project is going to redo the four plex that is just across the street from I think it’s the Venus Club now. Phase two is completely revitalize the old Tooele apartment building and turn that into an apartment complex with retail on the bottom floor. That will eventually progress up passed the Hometown Bakery if he continues his project as he has presented it to us in order to do that project to bring it back to the condition it is in now. Again, that project is the decision of a private developer, who came to Tooele City and said ‘I can’t do this on my own. Will you help me? Do you have the mechanism to do that?’ We do and we did.

Barrus: That ends the question portion of the debate, so now we will give three minutes to each candidate for concluding statements. We’ll begin with Mrs. Bracken.

Bracken: First of all I want to thank everyone for coming out in our snow storm to hear what Mayor Dunlavy and I have to say. I just want to stress the point that I’m not a politician. I retired from the police department after 20 years and I do have a unique perspective, an insider’s perspective of what goes on in city hall, how things are done. I love this little town. I want what’s best for us. I want us to grow I want us to thrive. I want us to have the best of everything and we are on the way to doing that, but I believe that the citizens have the right to know what is going on as it is going on. I believe that the citizens of Tooele deserve to have a voice. They deserve to be heard. I believe that everyone has an opinion and they have a right to express that opinion. Not everybody can make it to city council meetings, I wish they could, but that doesn’t happen. I want to let people know what is going on in their town as it is going on and give them time to make feedback so that our community leaders and our council and the mayor can make an informed decision based as to what the people of the town want. Tooele citizens deserve that and I believe that they want that and as mayor I would make sure that they got that.

Dunlavy: First of all let me thank the Transcript for putting this together. I’ve been with Tooele City for a long time and I’ve never seen this done before so Scott thank you and to the ownership of the Transcript and to Jeff for bringing us together. It’s a unique opportunity for each of you to hear from the candidates who potentially for the next four years will guide the city. I applaud each of you for being here. It shows an interest in your community that I wish the place was completely full. We do what we do for one reason. I ran for political office for one reason and that’s to make Tooele City better every day. I put myself in a position with many years of learning how city hall works, how government works, how finances work and when I thought that I was ready for that I stepped up and I ran or the office of mayor four years ago with one thing in mind and that was to use that experience to use my ability and my knowledge and my honesty and my openness and my passion and my humility for a community that I love. There is no better place to raise a family in my opinion than in this city. I express my appreciation to my family for making me proud everyday. For my wife who puts up with a lot. It’s no fun being a mayor’s wife, believe me. But I could do it without them. And I couldn’t do it without your support. I’m very gratified by the fact that you support me. Your kind words and your ideas mean so much. I’m very grateful for a city council and people like Shawn Milne who step up and are involved in their community. I appreciate what they do serving each of you. We only care about this community, we only care about making it better, we only care about protecting your interests. That’s why I ran for public office. That’s why I’m running again. So I ask for your support and I ask for your vote. Thank you very much.