Politics

Hendersonville candidates Q&A

By Bill Moss, Published: October 24, 2013

Here are the answers of Hendersonville City Council and mayoral candidates to questions at a forum sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, Oct. 17.

The city has undertaken several capital improvements project. What is the city's capacity for projects and should the focus shift to building the reserve fund.

RON STEPHENS: "That's one of the reasons I am running because the cost of these projects have gotten out of control. The fire department that we need to building because insurance rates are going up if we don't — and let me say no one supports the fire department, the firemen and their families more than I do. But the first part of this Ron Stephensfire station was $900,000. They bought the land before I was on City Council, a very good purchase, bought it in bankruptcy for $650,000, 11 acres, that was very positive. Today, the fire station is costing — not with the land, $3.6 million. Where was the control, where was the management on that, where was the leadership? I tried to find out how that happened. It did not come before City Council, I have not voted on that big increase. I've asked another city council member, who doesn't remember it. I've gone to City Hall and interviewed some key people who have been involved in that. They don't remember. I am asking this morning the mayor to tell us, When did she know that it was going to cost this much and how did she find it out?"

BARBARA VOLK: "I think the city needs to invest wisely. If there's something that we need that we feel will be of benefit to the city in the long run, I look at the long term. My opponent says why didn't we know? He voted for the contract. He was there the night we voted on the contract. He didn't question it that night. If he had concerns I really wish he had brought them out when we were approving the bid and approving the contract instead of bringing them out at this point."

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DIANE CALDWELL: "I'm a very conservative person when it comes to spending. However, I also agree that there comes a time when spending has to take place. What I would do is look at the cost. I like to try and see what were the trends ... and have something to compare it to.... I would look at what it costs now and how much would it cost in the future?"

JEFF COLLIS: "Hendersonville is in very good financial shape. The state requires us to keep an 8 percent fund balance reserve. We're currently at 42 percent. It's long been city policy to keep an extra large fund balance in a rainy day fund. But we've just come through the worst economic crunch since the great depression and I think it was very good on the city's part to, instead of raising taxes, take a few dollars out of the rainy day fund. ... With the fire station, I agree with Mayor Volk. There was five of us that voted on it. I don't know what has happened for Ron to not realize that he voted on it as well. We hired an architect that specialized in fire stations, I learned more than I probably ever want to know about fire stations but when people are there 24 hours a day you can't use common building materials ... and a lot of things like that. It's all geared toward response — getting people out of the building as fast as they can. We can bicker about how that was spent but there was management on it and we're right on budget for it."

JERRY SMITH: "Currently, at the end of last year, we had $5.7 million in our reserve fund, which was around 42 or 45 percent range. Our debt is roughly 8 percent of our city budget. The state puts a number of 15 percent, if your debt is 15 percent they start looking closely at your finances, so we are well within the state control on that ... Our tax rate in Hendersonville we are right smack dab in the middle, right around 250; there's roughly 560 municipalities in the state. Are we capable of funding additional capital projects? Yes, we have the financial wherewithal to do that. Part of the reason we decided to go to the voters was, in order to maintain this healthy level of funding, there's no way we can move forward without some level of tax increase."

JEFF MILLER: "The bond says would you give City Council permission to borrow up to $6 million. Some people want to build the park out completely on the front end, some don't. I think $6 million is kind of a shot at. I don't think in this case it's a wise thing to do to borrow money to build a park. We're $12 million in debt. We just borrowed three and a half (million) I think for fire station, two and half for overruns on Main Street — which, I want to say, I think we're in great shape, too. Main Street's beautiful. I don't think we need to step out and do something like this at this grand scale. We also have to look at the health care. We don't know exactly what's going to happen with the city's health care coming up either, so that could be an increase. We've already heard we've got a potential 3-cent tax increase. If you did that and you did the park and you added that on to it, at 3 to 4 cents, you'd be looking at a 17 percent tax increase. We're in good shape but we don't need to do these optional things."

Two years ago the City Council changed the privilege license fee from a flat rate to one based on gross revenues. Businesses with gross revenues less than $500,000 a year continue to pay the flat rate, which is much less than the gross revenue based system. Would you be in favor of increasing the gross revenue fee trigger from $500,000 to $1 million?

BARBARA VOLK: "The reason the privilege license was changed was because, looking at it, big box stories were paying the same as our stores on Main Street. The council felt like they were getting a lot of business and they should pay at a higher share, not the same as small businesses. I am certainly willing to look at raising that limit. I think it would be a good discussion for council."

RON STEPHENS: "I am for discussing this. I want to go back to something else. The late Sen. Moynihan said everybody has the right to their own ideas but nobody has a right to their own facts. The facts on the fire station is that we approved a million-six. We did not approve $3.6 million that I can remember, some I've discussed with in City Hall can remember and that another city council member can remember. I'd like to see the document where we voted on it if that's true."

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DIANE CALDWELL: "We have so many different sizes of businesses. I think fees should be based on the gross income. To be fair, I think that is only fair that we look at what size business it truly is."

JEFF COLLIS: "This is one of the examples where we solicited advice from the business community and overwhelmingly the percentage that we're at now was endorsed by the business community. The prime example, Sherman's store up here on Main Street was paying the same privilege use tax as Wal-Mart. I been working as a probation officer for about 16 years and I'm constantly listening to police calls when I'm in the car. Wal-Mart continuously is a drain on our services. We have the fire department out there a lot, we have police out there a lot, and I feel like it does not hurt Wal-Mart one bit to pay for their drain on services, whereas you have a store like Sherman's that you rarely ever here issues with these services."

JERRY SMITH: "I did propose raising it to $750,000 and it didn't fly that year. It's certainly open to discussion. The whole idea is to make it fairer so that the large stores are not paying $50 versus small stores that are paying $50. You also have to understand that there are a lot of businesses that we cannot charge a fee for in this town. There are businesses that, by law, you cannot charge a business license fee. We have absolutely no control over that..."