By REID TUCKER
Sitting City Councilmen Kermit Wright, Mac Work and Ron Kelley took on the four new candidates vying for their seats at a public forum.
The event, hosted and moderated as always by the DeFuniak Springs Business and Professional Association, took place on the evening of Wednesday, April 1, at the city’s community center, and attracted a standing-room-only crowd. The candidates each made a brief introduction before diving in to the questions submitted by those in attendance, with clear delineations soon becoming apparent between both the sitting board members and the challengers themselves.
Work as good as summed up the current councilmen’s basic arguments for their re-election with a concise rundown of the City Council’s achievements during the tenure of Wright, Kelley and himself. In that last four years the Council saw 39 new businesses open or expand, which added 214 new jobs and $10 million to the local economy, with the Lake Eerie College of Osteopathic Medicine’s dental school the brightest gem in the crown. Other achievements made by include 35 miles of new waterlines, 5,000 feet of new runways and 10 new hangars at the city airport, renovations and new business openings downtown, plus a hiring freeze and less restrictive regulations downtown and the first balanced city budget in more than a decade.
“The benefits of our polices are easy to see,” Kelley said. “You can drive to almost any section of the city and see it, so they’re working.”
While none of the City Council hopefuls refuted the efforts of the current board members, there were nevertheless differences of opinion on several of the key issues brought up at the forum. A question as to the efficacy and wisdom of the recently renewed impact fee moratorium was perhaps the most noteworthy dividing line between all candidates, as even some of those with like positions had different reasons for their choice. The question as it was read gave an indication of the importance placed on the issue by voters as well – the submitted question included the addendum “Are we borrowing from our grandchildren?”
Seat 2 candidate Fawzi Fawaz, a local surgeon and physician, suggested the adoption of a modified version of New York state’s plan, wherein new business developers have a 10-year waiver on impact fees before having to pay, though he said the time frame should be reduced by half. Seat 1 candidate Janie Griffith, a Walton County School District employee and city Planning Board and Special Events Committee member, agreed that impact fees should be levied again, especially given the strong likelihood of business growth following four-laning of U.S. Highway 331. Griffith reasoned that, without impact fees, citizens will have to pay in the form of higher taxes for the necessary infrastructure needed to attract good-paying jobs and big employers to the city after construction on the highway concludes in a few years’ time.
Griffith went on to say that minimum-wage jobs like fast food restaurants are not what DeFuniak needs if it is to move forward and provide sustainable, long-term employment for the city’s families. Work, a major player in bringing the recently opened Taco Bell to DeFuniak, said only that restaurant of all the new business openings was influenced by the lack of impact fees, thus leading to him no longer being in favor of the fee waiver. Wright and Kelley came out strongly in favor of continuing the moratorium, without which Kelley said DeFuniak won’t be as competitive as nearby cities when it comes to attracting business.
Seat 3 hopeful Rebecca King, sales manager at WZEP AM 1460, and seat 2 candidate Reed Nolin also strongly upported collecting impact fees.
“I feel like by not collecting impact fees, yes, we are borrowing from our grandchildren,” Nolin said.
As divided as the candidates were on the moratorium issue, they were more or less of one mind on the topic of balancing public spending to favor services first, infrastructure second and events and promotion last. The possibility of extending city sewer utilities north along Highway 331 was similarly met with a more or less shared opinion, with all candidates expressing their interest in such an outcome, but not seeing it as very likely, considering the tremendous expense such an investment would require. King said the city should plan its budget like a family would do, taking small steps to save up until it could afford projects as big as filling in the gaps in DeFuniak’s sewer system coverage.
“I know with my budget I can’t afford any more expenses than any other citizen in this room,” Griffith said, agreeing. “We’ll just have to plan for future. When we get our five-year growth plan maybe we can see if can go a little ways (up Highway 331). Until then – no money, no extra utilities.”
All candidates, especially Wright, who wanted to increase the city’s population as a means of attracting new business, agreed on there being a real desire to see the city limits expanded, this would be a costly project the city may not have the money to cover for years to come. Work said any annexations would have to be voluntary, as individual property owners would likely have differing views on being part of city, given a likely increase in taxes. He said more pertinent than the figure of 5,400 city residents is the 36,000 northern Walton County residents, meaning any businesses wishing to locate in DeFuniak would still have a large pool of talent to pull from.
Questions about whether the candidates were for or against merging the city fire department with Walton County Fire Rescue were met with near unanimous and enthusiastic defense for the department to remain independent. Only Fawaz offered an alternative view, saying he would, if elected, look at what saves the taxpayers the most money before making a decision one way or another.
The revised sign ordinance, which came into effect as a much less restrictive regulatory document in 2012, was also generally agreed upon by the candidates as a workable piece of legislation, with everyone intoning some variation on “we can change it if we need to.” To that effect, Wright did say he would bring some critiques and possible changes to the ordinance before the Council at its next meeting, scheduled for April 13. For the most part though, each member of the panel was in favor of the ordinance as-is, unless a problem arises in the future.
Work, the last to respond to the question, didn’t let the chance to go out on a zinger get by him.
“If I was going to change the sign ordinance, the one thing I’d outlaw would be political signs,” Work said to a cascade of laughter from those in attendance at the forum.
