Five candidates sat in front of a crowd of dozens of Cottonwood residents, vying for three open seats on the City Council, on July 25 at the Cottonwood Recreation Center.
The event was moderated by Barbara Litrell of the League of Women Voters Greater Verde Valley, which organized the event.
Vice Mayor Kyla Allen was the only candidate defending her position on the council, and spoke in her opening statement of the need for candidates like herself “who know what’s going on.”
Doug Hulse, a member of the Cottonwood Parks and Recreation Commission, cited his experience on that and the Design Review Board, before saying he is “beholden to no one.”
“I’m one of you,” said Michael Mathews, a real-estate businessman. “I’m just a resident who became concerned a couple of years ago.”
Jackie Nairn, who has worked with Catholic Charities and volunteered with the Old Town Mission, cited her experience in public service and outreach in the community.
“We elect people to sit and do what we want them to do, but not enough people are coming out and telling the politicians what you want them to do,” Nairn said.
Bill Tinnin, a veteran of military intelligence and commander of the American Legion, cited President John F. Kennedy’s adage of “Ask not what you country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” and said he believed Cottonwood could improve.
The hottest topic of the Cottonwood City Council candidate forum was the same one that has made council meetings into contentious affairs over the past few months: The 0.5 percent sales tax hike proposed by the council.
Mathews has been a frequent critic of the proposed sales tax at City Council meetings, and continued in that vein during the forum.
“I wasn’t in favor of a 0.65 or a half a percent,” Mathews said. “I said I was in favor of perhaps a quarter percent if the city would make a commensurate cut and we would do it as a team and work together as a team. It didn’t happen like that. Perhaps the half a percent increase that we put out there should have been not added to food.”
Nairn joined Mathews in saying that the 0.5 percent increase would be too much if it included a tax increase on food. “During the debates about the sales tax increase, I had a lot of people in the public approach me about that, all with concerns about raising the sales tax on the food and how that was going to affect our low-income households,” she said.
The other candidates pushed back.
“The tax on food itself is negligible,” said Tinnin, speaking from experience having frequently bought large amounts of food for the American Legion. “I wouldn’t even consider that a questionable item.”
“If you were to buy a hundred dollars’ worth of groceries a week for 52 weeks, you would spend an extra $33 on groceries over the course of a year,” Hulse said. “That $33 coming into the city over the course of the year adds up to a little over $2 million in the current budget, which is a big boon to us. To do away with that food tax could result in the city going to a property tax, which would mean 1,100 property owners would then begin to pay for all of the services that currently 60 to 70 thousand people who live in the valley plus the tourists are currently paying for us.”
“The majority of communities in the state of Arizona tax food,” said Allen, who voted to move forward with the tax increase as a member of the council. “If we were to remove the tax, the 0.5 percent that we increased it would be more than a wash out. We would even get less money into our coffers.”
Mathews alleged in an essay that the public debt of Cottonwood amounts to $5,847 per capita, up from the national median of $1,525. The statement sparked some debate during the forum.
“I believe we have too much debt,” Mathews said at the forum. “There are three or four who sit on the dais on City Council, including the mayor, who believe we have too much debt. I’m just going to have to agree with them. It’s not about how much debt we currently have. We need to not accumulate any more debt and we need to start working on paying it down and building our reserves.”
Allen and Hulse pushed back on his assertion, saying that his debt per capita numbers included the debt for the water company, which is serviced by a greater population than just the people living in the city proper, as well as pension liabilities that the city has taken on from the state. The two argued that a more reasonable debt-per-capita calculation should only include the debt on the general fund.
Deputy City Manager Rudy Rodriguez argued that this is the more accurate way to view the city’s public debt. The general fund debt amounted to $20,392,367 as of June 2017, which amounts to $1,696 for the 12,023 residents, according to estimates by the U.S. Census. The debt on the water and wastewater enterprises amounts to $29,097,734, or $1,247 spread among 25,210 residents, according to the U.S. Census. The total pension liability of Cottonwood stands at $22,753,512 according to 2016 data, the most recent data available, coming out to $1,892 per resident for the city’s 12,023 residents.
Allen and Mathews, though at odds on other issues, both made commitments to not seek closure of the Cottonwood Recreation Center or library in the coming years, contrary to rumors about the City Council or Mathews seeking spending cuts. The other candidates also joined in their protestations against any intention to close the public buildings. Nairn cited her time on the library’s advisory board while Hulse touted his work in seeking to get the rec center built. Tinnin said he did not see how it made any sense at all.
The primary election for Cottonwood City Council will be held Tuesday, Aug. 28. Early voting will begin Wednesday, Aug. 1.
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551, or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.co
