Election 2024: Council candidates answer your questions

I believe that the greatest issue facing our community are two sides of the same coin. Affordability and economic development. Economic Development requires investment. In communities around ours, we can see the fruits of investment. We must invest in programs that not only improve our day-to-day lives, but also create asymmetric economic benefits. The Murray Main Street Program is a great example of this. Since its inception, it has returned $5000 for every tax dollar invested. Investments like that help keep our community thriving and we should invest more. We must also look at adjusting the way we approach our tax. We are restrained by Frankfort in many ways as it comes to taxation but that cannot mean that we don’t look for ways inside the current structure. We should try to reduce the tax burden on those who have the least while not harming the health of our community. We must also look at reforming our business licensing and tax system to better ensure we aren’t creating disincentives for our small businesses, enforce coding so that neglectful property owners aren’t harming their neighbors, and do everything in our power to protect our school system to ensure that it remains the cornerstone of our future. 

The biggest problem our city faces is lack of resources. We have an aging infrastructure that will not continue to support the citizens as we’ve been accustomed to being supported. This is probably a common for cities

Bringing in new industry is one of the ways we can solve that problem

I see no major problems but opportunities for more park funding, affordable housing and look at the need of building an additional water treatment plant on the north side of the city. Park funding and affordable housing are both part of our current long range plan and we will continue to work on these. We (the city) has an evaluation of our current water treatment plant, we will review this study over the next few months and make some decisions.  

What do you consider to be the biggest problem our city faces? What will you do to address it? The biggest problem our city faces is job and labor shortages. Job and labor shortages can be addressed by encouraging local entrepreneurs to start new businesses in town and attract outside businesses to invest in our community. We could offer tax breaks, grants, business development programs, and highlight local businesses through events to attract customers. We could also invest in “Pop-up shops” by using vacant storefronts for temporary retail experiences to test new business concepts.

I don’t believe Murray faces any major problems.

I my opinion the greatest issue the City of Murray faces is balancing the city budget with the rising demands of our citizens for ever greater expenditures to keep abreast of perceived necessities. The Kentucky Legislature closely controls what taxes, fees and other forms of income cities can levy and thus Murray has a relatively narrow revenue stream we can depend on to satisfy demands for improved roads, parks, water purification, storm water control, technology modernization, opioid and drug remediation efforts and other requests of our citizens. We are constantly losing police, firefighters and city employees because of competing cities who offer higher salaries & pensions than us. Federal funds have fortunately come our way through state government and these funds have helped but likely the Infrastructure Act and other Federal programs will soon be exhausted.

Fortunately, I don’t believe that there are any huge challenges for our city at this time.  However, we need to be mindful of issues such as the need for affordable housing, continuing improvements for public spaces in our community, and ensuring that all citizens are treated equitably. 

Of course roads and drainage are things we face daily and making sure we keep up has been a challenge. When given the opportunity we add extra money to the budget for road paving or drainage projects. Growth is another challenge we face which is a good thing to have. We want to grow but with that we have to make sure there are enough services like fire and police to cover the new areas. Fortunately we have grown the last many years which means the tax base has as well. We have constantly updated our police and fire fleets to keep up with the growth. We also continue to monitor to see if we need to hire additional people as well. I feel we have been efficient with what we have and will continue to do so.

As a whole, I do not feel Murray is facing any major current problems, but we do have some outdated and deteriorating infrastructure. This includes roads, water systems and community facilities. However, I feel we have a long term strategy that outlines our goals and objectives for addressing those challenges. We try very hard to be good stewards of our taxpayers dollars to achieve our goals within our budget and identify those needs that most benefit our community.

Of the many issues our city faces, bringing good paying jobs to our community should be a top priority. No one likes tax increases and the best way to avoid future property tax increases is by bringing good paying jobs to the city of Murray.

I was born in Murray, Kentucky in 1981 and at that time Fisher-Price employed more individuals than any corporate facility in Murray.  From my perspective as a former local restaurant owner, our city seems to continually find itself in situations similar to our community losing Fischer-Price/Mattel and then having a significantly smaller company like Pella, specifically in reference to the fact Pella has a significantly lower number of employees locally, replacing Mattel several years after they relocated to Mexico.

A remarkably comparable situation occurred with Briggs & Stratton. A company that has hired a significantly lower number of employees has taken their place.

To make my point in a single sentence, the biggest problem our community faces is the lack of availability of career wage jobs. I genuinely believe it is possible for our community to become an excellent location for career job seekers given the highly educated work force we have because of having two outstanding public schools as well as an outstanding public university.

In many instances, such as the two I described above, our city has taken 5 steps backwards while taking three steps forward.

We have several issues on the horizon that our city will be facing one of which is preparing for future growth along with the possibility of a disaster. You never want to think about disaster such as what Mayfield suffered a few years ago or even the issues that Marion faced with their water supply. But, we need to be prepared from an emergency services standpoint as well as looking at an additional water plant to be located on the north side of Murray. What we can do to address these issues are continuing to support our administration authorizing funds to be put in reserves for these projects as well as applying for grants to help offset costs. Additional concerns that need addressing are affordable housing and seeking industrial and economic growth. 

My plan is to push to implement the following changes.

1. Increase investment in economic development programs like Murray Main Street.
2. Revamp our payroll tax to help take the burden off of those working and making the least. This will make Murray a more competitive place for businesses to operate and help families make ends meet.
3. Work on how we tax businesses. Remove tax loopholes for chain stores that end up harming local businesses. 

Make no mistake, these are ambitious plans and not all of these can be reasonably be expected in a single term. However, we must never let that deter us from taking on tough challenges. That’s why I’m running. 

If I am elected, I am specifically going to work on building more sidewalks and bike trails extending the sidewalk structure that we have now. I will continue to support the Park and its effort to maintain and upgrade those public spaces for our citizens

I’ll also work to firm up the infrastructure which may specifically include a water project for the north end of town.

Next term we will continue to do the work of the city. Big emphasis on our long range plan as we prepare for the future needs of our city.

If elected, what do you hope to accomplish during your tenure? Specifically, what projects will you try to initiate? During my tenure as a member of the city council an on going goal I would like contribute my efforts toward is having a more vibrant and active downtown atmosphere. We could encourage mixed-use zoning to allow for residential units above commercial spaces, increasing foot traffic. We could upgrade sidewalks, lighting, and street furniture to enhance the pedestrian experience. We could offer tax breaks, grants, business development programs to appropriate businesses willing to open in or near the downtown area.

Together with our mayor, Bob Rogers,  city administrator, Jim Osborne , and department heads, the city council is kept timely abreast of matters concerning the city as they arise.  Committees are appointed and informed, concerns are addressed.  The outcomes are addressed at the next city council meeting.

I hope to accomplish a council wide and community  wide training session regarding  what the council members and citizens can do to help our citizens survive a natural or man made disaster.  My husband and I have attended intense  6 week training sessions with Bill Call helping citizens be better prepared, cope with, and survive a natural or man made disaster.

We must realize it’s up to us to take care of our families and neighbors while awaiting state agencies to come to our rescue.

I would very much like to expand our residential curbside recycling program to reach more Murray residents as well as expand our recycling efforts to the business community. A huge amount of recyclables are still going to the transfer station and from there to landfills. Further, the City of Murray could use Federal funds to pursue solar panels on city buildings thus saving some of our expenditures for electricity and natural gas for other needed projects. Also, as a member of the Opioid Abatement Group appointed by Mayor Rogers, I am heavily engaged in looking for answers to how best to address the scourge of Opioid and drug consumption that is impacting our court system as well as our schools. 

If elected, I want to continue our work to determine the best use of opioid settlements funds received from the state.  I think that we are close to making a decision about the funds and am proud that we’ve conducted careful research and consulted with stakeholders to ensure that the funds will make a  positive difference for people in our community. Also, I hope to provide leadership to promote collaborations between city government and nonprofit organizations.  

When I was first elected I promised I would have no agenda when I was in office. I do have some likes which include the park. We have done a great job updating many things like the pool, lights at The Bee Creek Soccer Complex and a new concession at the four plex. There is still work that needs to be done like lights on the baseball and softball fields. I also feel sidewalks are important. We continue to search for grant funding to add to our sidewalks across the city.

I have always wanted to see Murray focus on beautification and having a clean and welcoming appearance especially when new businesses are looking to move to Murray.  I believe this is what sets the tone for the entire town.   Murray’s pride and resources are key to attracting industry and companies that provide high quality paying jobs.

My primary goal as an individual council member if I am elected will be to do everything I can to inform our community regarding all matters pertaining to City Hall. When I first decided to run for City Council, one of the first ideas I had was to create an initiate to encourage each member of the City Council to personally invite no less than two community members to the monthly public meeting. My idea is to have each council member acknowledge their guests at some point during the meeting to show appreciation for their attendance. I believe our City Council members must do everything possible to make sure our community members are well informed.

By making the effort to personally invite individuals to the lone monthly public meeting, in my opinion, the Council would send a message to the community that their attendance is greatly appreciated as the primary reason these meeting occur is to provide transparency to the members of our community in relation to City Hall business. It is my belief that if all twelve members of our city’s council were to adhere to this concept, it would not take long to justify going back to having two monthly meeting rather than one.

If re-elected I will continue to fight for improving and maintaining our parks. The quality of a community is reflected by its parks and recreation system. Businesses as well as industry look at the parks system when making their decisions to locate in a community. Our parks went underfunded for decades but we are now making great strides with improvements, we now have to maintain those upgrades as well as looking to expand our park system and the services that it provides to our community. We also need to continue making Murray a more walkable community. So many roadways still without sidewalks, making it extremely unsafe for pedestrians. The addition of a greenway trail/bike trail would also be a great addition to our community connecting our residential areas with other amenities within the city. 

Community involvement is imperative in local government. I do my best to be available for all of the people in our community, ready to answer questions, even going to where they are to talk about problems. Part of that is access. My email is open and I respond because that process is vital. We won’t always agree, but I’m always ready to discuss the issues. I hope to hear from the people whenever they have issues, questions, or concerns.

Setting meeting times is always a challenge. None of us are professional politicians. We work, we volunteer, worship, and we have families just like everyone else and it always a strain to schedule anything. As such, I would be open to have more public meetings of working groups at different times to involve more of the public. This would need to be worked out to ensure it’s legal, as there are state laws that govern meetings. But I’m open to finding a way. We need people to be more involved in city government. 

I do understand the problem that’s presented. I would be on board to entertain solutions to this problem which might include recording the meetings, switching the meeting dates or broadcasting it live.

I am invested in having fully informed constituents.

Our meeting times are currently OK, all of our agendas are published ahead of the meetings the council meetings  are live and  replayed by our local cable providers, and all the mentioned meetings are  covered by local news outlets.  It would be very difficult to find a time that everyone would find convenient, however if there is a major outcry for change we could look at some changes. 

There are several obstacles that prevent citizens from attending city government meetings. I understand the publics frustration and concern related to conflicting times that make it difficult or impossible to attend city government meetings. To ensure that there are more options available I believe that each meeting should be live streamed and recorded. I believe that the City Council and Murray Board of Education can still meet on the same day but one meeting would began shortly after the other adjourned.

No response

Yes, I believe meeting times of the City Council should be modified in order to allow greater participation of Murray citizens to attend our meetings. The Calloway County Fiscal Court has much the same problem. Evening meetings (after dinner hours) might be one way to address this problem. We might also have live zoom participation for a period of our Council meetings to allow questions, concerns and opinions of Murray citizens to be expressed. We might experiment with several different ways to entice enhanced participation and implement what seems to work.

Yes, I see that this can be a problem and am open to taking a closer look at how we might be able to minimize conflicts in meeting times.  Given the finite number of days and times available for evening meetings, it may be difficult to schedule committee meetings during the evening. 

I’m grateful that people want to attend meetings. In this day and age I believe it is hard to find a time where there is not something going on every day.

The Murray city council and the Murray Board of education are both open forum meetings and I do see how it would be difficult to attend both at the same time.  However, this has never been intentional as both bodies are independent of each other and do not dictate either schedule.  I do encourage all citizens to be involved in our community and am open to hearing any concerns they may have, though this has not been one of them recently.  With a family community like Murray, scheduling conflicts and overlaps will often incur whether it be soccer practice, doctors visits, and so on, we all do the best we can to invest and be where we need to be when time allows.

This is something my campaign has discussed at great length. Primarily, as of last week, the City’s website regarding City Council agenda’s, had not been updated since April of this year.

Second, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that our City Council does not live stream every meeting that is open to the public by law in the exact same manner the Council did for the monthly public meetings during Covid distancing and quarantine protocols. The city of Murray has already proven we have the capability to provide easy access transparency by providing a live stream of all meetings that are required by state law to be open to the public. Other communities of comparable size already do this for their citizens.

If I am elected this Tuesday, one of the first issues I will address is understanding why the streaming of meeting ever stopped and what will need to happen in order to be certain committee meetings taking place during standard business hours and are impossible for most individuals with career’s to attend also be live streamed so that the individuals who make up our community can be as well informed as they desire to be.

I would also suggest that all meeting be kept in an archive such as a YouTube channel so that any individual who has the desire to view our local public officials at work can easily do so!

(Response edited for length)

Yes, I do agree that this is an issue. However, I’m not certain what the correct approach would be with public meetings overlapping. With so many boards and commissions within the city and county governments it’s almost inevitable that something is going to overlap. With that said, as a businessman and being involved with so many other committees and boards I, myself, find it very difficult to attend these meetings during business hours and have and will continue to advocate for them to be moved to evenings. It’s only fair for the citizens and the members of the committee to not be pulled away from their jobs to attend meetings that are detrimental to the present and future of our community.