Carson City candidates talk turkey at Tuesday night forum

Candidates for Carson City Mayor and State Assembly District 40 addressed a nearly full house of voters at the Brewery Arts Center Performance Hall Wednesday night during a candidate forum sponsored by the Carson City Chamber of Commerce.

The candidates participated in a structured debate moderated by Nevada Appeal Editor Adam Trumble.

As a group, they were asked questions on specific topics and each given two minutes to provide a response.

The mayoral forum started off the evening with incumbent Bob Crowell and challengers Kurt Meyer, Chris Carver and Jerry Cinani.

The first question posed to the mayoral candidates was what they would do to attract more viable businesses downtown and fill vacant space. The question was asked in light of the downtown corridor improvement project that is currently under construction along Carson Street.

“One of the first things we need to do is improve our curbside appeal,” Kurt Meyer said. “We need to improve our image to get people downtown.”

Jerry Cinani’s approach was to attract larger businesses to Carson City in order to boost the number of consumers in the area.

“The solution for downtown is we need to have people here to create the market for those businesses,” he said. “The only way to develop the businesses downtown is to bring in medium-sized businesses with a lot of people. We don’t have enough people here with money to go down there and buy anything. If we had the people with money, the businesses would develop automatically.”

Chris Carver said new businesses to downtown should be those focused less on tourism and more on providing services to the existing workforce.

“We have a responsibility as a capital city and to our heritage to capitalize on industry and provide a worthwhile venue for tourists to come here,” he said. “More importantly, I think the retail should be geared more toward services that provide for the workforce that exists downtown.”

Mayor Crowell defended his decision to support moving forward with the downtown corridor improvement project, stating that an attractive downtown naturally promotes the growth of business in the area.

“One of my main reasons for changing the streetscape in downtown Carson City is to make it more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. The idea there is that type of downtown is what’s being looked at as an attractive part of a community,” he said. “More importantly, what a more bicycle and pedestrian friendly environment does is provide a more attractive gathering place for people."

The mayor also said he feels it’s important that the city do its part to attract businesses to the area.

“Government puts in place the infrastructure that makes an attractive place where businesses want to come,” he said.

Mayoral candidates were also asked about what they thought the best use of city redevelopment funds would be.

Carver felt strongly about fixing problems caused by too much emphasis on downtown redevelopment.

He said millions of dollars have already been spent over the years in an effort to improve the downtown area.

“Tourism is not our number one economic driver, and yet we continue to throw money at it,” he said. “We need to do the right thing for the community and repair the damages that have been done.”

Meyer defended the local tourism industry, stating that the efforts toward improving downtown Carson City are key to keeping the area attractive for visitors and encouraging more tourism dollars.

“I believe that tourism is an essential part of Carson City,” he said. “We really do need a reason to bring families downtown. We can’t say no to tourism. We have to say yes.”

The mayor focused his comments on the city’s façade improvement program, defending those standards for the curb and street appeal of area businesses.

“I disagree with my opponents on the façade program,” he said. “I think the façade program is terribly important to make sure we have some form of consistency.”

Crowell also pointed to the redevelopment of Third and Curry streets as an example of where redevelopment dollars are being invested for the city’s benefit.

“A prime example of good use of development dollars is what’s going on at Third Street right now with a pedestrian plaza, an outdoor amphitheater, and water feature,” he said.

Cinani took the redevelopment issue in a different direction. He said there are areas in Carson City that could use more attention than downtown right now.

“We need some other areas that we can apply redevelopment funds to,” he said. “The east corridor has really been left without much attention, and I think it will become more important as we see the impact of Tesla.”

The second half of Tuesday night’s political forum was devoted to the Republican candidates running for the Nevada Assembly District 40 seat, currently held by Phillip “PK” O’Neill.

O’Neill, finishing his first term in the state assembly, is facing three challengers in next month’s Republican primary election. Sam England, Chris Forbush, Al Kramer and O’Neill are all vying for the party nomination in the fall general election.

Assembly candidates faced tough questions about funding state infrastructure and improving education.

England had pointed comments about what he said was the state’s tendency to react to growth rather than prepare for it.

“When more people come in, they actually bring their money with them, they have to pay taxes, and that money is used to build infrastructure,” England said. “What we don’t get to do is say we’ve squandered the money we had and were too foolish to put any away, and now we need more roads so we must raise taxes to pay for them.”

England suggested a wiser spending plan should include being proactive toward anticipated growth so that the state is not caught unprepared for the demands that growth puts on infrastructure.

“What we need to do is spend wisely,” he said. “We need to make sure we save for things. We have to be responsible with the money that we are spending on our infrastructure. Let’s be good stewards of our money and therefore we can grow.”

Kramer, a former Carson City Treasurer and deputy state treasurer, said that many of the taxes in place are designed to grow with the state’s population. He cited property tax revenue, which increases as more houses are built, and sales tax revenue that increases as more people spend in the state.

“The revenue we get is based on economic development for the state and infrastructure comes out of it,” he said. “Taxes will increase as economic development grows.”

State Assemblyman PK O'Neill, the District 40 incumbent, said Nevada has been on the right track lately with respect to the economy and providing for its infrastructure.

“Nevada is still ranked by the Tax Foundation as the fifth friendliest business state in the country,” he said. “What the state needs to provide it has provided: A good business environment and the ability to attract new businesses to Nevada.”

Forbush focused his answer squarely on taxes and whether or not to raise them. He said he signed the taxpayer protection pledge, because he wants to be responsive to the will of the voters.

“The question here is, what do my constituents want? What do the constituents in Assembly District 40 want me to do?” he said. “If they were to give me their voice that they don’t want to raise taxes, then I’m going to say I’m not going to raise taxes. If they are lacking information, if we need to have a certain tax, then I can inform them there is no other way. However, raising taxes should be a last resort.”

On the issue of education, the views of the candidates varied.

O'Neill pointed to the efforts of the 2015 legislature to ensure Nevada students are equipped to succeed in a 21st Century economy.

“We put money into education through the distributive school accounts to fund public schools,” he said. “Then we took money for additional funding and put it into these grants to address the civic issues.”

O'Neill said the Carson City School District itself had access to $6.3 million dollars that provided technology tools to every student in the district.

“Every student is one-on-one now with Chrome books or iPads for technology,” he said. “They can access the internet and gain that information to perform in the 21st Century. That’s what we are giving to the students, that’s what we are giving to the state, and giving to the businesses that come here.”

Kramer, England and Forbush argued that Nevada’s education problem goes much deeper than funding alone.

“The problem of education is multi-faceted. It’s more than just a lack of funding,” Forbush said. “Nevada spends roughly $11,000 per year per pupil, and we’re ranked fiftieth.”

He said the neighboring state of Utah spends several thousand dollars less per pupil, but is much higher ranked than Nevada in its education outcomes.

“The question is what are they or other states higher ranked than us doing that we are not doing?” he said. “Can we look into their programs and adopt some of their good practices?”

England also referenced a country, Slovenia, as generating better math scores than Nevada.

“How much money does Slovenia have? Not a whole lot,” he said. “There’s a reason why we are behind Slovenia in math."

England said funding is not the issue with education. Rather, it’s delivery. And he blasted the state’s adoption of Common Core standards.

“We keep being told that we don’t have enough money for education,” he said. “We have the money, but it’s being spent poorly, and being spent incorrectly. Do you think it was cheap to start bringing forth Common Core? Was that a good way to spend our money? Of course it wasn’t. It was terrible, a disaster for our kids.”

England argued for more school choice options for Nevada parents, suggesting that Nevadans need to get over the fear of allowing free-market principles to be practiced in public schools.

“Free market is something that has always been taboo,” he said. “Bu if we interject free market and start having a little bit more money that goes into these different education centers, then we have a choice as parents who know more about our kids’ needs better than anyone else. That is going to be a better product for our kids.”

Both Kramer and Forbush considered a cultural problem in Nevada that has contributed to poor student performance statewide.

“It’s easy to blame culture, and it’s hard to define what can be done about it, but the responses I’ve gotten from teachers is that culture is a big reason why we can’t get good responses from the students,” Kramer said. “You have parents that care, you have students that achieve. You have parents who are sending their kids off to basically be baby-sat all day and you don’t get the performance you need.”

Forbush concurred, saying that parental participation in the education system is a critical component to student success.

“I look at education as a three-legged stool,” he said. “If you don’t have one of the three legs, it falls.”

He said the three legs are quality teachers, involved parents, and communication with students.

“Sometimes teachers are failing because they don’t have parents at home who are encouraging the student,” he said. “There are other problems we need to look at that do not involve shoveling money at education.”