Fiscal Court candidates debate development, privatization, civility

Nearly half of the Republican can­di­dates for the Clark County Fiscal Court were no-shows at the town hall forum on May 13, but a near-capac­i­ty crowd filled The Venue at Whiskey & Wiles to hear those who did attend.

Because so few of those vying for mag­is­trates’ seats attend­ed the debates, except for those for the 2^nd District, the ones who attend­ed had the floor to themselves.

Flynn in the 5^th

Interim Winchester City Manager Mike Flynn, who is chal­leng­ing incum­bent Magistrate Chris Davis in the 5^th District, was first up. In his open­ing state­ment, Flynn said some have crit­i­cized his cam­paign style, which he admit­ted was unconventional.

“I’ve had no sig­nage, no mail­ers, no door hang­ings, no oth­er typ­i­cal cam­paign adver­tis­ing,” he said.

Rather, he has told peo­ple who want­ed to donate to put their mon­ey toward some­thing good for the community.

“This has been an eye-open­ing expe­ri­ence,” Flynn said of the race.

He said he had been in city gov­ern­ment for 33 years, as an employ­ee and man­ag­er for Winchester Municipal Utilities, and had held two stints as city man­ag­er, but he had nev­er run for elect­ed office until now.

The first ques­tion Flynn was asked was whether he would lis­ten to con­stituents or fol­low only his per­son­al agen­da. He answered that he has nev­er had an agen­da of his own, and he has always been respon­sive to people.

Regardless of whether you can help them or not with a par­tic­u­lar issue, he said, “peo­ple want to know that you care” and that you have their best inter­ests in mind.

The sec­ond ques­tion was about pub­lic safe­ty and coun­ty finances.

Flynn said that dupli­ca­tion of city and coun­ty ser­vices can be cost­ly to tax­pay­ers. Although almost no one wants a merged local gov­ern­ment in Clark County, “mem­o­ran­dums and inter-local agree­ments” between gov­ern­ments can pro­vide a high lev­el of ser­vice at a low­er cost.

Perri Wilson, the mod­er­a­tor, not­ed that there were only two pre­pared ques­tions for the mag­is­trate can­di­dates, so she invit­ed the audi­ence to ask their own.

One ques­tion from Heather Penichet was why Flynn had said dur­ing an ear­li­er debate that he pre­ferred that devel­op­ment occur on the east side of Winchester, par­tic­u­lar­ly along the east­ern bypass and Ky. 627, rather than on the west side along U.S. 60.

Flynn said devel­op­ing the west side isn’t a “bad idea,” but it’s not “the right idea right now.”

Veterans Memorial Parkway has been built for at least a decade, and the state has pro­vid­ed fund­ing for rights-of-way to extend it to Boonesboro Road (Ky. 627), where large-scale devel­op­ment is already under­way. But the exist­ing part of the east­ern bypass hasn’t been devel­oped because it lacks water and sew­er ser­vice, so the coun­ty needs to get grant mon­ey for WMU to pro­vide the nec­es­sary funds to “open that up,” Flynn said.

Cora Heffner asked him how the coun­ty and city gov­ern­ments could have a clos­er work­ing relationship.

Flynn said mem­bers of the Fiscal Court and the Winchester Board of Commissioners used to meet reg­u­lar­ly, and that prac­tice needs to resume.

“I think that will encour­age some of the ideas that I think are very impor­tant” in regard to joint­ly fund­ed city and coun­ty ser­vices, he said.

Flynn said there has been more coöper­a­tion recent­ly between the new inter­im Judge-Executive R.J. Palmer and himself.

“I can say this: that the judge has been over in my office more in the last month than I’ve seen the [for­mer] judge in the last three years,” he remarked.

Moberly’s moment

Ben Moberly, can­di­date in the 3^rd District, also had the floor to him­self because his oppo­nent, school offi­cial Christy Bush, had a sched­ul­ing conflict.

“I’m cer­tain­ly not a politi­cian,” said the heavy equip­ment mechan­ic, who is also a first-time candidate.

Moberly said he would lead by “faith,” “show up,” and “work hard” with the team to do what’s best for the community.

Although she couldn’t be there because of her son’s senior hon­ors night, Bush also shared an open­ing state­ment in which she said that being an active, sup­port­ive par­ent was “the foun­da­tion” of being a good pub­lic ser­vant. While she must hon­or that “once-in-a-life­time com­mit­ment” to her fam­i­ly, she explained, she remained “ful­ly invest­ed in the issues” being discussed.

She encour­aged lis­ten­ers to reach out to her by email.

In response to the ear­li­er ques­tion about lis­ten­ing to con­stituents, Moberly said he encour­aged pub­lic input.

He said he had been reach­ing out to vot­ers on social media, and what he had learned was that peo­ple most­ly want things for their chil­dren, good roads, and for their offi­cials to “get along.”

He said the coun­ty should plan and pri­or­i­tize spend­ing needs and “work togeth­er to move the coun­ty forward.”

Friendly foes

Magistrate Ernest Pasley, who is seek­ing re-elec­tion in the 2^nd District, did not attend the debate, but both of his chal­lengers, Kelly Nisbet and Bryan Howard, did.

The two are old friends, and Nisbet said it was hard to run against some­one she has known and liked for many years.

“I still want to win!” she added.

The ban­ter between the two was light­heart­ed from the start. Nisbet began by say­ing she had decid­ed not to use her notes but to speak from her heart.

Howard brought the audi­ence to laugh­ter by ask­ing if he could use her notes.

Nisbet, a real estate pro­fes­sion­al, said Clark County is expe­ri­enc­ing growth, and with that growth comes oppor­tu­ni­ty and responsibility.

“We have to be smart” about deci­sion-mak­ing regard­ing growth, she said.

Howard, a farmer and retired fire­fight­er-emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cian, said he’s run­ning after his retire­ment because he still wants to give back to his community.

Responding to the ques­tion about lis­ten­ing to peo­ple or pur­su­ing one’s own pur­pos­es, Howard said one les­son he learned as a fire­fight­er was: “Remember who you work for.” Ultimately, it isn’t the fire chief or the coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive, he said, “You work for the peo­ple in this community.”

“So I’m going to lis­ten,” he said.

“That’s part of the job,” Nisbet agreed.

Howard said the coun­ty gov­ern­ment needs to do more through social media to keep the pub­lic informed.

When the audi­ence was asked for ques­tions, Jeannie Gwynne, a retired 911 dis­patch­er and Democratic can­di­date for 1^st District mag­is­trate, asked the two whether they would ever con­sid­er out­sourc­ing emer­gency med­ical ser­vices if it saved the coun­ty money.

“I think there’s a lot of things you’ve got to look at oth­er than sav­ing a dol­lar,” Nisbet said.

Although fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty is impor­tant, so is pub­lic safe­ty, she said.

“There is no way I would con­sid­er pri­va­tiz­ing an ambu­lance ser­vice,” Howard responded.

A pri­vate busi­ness, he said, “is in it for the mon­ey,” so “they’ll want to do it cheap,” and that could be cost­ly for patients and insurers.

As for the dis­patch ser­vice, if the city and coun­ty decide they no longer want to do it, it will go to the Kentucky State Police, and he believes it would be bet­ter to keep it local.

An audi­ence mem­ber, Charles Endicott, asked whether the can­di­dates would allow a coun­ty employ­ee to be dis­re­spect­ed in pub­lic, as he believed Perri Wilson, the for­mer emer­gency man­age­ment direc­tor, had been dis­re­spect­ed at a Fiscal Court meet­ing months ago.

“Not only no, but hell no,” Nisbet said.

She said that the inci­dent was one of the fac­tors in her deci­sion to run for pub­lic office. When that hap­pened, “I said, I’m in,” she recalled.

“I can tell you one thing, if I’m elect­ed mag­is­trate, it will not hap­pen on my watch,” Howard said.

He said that if the judge didn’t use the gav­el, he would stand up and speak up.

Endicott also indi­cat­ed he didn’t know who to believe regard­ing the county’s finan­cial condition.

Some offi­cials have said the coun­ty is in dire straits, while oth­ers have said everything’s fine and that it’s a cash flow prob­lem, not a long-term issue.

Nisbet said she didn’t think the coun­ty had “tubs of mon­ey,” but that it wasn’t on the verge of bank­rupt­cy. It was some­where in between.

“What we real­ly need … are sharp pen­cils and sharp minds and hard deci­sions, and to let the pub­lic know what the hard deci­sions are,” she said. “You need to know that we are doing what we are elect­ed to do.”

Howard said he had read an online arti­cle in which one coun­ty offi­cial said the coun­ty had $3.2 mil­lion, and in anoth­er arti­cle, a mag­is­trate said that if the Fiscal Court paid its bills, it would be $9,000 “in the hole.”

Clearly, Howard said, there needs to be more trans­paren­cy regard­ing the county’s finances.

Endicott, who asked about the finances, also com­ment­ed about plan­ning and zon­ing reg­u­la­tions in Winchester and Clark County being so strict that “it’s hard for peo­ple to devel­op anything.”

“This coun­ty can­not grow until we relax some of these rules,” he said.

Nisbet, who is a mem­ber of the Winchester-Clark County Planning Commission and a lob­by­ist for prop­er­ty rights in Frankfort and Washington, D.C., explained that the coun­ty must fol­low state laws, local reg­u­la­tions, and the com­pre­hen­sive plan. But because of the hous­ing “afford­abil­i­ty cri­sis,” it is impor­tant that devel­op­ers be able to prof­it from their investments.

“You are preach­ing to the choir when you are talk­ing about that,” she said.

“I’m on the same page as you are,” Howard said. “I would try my best to do some­thing about that.”

Scott Hisle is unop­posed for the Republican nom­i­na­tion in the 1^st District and will face Democrat Jeannie Gwynne in the gen­er­al elec­tion in November.

There is no Republican can­di­date in the 6^th District, where Democratic incum­bent Robert Blanton is unop­posed in both the pri­ma­ry and gen­er­al elections.