Georgene Lockwood, left, Carol Springer, right.

The two Republican candidates for Yavapai County Supervisor are Georgene Lockwood and Carol Springer. They started the debate, squaring off a little later than scheduled, at 3:10. Following is a transcript of the debate:

Opening Statement by Georgene Lockwood

Thank you, Jan, and thank you to all of those at Las Fuentes who invited us here... I'd like to begin with a quote. 'We have our disagreements, we Americans, we contend regularly and enthusiastically over many questions. These are important questions worth arguing about. We should contend over them with one another, it is more than appropriate, it is necessary. That even in times of crisis - especially in times of crisis - we fight among ourselves over things that we believe in. It is not just our right, but our civic and moral responsibility.' And those words were from John McCain, when he stood on the steps of the steps of the Courthouse here in Prescott during his Service to America Tour. These words are no less true when it comes to our local government. It is important and healthy when we have a dialog. Even strenuous argument about what is best for our beautiful county. And when candidates run unopposed, there is no dialog.

I am running first and foremost to create a choice. Let's be honest, I wouldn't be running against an incumbent in my own party, unless I believed there was a real need for change. That's why challengers in reelection primaries are born.

I am running first and foremost to create a choice. I am running because I and many in our county believe that we do not have a real voice in the current county government. We have been told too many times 'It's a done deal.' Well, that's not the kind of government I, or my supporters, believe we deserve. It's never a waste of time for an elected official to hear the people he or she represents. And by 'hear' I mean listen.

It's never a waste of times to test ideas and measure actions against the needs of experiences of your constituents. To paraphrase a recent presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, 'We do not need a ruling class, we need a servant class.' And I believe people should trump politics every time. In fact the slogan for our campaign is 'People over Politics.'

Now you probably want to know a little bit about me, because I'm a newcomer, I've never been in politics before. I've lived in Prescott for 15 years, 11 years in Williamson Valley. I moved here from the State of Connecticut, but I was born in New York City, in the burough of Queens. I am a Yankee. I have a degree in English, and Journalism. I was a newspaper reporter for a daily and an award-winning weekly. I have been a Corporate Communications Specialist for a major publisher, then an industrial corporation, and finally a high tech company. I had my own public relations and marketing company in Connecticut, I've been a freelance magazine writer, for consumer, trade and high tech magazines. I was an adjunct professor of journalism for my alma mater, Western Connecticut University, and I've even covered auto racing for the Associated Press. I am now the author of non-fiction books, I've written ten of them, and I've written five of the Complete Idiot's Guides... and some people joke that the fact that I've been writing books for Idiots explains why I'm running for office. But, honestly, I'm running because a lot of people asked me to.

My prescription for County Government focuses on five key issues. Number one for me is transparency and communication. As a professional communicator, I have a lot to offer in implementing better communication and openness between our county government and the people. I think there should be a yearly report card with performance measurements in the budget and elsewhere, and you should know our goals and whether or not we've met them.

I believe in more frequent town halls, I would revamp the website, I've already met with the head of MIN to work on it. Already? Ok, I'll just try to enumerate these, then.

Citizen Involvement is my second, Planning Revision is my third, Regional Cooperation is my fourth, and fifth, Eliminating Waste and Implementing Cost Savings Policies. I ask for your vote in the Republican Primary on September 2, and you can find out more about me at www.citizens4lockwood.com I look forward to your questions.

Opening Statement by Carol Springer

Good afternoon, everybody, thank you for coming today. I really appreciate the opportunity and it's nice to see some of my old friends. For those of you who don't know my background, let me give you a little of that. First of all, I've been in Arizona in 1969, I have 5 children, 9 grandchildren, and one and a half great grandchildren. Most of them live here in Yavapai County. I have been a real estate broker, retired now, for over 30 years, had my own small company here in Prescott, Springer Realty. Of course, I've been a lifelong Republican.

I first got involved in Politics back in 1989 when I ran for the State Senate. And you elected me then, and reelected me, and I served four terms in the Az State Senate. Then I was elected Arizona State Treasurer. After that, I elected as County Supervisor three and a half years ago, so I am now here to ask for your vote again, for reelection.

In five minutes, I can't tell you everything I've been doing in the last three and a half years. Normally that's what a candidate running for reelection wants to do, is tell you everything they've been doing. Since I don't have the time to do that, I would ask that you would take the brochure that you have here. Because what I've done in this brochure is put down some of the issues that I have been working on for the last three and a half years, and so you will see, that being a county supervisor covers a wide range of issues. I can tell you this just kind of an overall perspective. I am not young anymore, and I have children and great-grand children. And they live here. And I very, veru cncerned about wshat their is future in Yavapai County, in the wold. And that's why I am so intent on making sure that we plan properly to handle that growth. What that means to me is long range planning in terms of transportation, water issues, we are deaing with a long range capital improvements program for county building.s All of those issues, I think are extremly important in Yavapai County for us to be able to plan how we grow in Yavapai County.

It's imporatant that we make sure that we maintain our current culture, our way of life. So it's very important to me that we retain our history and traditions, and we make sure that as this growth occurs, that we still stay Prescott as we know it. And I think that it's certainly possible.

It's possible with good planning and I think the way you do that is to try to maximize the tax payer dollars. In other words, if you plan ahead, I think that you are not only doing a good job for future generations, but also saving taxpayer dollars.

So, I'm here to just tell you that what I think that I offer is experience, and leadership and hard work, and I think that that gets results.

Question from the Audience regarding transit:

Question: What is your specific priority and rationale for bringing transit to our area before the year 2011? You talk about growth and opportunities and your children but what about mass transit for all the people in the audience, what do you have in mind and how do you propose to make that happen for us?

Springer's Response:

I happen to be the Chairman of CYMPO, CYMPO stands for Central Yavapai Regional [Municipal] Planning Organization, that is our transportation group. We have, in the last couple of years, completed a transit study, so we are in the process of implementing a transit program. That has gone through a couple of years now of public hearings. It takes a long time to get a transit program going. It's been extremely important to us to do that. What we are starting now is what we call the Implementation Plan, in other words, how are we actually going to do this? And what we're planning first, is that we're planning a route that will encompass Prescott Valley to Prescott, and in the future, we will, I'm sure, expand that to Chino Valley and the Dewey-Humboldt areas. But, we think that there is a need, a need for public transit, so we're working very hard to achieve that goal.

Lockwood's Response:

I agree that there is certainly a need for transit. However, I do have some problems with the CYMPO regional planning basis. The figures that CYMPO is using, and all of the plans that CMYPO is making for the future is based on certain growth projections. And those growth figures are wildly different than the growth figures being used for water. And also wildly different than those being used by APS for future investment.

There are so different that the unincorporated areas of the county for the same time period and the same area, CYMPO projects 642% growth. And WAC expects double in growth, and APS is somewhere in there. So, one of the first things I will do, if I were elected is to totally reevaluate the basis for our regional transportation planning in general being done by CYMPO.

Springer's Rebuttal:

I'd just like to comment on that, simply because when we talk about a regional transportation plan, what we're talking about is representatives from Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, the County and ADOT, who have come together representing each of those communities and the unincorporated areas of the County, to make our regional transportation plan, which includes the transit. The idea is that this is a cooperative effort, CYMPO represents all of these entities, so when we have come together and approved a plan, it is with that regional cooperation. So a transportation is not enacted by one person.

Lockwood

Although the citizes have repeatedly asked for the TAZ data, which is the raw data that these projections were made on, we were unable to get them. So we are about to - several groups are about to file a Freedom of Information request, so we can actually look at the figures that compare so oddly to the figures for water. We're either planning for too many roads, or for way too little water, it's one or the other.

Question on Transit Financing

Question: What's your concept on the financing for transit?

Lockwood's Response

For transit. Well, there's a couple of different ways we can do it, some is taxational, I don't think that's going to be real popular right now. For example, the TIME initiative, I don't know if you're familiar with that, that seeks to raise the sales tax to support transportation for the State of Arizona is going to be on the ballot, and I don't think people are in the mood for that right now. So, actually, going forward with trasit, to be absolutely frank, this may not be the time. I don't know that we're going to have the money to do that.

Springer's Response

We received Federal funding for the transit, and we have quite a lot of money that has accumulated over the last few years to start a transit program. It is a reality, however, that a transit program never supports itself. In other words, if you charge a fee to ride the bus, that fee is never going to be enough to pay for the operation of the transit system. So, that's why I think it's always been a controversial issue, particularly in a small community. That is, to what extent should the public subsidize a transit system. So, I think at some point you have to come to a realization that transportation should be available to everyone, whether they are able to drive or not. The issue to me is that we all subsidize all of our transportation systems - that is, our roads, and our transit. So, it will be a combination of user fees, in other words, rider fares, federal dollars, state dollars and local contributions.

(no rebuttals)

Question Regarding Growth

Question: What are your proposals for slowing growth so that we can catch up with all these things that you're talking about?

Springer's Response:

First of all, I think the market has the best handle on that, in the sense that right now, we are kind of in a slowdown period. It has given us the opportunity to do a lot of things, for instance, right now we're in the process of building a new county building. As a result of the slowdown in the private sector, we're able to get the best prices from contractors who are looking for work to do work for us, so it's been a big benefit for the tax payer in that regard. Another thing with regard to growth, is I think we're very fortunate here in Yavapai County. That is, if you stop and think about it, we are not going to end up like a Phoenix type of sprawl area. Because we are bounded on our south, east and west sides by national forest. So we really have in our area some built in limitations on growth. So most of our growth here in this area is going to be to the north and to the northwest. And we know that, and that's why we need to plan for growth in those areas.

Lockwood's Response:

The free market is a market that is not subsidized. I believe that what we've had up until now is hyper-growth. That we've actually been fueling and subsidizing growth. How we do that is by building way ahead of what our needs are and not paying as we go, and taking out massive debt. So, I opposed these capital improvements at this time, it is a large scope, especially taking out a $52 million dollar debt, particularly at a time when we are in a downturn. Also, yes, contractor prices are down, but materials costs are up, and so I don't think that they got that much of a gain... (unintelligible)

(no rebuttals)

Question Regarding $50M Debt

Question: I know that the city is going to propose to the residents a capital bond and spend quite a bit of money on capital improvements. I wonder why the county just voted it's residents a tax iniative before they put us in debt $50 million dollars.

Springer's Response

That's an excellent question, and I'm glad you asked it. It's a different type of issue. When the city is considering going to the voters to pass a bond issue, that means one thing - it's a tax increase. Because there's always a tax payment associated with a voter approved bond issue. The bond issue that we have is not a tax increase, it is being paid from existing revenue sources, so it is not an increase.

Lockwood's Response

Well, there might not be a tax increase, however, the supervisors, and you may not know about this, the supervisors did go to the state legislature and ask for a half-cent increase in the sales tax cap. It did not pass, but Yavapai County was one of the three counties that was most strenuous in stressing this increase in the half cent sales tax. It did not make it through the legislature this year, but I'm thinking about moving ahead there are signs of declining revenue for that and other expenses in the county.

Springer's Rebuttal

That's an incorrect statement. The County Supervisor's Association as a group voted to support the question of the legislature to give counties the opportunity to increase the taxes, I was not one of those supervisors.

Lockwood's Rebuttal

I'm not going to argue, but after the meeting, if any of you would like to see an email from the head of the County Supervisor's Association, to that effect, I have it with me.

Final Statements

Lockwood's Final Statement

I've learned a lot, and I hope you have too, if you want to know where I stand on various issues, you can go to my website at www.citizens4lockwood.com. I've left fliers and cards and bumper stickers, so there's a lot more that I can't mention here. So, I will be here afterwards, I'm staying for the CD1 debate, and I'd love to talk with you afterwards.

Springer's Final Statement

Thank you again for letting us participate in this debate. Again, I just want to say that I think that I offer again, experience, leadership and hard work that gets results, and I again would ask you to please read about some of the things that I've been working on, and I hope that I can count on your vote in the September primary election.

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