School funding, Air B&B, parks and recreation funding and downtown Auburn were some of the hot topics Wednesday night at the Auburn Chamber of Commerce’s mayoral candidate forum.
All of the questions the candidates answered were submitted by audience members at the forum.
The chamber allowed the audience to write questions for the candidates which Brian Keeter, the moderator, then read to the candidates. Each candidate had two minutes to respond to each question.
The City and the University
Several questions the candidates were asked touched on the relationship between the City of Auburn and Auburn University.
The consensus from the candidates was that the relationship is necessary and vital to the city in order to ensure the growth of the city. The candidates did have varying ideas on how that relationship has worked in the past and how it should continue to develop.
“Dr. Leath has hired John Thompson to be a liaison to the City,” said Ron Anders Jr., Ward 2 Councilmember and Mayor Pro-tem. “John’s role is to be all things about the City. He’s supposed to know everything that’s going on. I look forward to working with John and I applaud Dr. Leath for making that hire.”
Brittany Cannon Dement, a teacher who is seeking the office, said the relationship is important not only because it provides jobs to citizens but because the students provide a significant amount of revenue, mainly in the form of sales tax, to the city. She said it is important to make the students feel welcome and included.
David Hill, a consultant for local governments and other businesses, said he would like to see the City and the University meet more often. He believes that President Steven Leath is willing to work with the city.
“The University is definitely our life blood,” said Lindburgh Jackson, community activist in Northwest Auburn. “We need to involve our students. We need involved the citizens. We need to do this orderly. We need to listen to our citizens as we listen to our University.”
Richard Speake, a small business owner, said the City and the University have been tied together before the University gained its namesake. Speake added “what is good for one is good for the other,” referring to the actions the City and the University take that may not directly involved one another.
Downtown Auburn
The candidates responded to several questions that centered around several issues related to downtown Auburn, such as the new height ordinance and competing with Tiger Town, in Opelika, for retail sales tax. Auburn lost the Tiger Town development to Opelika.
Anders said he supported the rise of the height ordinance to 75 feet when the ordinance came to the City Council, and he will continue to support it. He believes the hotel the new height ordinance is likely to bring to downtown will strengthen the area in terms of looks and what it provides to the community as a whole.
The loss of sales tax revenue to Tiger Town is significant, Anders said, he also assured the audience that the City did not give up.
“We’ve invested in our mall,” Anders said. “Because of the whole group and the City’s investment, we have activity at the mall. The shopping centers around the mall, because of the City’s investment have been repurposed.”
Downtown is a unique environment and cannot be looked at as a single place to compete with Tiger Town for the sales tax revenue, instead shopping centers around Auburn must be invested in in order to bring more sales tax revenue, Anders said.
Dement said she would support brining the height ordinance back down to 65 feet because she would like to see the new buildings match what is already present downtown, not add a new design that doesn’t match the rest of the older buildings.
Dement is a big supporter of small businesses, especially since her father was a small business owner as she told the audience. She wants Auburn’s businesses to grow.
“We do have the commercial incentive rebate program and what that does is it rebates a portion of sales tax that business pay in,” Dement said. “This is a great way to bring in businesses. However, I’m not in support of bringing in business that are in direct competition of business we have here, especially small businesses.”
Hill said the City government needs to ensure they are working for the citizens of Auburn, not just large, out-of-state developers.
He is also a supporter of shopping within Auburn instead of driving to places outside of Auburn, such as Tiger Town.
“If you stop and thought maybe I can find what I need here,” Hill said. “Let’s encourage people. Let’s have a major public relations campaign to make people think, tell people keep your dollars at home working in our community.”
Jackson said that the City needs to stick to the 65-foot height ordinance. He said he thinks the City moved too quickly and did not take the time to educate the public before the City Council made a decision.
Overall, Jackson does not think downtown is Auburn’s sole answer to Tiger Town. He wants to focus less on downtown Auburn and more on surrounding areas to improve all of Auburn
“We need to look for land for future growth to compete with Tiger Town,” Jackson said. “Something maybe not so close within downtown Auburn. And using a transit system that will work for our students and for the under privileged.”
Speake suggested that all of the tall buildings don’t have to be downtown. Speake said since the City has put a lot of resources into Opelika Road, they could look to putting taller buildings there.
He also wants to make it easier to welcome new business to Auburn.
“Let’s start attracting some new industries for one,” Speake said. “I don’t understand how some community worldwide have figured this stuff out already and we’re still behind.”
Jordan Langdon, the Auburn student running for mayor, was unable to attend the forum. Keeter read a statement from Langdon during the opening statements before the candidates took questions.
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Elizabeth, senior in journalism and political science, is the community editor for The Plainsman
