Thursday, March 28, 2024

Local candidates answer questions from community

Posted


CHELAN – Candidates vying for open seats in various offices in the Lake Chelan Valley took part in an open forum, co-hosted by Lake Chelan Chamber of Commerce, Thursday, Sept. 28 at Chelan High School Performing Arts Center. 

Chelan City Council

Position Six

Candidates are Incumbent Skip Morehouse and challenger 

Tim Hollingsworth.

Question: How do you promote economic growth yet maintain our quality of life here in the Chelan Valley. Some Chelan residents feel a little threatened with the economic vitality that’s happening right now.

Cameron “Skip” Morehouse: “We work with the Chamber of Commerce, we fund $425,000 a year right now for marketing, which is handled primarily by the tourism promotion group … we added about two and a half acres to Don Morse Park a few years ago. And so that greatly improved the park, and gave a lot more land space for people to use it.” 

Tim Hollingsworth: “I think it’s important to try and diversify our economy.  We have a lot of tourists; the tourist industry is where we’re seeing a huge growth and causing a lot of the traffic … I think we need to work with our planning and zoning codes to get some diversity in there to help maintain housing … diversifying the community, working with the Chamber, and trying to manage some of the impacts of the growth that we’re seeing are going to be key.

Question: What are your feelings on the Three Fingers, and how does that tie in to overall lake access?

Tim: “How did I guess that that question was going to come up?” Hollingsworth joked, “My thoughts on the Three Fingers are that frankly they’re not the prettiest piece of property on the lake and right now they are encumbered in a lawsuit … if they stay, I think we should leverage our public interest on that easement to make the best use of a private development. If a community wants a park there, I’m open to the idea, but I don’t think … given the fiscal and logistical constraints, I think that would be a very expensive undertaking.”

Skip: “The City owns the shoreline along that area … I think ideally it would be great as a park. Having a discussion with our lawyer last night, he says the first phase right now may last as long as five more years, and he said, ‘the city’s been waiting,’ and the city has to find out what the court’s going to do first.”

Position Seven

Candidates are Rachael Goldie and Ty Witt

Question: What do you see the purpose of the Chelan City Council, what role does it play and how are you going to contribute to it?

Rachael Goldie: “I think that mainly the role of city council is to make sure we’re spending our money wisely, that we’re doing things that the citizens are voting for, that the citizens are telling us they need … I think the council’s role is just to work with the public and then work with what we have in the budget, and look at where we can go from there and use the resources available to get there.” 

Ty Witt: “I see the council’s job as taking care of the citizens. And really the council oversees the administrators that run the whole infrastructure for our whole community … but we also direct policies that are going to go on within the city … I think the City Council needs to bring new ideas … most importantly I think listening to the people that elected you.”

Question: There are some, maybe many Chelan residents that feel maybe they’re losing some of their quality of life in Chelan, maybe to tourism. Share your specific ideas for regaining the small town character of Chelan.

Ty: “I spoke to council and I stressed that ultimately tourism is valuable to our community but I saw our lake and our citizens, our locals, as much more important. If any time that the decision were to come up in front of me where there was choice between the tourists and the citizens, it was always going to be the citizens.”

Rachael: “A few issues that I’ve been hearing, I think that vacation rentals is an issue that we need to seriously address, when we talk about quality of life in Chelan. We have a numerous amount of vacation rentals popping up and in order to manage how much that drives up the cost of living, and the nuisance – I’ve heard noise, garbage, illegal parking, things like that – I think we need to not only put structure in to that, but restrictions. We need to make sure that we’re getting what we need out of it, so if that’s more fees or what have you in order to do vacation rentals than that’s what we’ll do.”

Lake Chelan Community Hospital Commissioners

Position One

Contestants are Incumbent Mary Signorelli and challenger Jeremy Jaech

Question: What new trends in healthcare do you foresee that our new hospital is going to have to accommodate or adapt to?

Mary Signorelli: “We are looking at changing demographics and merging within our small community, and that’s in the form of patient needs and the integration and diversification of the caregivers. We have both of those things facing us, we have staffing of all levels, making sure we keep staff, then we manage the changes in medical payer systems emerging, the way in which the critical access hospitals and rural hospitals are reimbursed by federal and state government are going to be very crucial.”

Jeremy Jaech: “Medicare is pushing small rural hospitals like ours toward emergency care and rehabilitative care and trying to move patients out that require more extensive care than you can provide at a primary or secondary hospital like ours … and we have to figure out how to become a part of a bigger network so we can move our patients that need that care up into the network, then bring them back home for their rehabilitative care.”

Question: The design and construction of the new hospital is going to be a big challenge ... what background and experience will you bring to the commission to make sure that the project comes in on time, and hopefully within budget, meeting the design criteria?

Jeremy: “The UW builds essentially all of their buildings, with the exception of their stadium, using this GCCM (General Contractor Construction Manager) method … I was chair of the finance and asset committee which reviewed all of the capital projects using this method, so I know the strengths and weaknesses using this method. There are many pitfalls in GCCM, I’ve seen them and I have the expertise to make sure the hospital management is paying attention to those issues as well.”

Mary: “One of the things that’s happened over the last few months is that I have been involved as the chair of the commission with the getting the GCCM approved by the state. I have been on the interview team for the contractors … we have put together a team of professionals in order to oversee and work with us to make sure that things are done right with this committee … we have put together a good quality program to make sure that we work with them, and they give us the right information and they help us oversee this whole project. We’re not just going out there in the dark.”

Position Five

Contestants are Incumbent Phyllis Gleasman and challenger Jerry Isenhart

Question: What do you feel are the essential components to ensure financially viability for the hospital district?

Jerry Isenhart: “I think the most important thing that we do … have a business plan, that we’ve thought it out carefully. And we’ve asked the doctors and the staff for input to the probability as to the assumptions as we’ve put that plan together. Are these realistic and are they really likely to happen? You know, a lot is changing, the demographics of the valley are changing, and what can we really expect over the next five or 10 years in terms of population growth, property values? … we really need to work on whatever it takes to build patronage and usage of the facility as well.”

Phyllis Gleasman: “The main thing is oversight. We have to have a quality financial team on our administration, make them tuned in to what all the requirements are for making a viable hospital, stay on top of it. And yes, utilize everything that’s available in that hospital. An empty room does not pay the bills. We have to provide the services that are applicable to today’s constituents and provide the services that they need, and make them want to come to the hospital, rather than drive to another facility.” 

Question: Are you completely comfortable with the new hospital plan?

Phyllis: “You’re never completely comfortable with a plan, but it’s the best one we could have at this time. I’m comfortable with the team that’s been put together, I feel that they’ll do a great oversight with the project, and there’s a good communication going so that if there are any issues, they’ll feel comfortable coming to us with the issues so we can resolve them.”

Jerry: “I told Kevin Abel the other day that as I was looking through the minutes of the meetings and the activities going on, I sensed that there’s a new energy level at the hospital that I haven’t seen in a long time, I said ‘Kevin you must be doing something right,’ so I’m comfortable, but I’m not well enough inside the organization to really know that … we always have to have a discerning eye.”

Chelan Fire & Rescue District No. 7

Commissioner 

One position 

Candidates are Butch Sims and Phil Moller

Question: Chelan Fire and Rescue doesn’t look anything like it did six years ago, you’re running for a six-year term, what do you think it’ll look like in six years? What are your goals?

Butch Sims: “I think that Chelan Fire and Rescue is going to continue to do a lot of the same things, they’re going to continue to look on the community as their focus and to do great things. But I think we’re going to become more focused on Chelan’s people in that we’re going to hire more people from Chelan.”

Phil Moller: “It’s definitely changed a lot since I was with Chelan Fire and Rescue … I think that in10 years we’re looking at a department that hasn’t gone backward in any means. I’d like to see a stronger volunteer program, coordinated with the full-time folks. I think we need to look … at what direction we’re going with growth – I’d like to see a stronger coordination between the volunteers and full-time firefighters – see if we can’t get some new programs going in the department, just to build that volunteer base to offset the need for full-time firefighters.”

Question: Some of the changes you’ve seen at Chelan Fire and Rescue are full-time firefighters. Now we have six that we’ve received through a grant program, administration has made it clear that if we want to maintain our current staffing levels that we’re going to have to ask the voters to approve a levy lid lift. Are you in favor of that? If so, why?

Butch: “Are there tax payers in the audience? Do you support an additional tax?” he asked the audience, “one person does, the people have spoken … no.”

Phil: “If there is a way to retain that current level of participation within our ranks without having to go out to the public, I’d like to look at those avenues before having to go out asking for money to bring these employees on, or to bring these potential firefighters on.”

Manson Parks and 

Recreation 

Seat Three

Candidates are Lanny Armbruster and Ross Young *Ross Young did not attend

Question: Manson Parks has some ambitious plans for multiple capital projects … Grants will probably cover most of the construction ... however it’s going to take employees to maintain all of those improvements, how are you going to foot that bill?

Lanny Armbruster:  “If we get the Grants and get them in, the maintenance that we have – we have two good people and they do a good job – on the new stuff that’s coming in, maintenance wise, we’re not adding any mowing or anything like that. The work they’re doing is on Manson Bay, but that again shouldn’t increase maintenance … once we get the grants, you’re actually going to have less lawn to take care of. I think the maintenance is very important, and the people we have I think are very efficient.”

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