The field of Cedar City Council candidates has been narrowed from 11 to five seeking three council seats.
The candidates originally included all three incumbents, Alan Hamlin, Dennis Johnson and Evan Vickers. But Johnson officially withdrew from the race on Oct. 18 because of complications connected with his employment.The three remaining challengers are Dale Brinkerhoff, Mitch Dettamanti and Walter Mammel. Vickers was the top vote-getter in the primary and Hamlin was second.
Johnson was seeking a second term after being elected to the council in 1987. He is US WEST's manager of network technologies. He said his work assignment takes him out of the area too often to continue on the council.
The two issues being most discussed are the Cedar City Downtown Redevelopment Project and the housing shortage for young married couples and students. All of the candidates favor industrial development and growth in an orderly fashion, seeking only clean industry that will provide higher wages for the area.
The first phase of the redevelopment project to build a 34,000-square-foot supermarket on Main Street, financed by the city, is closer to construction. It is this issue that most divides the five candidates.
The city approved a $1 million bond to start construction earlier this month, meaning the new council will be dealing only with future phases of the project.
Dale Brinkerhoff, plant supervisor at Southern Utah University, has lived in Cedar City for the past 25 years. He grew up in Glendale and moved to Iron County from Orderville, in Kane County.
Brinkerhoff was on the town council in Orderville and was chairman of the Planning and Zoning Commission in Kane County.
He thinks housing is the No. 1 issue for the community. "I'd like to see additional affordable housing made available and I want to continue with long-range water development," he said.
"I want to know what citizens think about redevelopment, but I don't have a big ax to grind," he said. He is concerned with the continuation of the project past the first phase. "We need to get the facts down on paper and see what we can realistically do financially before moving ahead with the project."
Mitch Dettamanti said he wants to give the private sector a voice on the City Council, a voice he says is not currently there. He believes there hasn't been good dissemination of information from the city to the public. He said concerns of the private business sector, as well as the public, have not been heard particularly regarding the redevelopment project.
"I disagree with redevelopment," said Dettamanti, "We need to get out of it right away." He said that even though the first phase is already approved, it will be a recurring issue that needs to be addressed and dealt with.
He believes redevelopment should go back to private enterprise. "The property would have been developed if the city hadn't been involved," he said.
Dettamanti said the housing issue must also be solved by private enterprise. "The city should stay out of the housing issue as much as possible," he said.
Alan Hamlin is urging voters to keep the momentum going by re-electing him to a second council term. He was first elected in 1987. He is a professor of business and finance at SUU.
Hamlin is on the Iron County Economic Development Executive Committee, the Utah Summer Game Executive Council and has been active in other community affairs since coming here in 1981.
He said the League of Cities and Towns has recognized Cedar City's economic development plan as the "best" in the state. "I want to return and keep our economic development plan rolling," he said. He pointed out that wages are up and fewer homes are for sale since the last election.
Hamlin pointed out that Cedar City was ranked in August in the top 10 percent of all cities nationwide in efficient spending of tax dollars. "We must continue to be as frugal as possible while we deal with the demands placed on city government due to future growth."
Walter Mammel, a retired manufacturing and research engineer, has lived in Cedar City since 1987. He has worked for Western Electric and Sales Corp. of America. Mammel said that if tax money was strictly limited to essential city functions, there would be little need for tax and fee increases.
He believes the redevelopment agency project has been a failure and objects to the city bonding further for the project.
Mammel said he is concerned with the vote of the school board and the county to give up funds to back up the redevelopment bonds in the emergency event the city can't pay back the debt. Mammel wants to make sure the practice will not jeopardize education or inappropriately use tax dollars allocated for another purpose.
He objects to the practice of issuing revenue bonds to avoid a public vote and then using tax money to service the bonds. He cites the Golf Course Clubhouse project as a case where this occurred.
Evan Vickers, a pharmacist, is seeking re-election for a second four-year term. He said he wants to be able to see the redevelopment project through using his experience to make sure that the best course is followed by the city.
Vickers has served on the airport board, the water board, the library board and on the housing committee. He says he acted as construction manager for the golf course expansion, which would have cost taxpayers thousands of dollars had the city hired a manager for the project.
Vickers said the private developer was not willing to redevelop the downtown area the way the city wanted it done. "We followed the only course we had available to us." He said that Phase II may not come about based on the bonding capacity of the RDA.
Vickers says the lack of adequate housing is not just a university issue. "We have tried to create new residential zones that will allow multiple unit housing to be built and not deter from the neighborhoods."