PEA RIDGE — Why do you want to be mayor? We’ve accomplished a lot of things over the years I’ve been in office. We have a lot of opportunity. Yes, we have a bad economy, but with my experience, we can get over that. I think there’s business out there we can attract. I want to help us grow and our community grow.

Why should someone vote for you? I think I’ve proven myself over the years with things we’ve accomplished. I’ve stood by my work. I feel like I’ve got the experiece and have a network established with local, state and federal officials. If we need the help, we can go get it.

What do you hope to accomplish? We have a lot of things I hope to accomplish. There’s continued business grown that we need to see - for two reasons, for the tax base for the city and the schools.

There are opportunities to attract small industry.

I don’t think we’ll attract large; that’s not an opportunity for us.

I want to continue the street improvement program and the changes in the drainage. I want to see the development done much better. We’re working on a municipal storm system. There are new federal regulations coming into play in the next few years and we need to start getting things in place for that. We’re already in the process. Tony (Townsend, city building official) is going to classes. We have to get ready for that because they’re are going to be a lot of regulations.

Also, there are projects with the water/wastewater plant we’ve been working on for a while. We need soembody that’s got the experience and knows where we’ve been and what we need to do.

Do you have a specific agenda? I think if I had had anything specific. it would be community development and business development.

What are the sources of revenue for a city - for Pea Ridge? We have a 1-cent city sales tax; we have a 1-cent county tax.

We get turnback from the state. Also, Act 833 state turnback for the Fire Department (that’s insurance turnback). Also, building inspections, fire dues, impact fees.

The city has a budget of about $2.25 million not including the Water/ Wastewater Department which brings the budget to about $4.7 million.

What is your experience in managing a budget of that size? Well, I’ve got about 16 years experience managing that. Before, I was working with projects with Wal-Mart to manage project budgets.

The city has about 30 employees, who report to various department heads, who report to the mayor. What people management skills do you have? I was in project mangement for Wal-Mart;

just overall skills I’ve learned over the years in the office. I think I have good people relationship skills and good communication skills and know what needs to be done.

What do you believe is the job description of the mayor? That runs anywhere from helping an elderly couple with trash pickup issues, to working with engineers on multimillion dollar water/wasterwater treament plant, road projects - it’s a gamutof everything. There’s nothing you won’t face.

What are your plans for the various city departments?

Water/wastewater: What we’re working on right now is a lot of rehabs with the old infrastructure - old sewer lines, old water lines that are old galvanized pipes we’re replacing to clear up rust and water pressure issues; and continued leak detection - we’re down now to about 20 percent maybe average water loss, which is great.

Streets: Continue the overlay program and also working on drainage to help keep what we’ve overlayed in great shape.

Any area we’ve got where there is water standing on a road, is a problem. It causes problems with deterioration in the subgrade. We’re patching, repairing and doing general overall maintenance. I think we’ve been doing a real good job on that so far and continue as we get funds available.

Parks: Of course, we’ve added Givens Parks. The Parks Commission is working real well on that. We want to improve equipment as we can. Equipment is so expensive, it takes a while to get anything done..

Library: We’d like to be able to see it expand.

I think we’ve got a really good library for our size, but we want to continue to improve it with possibly adding more computers.

We’re adding books all the time ... All this has to be done in conjunction with governing body - the Library Board. That’s their responsibility. Mine is to support them and give them the tools to make it possible.

Police: We just expanded into a building now that actually gives them a Police Department. We want to expand with training and the addtiaional equipment they need; to keep their cars functioning and in good working order.

I know they’re working on some different systems on evidence tracking. Here again, my job on that is to support the police chief in providing him with tools he needs.

Fire/EMS: We’ve combined the two this past year, and we’re working towards a full-time fire/EMS.

We’d like, at some time, to be an advanced life support system. Now, we’re up to staffing the office seven7 days a week and have better response during day especially during work week when other volunteers are at work. It takes a lot of money to get to that. We’ve got the eequipment, we’ve got the building and we need the staff funding to make that go full-time.

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I think where we are now in the city, it’s not time for someone new. It’s time for someone who has the experience who knows what we’re dealing with, who’s built a relationship ... to make things continue to happen. There’s a lot of behind the scenes work that has to be done. We’ve got an open door policy. City Hall is open for people to come in.

It can’t be just me, it’s got to be the whole community working together.

News, Pages 7 on 09/29/2010