By Brendan Ulmer
Hutchinson Tribune Staff
HUTCHINSON—Incumbent Greg Fast and Kaden Winters, candidates for the Hutchinson City Council southwest district, struck very different tones on housing issues during a candidate forum on Thursday.
During the forum at Hutchinson Community College’s Stringer Fine Arts Center, Fast discussed the current progress being made in local housing, including the development of 36 new apartments at the Landmark Hotel, as well as Hutchinson Community Foundation’s funding commitments for infill housing.
Winters, a 20-year-old self-described member of the Revolutionary Communists of America, proposed the creation of city-owned, rent-controlled housing. Winters believes such housing would be a stepping stone for people to get out of poverty, as well as a place young people can go to move out of their parents’ home.
Housing, jobs
Fast said he believes the most important issue facing the city is getting jobs into the area, and getting the needed housing built to house the workers and broaden the tax base. He believes that part of this process is making Hutchinson more aesthetically welcoming.
“We have so much in our town to be proud of,” Fast said. “I think that the current Council is doing a good job, and we’re continuing to work on, again, the grass that needs to be mowed, policies that help with that, policies that help with blight.”
Winters said that he agrees with Fast that jobs and housing are the most important local issues, but thinks we should be more specific about the kind of jobs and housing we’re bringing to Hutchinson.
“We need jobs that get paid fair wages and housing that is affordable,” Winters said. “That’s why I believe we need city-owned housing with salary-based rent, and we need unionized jobs where workers have control over their workplace and over their wage.”
Fast took issue with the idea that the city needs to build its own housing.
“I totally disagree, I don’t think it’s in the city’s lane to provide housing,” Fast said. “We can provide incentives for people to build houses so that people can own their own homes.”
Approach to the budget
Winters said the city’s budget should go to meeting people’s needs, and not towards what he believes is big business exploitation.
“I would focus the city’s budget towards the things that people need, the people of Hutchinson. Not corporations that come here to use our resources and our people and leave us in the dust,” Winters said. “Those things are housing, food, and healthcare.”
Winters said he does believe in cutting some non-essential spending, and he specifically cited subsidizing Carey Park Golf Course as something he would favor cutting.
Fast talked about what the City Council has been trying to work on the budget, making cuts to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. He also highlighted the relationship he’s built with an Environmental Protection Agency representative, which he says he’s been able to use to save the city $200,000 to $250,000 on groundwater remediation.
Balancing priorities
Winters said that public safety should always be a top five priority for the council, but that there needs to be a shift in focus towards the revitalization of the city.
“I want to make Hutchinson the center of Reno County again,” Winters said.
Fast echoed the importance of revitalization while continuing to spotlight the relationships he’s made in office.
“I’ve met with the lieutenant governor, multiple occasions, and we have $13.5 million coming to our city on incrementally taxed financing of state tax dollars that are already there,” Fast said. “It’s no increase to our local taxpayers, because of relationships that we forge at City Council to invigorate Memorial Hall, the Cosmosphere, and the bottom floor of the Landmark Hotel.”
Making Hutchinson more attractive
Fast said there needs to be continual work on how Hutchinson promotes itself.
As the owner of a lawn care service, Fast said he has met many transplants from the coasts and from Denver who have moved here due to the relatively low cost of living.
He reiterated that he believes many of the problems are aesthetic.
“We’re working as a Council to clean up blight and make this town more attractive,” Fast said.
Winters said the city needs to invest heavily in sidewalks and other public infrastructure.
“We need to make it more inviting,” Winters said. “More green space, places to sit, like benches alongside sidewalks so that people want to get out, and not just go from A to B in their car.”
Homelessness
Winters said homelessness is one of the top priorities for any community, and that his city-owned housing plan would help combat these issues.
To tackle the drug issue around homelessness, Winters said Hutchinson should be working with the state and funneling money into rehabilitation programs.
“While it can be challenging, we must remember that these are people,” Winters said. “These are our fellow Americans, and it is our duty to help them.”
Fast echoed the importance of the issues of drug abuse and mental illness in leading to and exacerbating homelessness.
Fast talked about the coalition he created three years ago to work on the issue of homelessness.
“The chief of police is usually there, representatives from the Police Department, Sheriff’s Department, United Way, New Beginnings, all of us get in a room and try to figure out how to make progress on this problem,” Fast said.
Fast emphasized the importance of respecting the constitutional rights of the homeless while limiting their negative impact on downtown businesses.
Parks and trails
Winters said that while he enjoys the parks in Hutchinson and has many fond memories of them, they may have to be on the chopping block if a tough decision needs to be made.
“We have to make a hard decision sometimes of when we have to give up some of those parks for the things that are needed,” Winters said. “When people don’t have a bed to sleep in or don’t know if they’re going to have a warm meal that day, I think we might have to cut some of those trails. Not permanently, but it’s something I believe may have to be done.”
Fast said parks and trails are a quality-of-life issue, and that these parks, as well as the zoo, are a unique quality and draw for the city of Hutchinson.
The fact that Hutchinson has more acreage of parks than average for a city of its size, Fast believes, could be a sign of inefficiency, but on the other hand, people enjoy their neighborhood parks.
“If a neighborhood wants a park and they’re willing to help pay for it, I think we ought to consider that,” Fast said.