New Saint Andrews College hosted a forum Friday for participating mayoral and city council candidates. With less than two weeks remaining before the Nov. 2 elections, candidates were asked about their background, personal philosophies surrounding local governance and how they would approach the pressing issues in Moscow today.
The forum, which was presented before an unmasked audience of students from the college, featured mayoral candidates Art Bettge, Jim Gray and Barb Rathbun and city council candidates Steve Harmon, Hailey Lewis, Gina Taruscio and Kyrk Taylor.
Councilor candidate Harmon sought to highlight Moscow’s need to return to a “shared purpose and shared identity.”
“We need shared values; love, respect, tolerance and inclusion,” Harmon said. “It’s a given that we live in a town where the people here are different races, religions, cultures and national origins, and this is true for most cities in America. It’s been that way for many many years.”
Harmon added that the sense of unity in the community stems from a lack of “shared values” among individuals, going on to recommend that community members commit “to something greater than ourselves and not the pursuits of self-expression.”
Harmon also expressed his belief that masks were wholly ineffective against combatting COVID-19, going far as to insinuate that exercising with a mask was especially dangerous as it increased “bacterial load.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studies have shown the effectiveness of masks in preventing viral transmission, with no evidence of a bacterial buildup.
As a health professional himself, Taylor focused his speaking time on addressing the importance of being vaccinated against COVID-19.
“I know that these vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective, and they can reduce the severity of illness,” Taylor said. “If you look out right now and look at the hospitals, a lot of our beds are limited, our capacity to hold patients is limited because of COVID patients. We’re finding that a lot of those folks who are hospitalized haven’t been vaccinated, so something that we just continue to advocate for is vaccination.”
Taylor said that he would also put a significant focus on instituting greater transparency in the governing process, specifically working to disseminate research provided to the city council in a way that is easy to understand for the average Moscow resident.
“That way … we can make a collective decision that doesn’t cripple us financially, that leaves us looking better in the future.”
City council runner Taruscio made it clear that she would be working to ground city council with transparency and community interaction.
“I’m going to institute, what I call office hours, by which I will be two hours anywhere once a week, and anybody and everybody can come talk to me,” Taruscio said. “I don’t care what the agenda is … I think I will continue to create the ways for people to be heard, that’s so important in our government right now because really government is best right next to you.”
During her remarks, city council candidate Lewis addressed the issue of affordable housing in Moscow.
“I don’t think that the city wine-and-dining developers, I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Lewis said, adding that implementing a low threshold for development costs and revising single-family zoning stipulations would be preferred solutions for Moscow’s housing issues. “I don’t think we need to be going and soliciting developers, that’s not the right place for the city to be spending its energy.”
Turning to the city’s budget, Lewis said she would use her professional experience in researching healthcare price transparency and apply it to employees working for the city to maximize benefits with the financial base that is available.
Mayoral candidate Bettge and city council candidates Lewis, Taruscio and Taylor all stressed the importance of addressing Moscow’s insufficient aquifer situation now rather than later. Mayoral candidate Bettge couched the issue as being one of fiscal responsibility.
“If Moscow runs out of water, that is not fiscally responsible because we’re all dead in that nonexistent water,” Bettge said. “We need to do the investment now because it’s going to be a decades-long project securing alternative water sources. The aquifer continues to go down. From my understanding there is another 100, 200 years’ worth of water down there, no reason not to get ahead of it now. All the costs are not going to be as high as they will be in 10 or 20 years.”
During the mayoral section of the forum, candidates Bettge and Rathbun both characterized Moscow as a “municipal corporation.” In Rathburn’s remarks, she depicted her mistrust in the current government, one that she alleges is more concerned with profiting off the community than seeing its members as human beings.
Bettge’s characterization was used to illustrate his perception of the mayoral position. “Moscow is defined in Idaho as a municipal corporation,” Bettge said. “And like all corporations, it’s structured much the same. The mayor fills the role of CEO, which means the mayor implements the will, the policy, using the funding provided by programs to the Board of Directors, which is city council.”
Straying from the corporate metaphors, mayoral candidate Gray detailed how his perception of the mayoral position was influenced by his background in the Coast Guard, stating that his prior position allowed him to mediate over tense political situations.
“As a mediator, you facilitate settlements between disputing parties,” Gray said. “After you get the settlement, you try to encourage correction. You are kind of like the referee, but you also interact with individuals or groups to keep the situation settled.”
Gray said that much of these tensions come from “selective respect,” where individuals only choose to be gracious on a conditional basis depending on one’s race, sex, religion, or political affiliation. For Gray, the solution for this issue of polarization was fostering greater community interaction.
Bettge and Rathburn held contrasting views on the importance of art within the Moscow community.
“We can put lots and lots of money into infrastructure, and we do,” Bettge said. “Eventually we come to a point where we look like every other municipality in the United States. What sets us apart and makes us unique is the arts … we have to maintain that as part of our overall city structure.”
Rathburn instead believes that the current Moscow City Council is openly refusing to sacrifice the “golden cow” of the arts, a refusal that Rathburn said was, among other things, evidence of the city itself being deemed more important than the residents.
Elections to replace two-term Moscow Mayor Bill Lambert and the three city council positions will be held on Nov. 2.
Royce McCandless can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @roycemccandless