Candidates for the at-large position on the Thomasville City Council Kevin Glass and Roy Campbell outlined their positions during one-on-one interviews conducted the week before the Election on November 8, 2005
The challenger looking to unseat the incumbent in that position is Kevin Glass, owner with other members of his family of Battery Source stores and other real estate investments. Glass was instrumental in helping to found the Business Action Council. The BAC started as a focus for business owners in the community to protest what they saw as unfair and arbitrary building a zoning issues early in 2005. It quickly grew into a regular forum for city and county public affairs to be discussed. Organized as a non-profit and non-partisan organization, many of its members worked hard to find candidates to run for election to the Thomasville City Council. Glass was the only person to successfully be a candidate.
--In the interview, Kevin Glass was asked what were the major issues that people talked to him about, and he said, "The biggest problem with the city now is getting the city council to listen to the people, the average person, and react to what the average person wants." He also said, "Building issues is the top issue I keep getting. For residents, the paving of the streets is a big issue."
--Glass said, "You need more town hall meetings to listen to people, you need to insure people come to the meetings, encourage them to put their input into the meetings. You also need to be on the streets and talk to people and know what's going on in the community." Glass said the workshops and meetings of the city council needed to be better scheduled so people could come them.
--Paving streets is a major issue with Glass and "there needs to be consideration of what the long term cost is of paving a lot of these streets we already have." Asked how he would move the pace of paving up, Glass said, "You can get grant money that come in. I'm not to familiar with all of that. Hopefully, I can get up to speed on that."
--Asked about how to improve city and county relations, Glass said consolidation was a possibility, but, "I don't see actual consolidation of the two governments for a long time. But there has to be cooperation of the two working together. I really wish the ESA would have worked." Asked what happened there, Glass said, "I thing there were a lot problems with that. I'd hate to be pointing fingers at people. It was something that a lot of people involved would have wished worked." Asked if there were problems "on the ground" at the ESA, or was it higher up at the city council and county commission level, Glass said, "I think it was all higher up rather than on the ground. Management needed to be looked at closer and managed closer." Asked if the city and county could try again to have a consolidated emergency services agency, glass said, "I don't know what the practicality is of that actually happening is. I really wish it could. When you have emergency services - fire and ambulance service - it really makes sense to get those two together and use some of the same people for different jobs."
--About finances in Thomasville city government, Glass said, "From the things I was given when I signed up to run and from some of the stuff we have been able to dig up, it kinds of leads to more questions. From the appearance, from the outside, everything looks to be run pretty well." Asked about the importance of the various enterprises the city is involved in, Glass said, "There again, you really have to get in and analyze and have more information than what's really on the surface.. When you look at the surface of all that, it looks real good from a financial standpoint, but you still have to get into the nuts and bolds of it to find out." Glass said, "I think the city has done an excellent job of planning, but they haven't done a good job of explaining to the citizens what that plan is. If everyone knows what the plan is, then we can all work together to get to the plan. But I don't think the average person knows what the plan is. We need more input into the decision making process." Asked how that would be accomplished, Glass said, "Getting people motivated is a hard thing. I think that if you ask people enough, they'll help you. I think we need to ask people to come to city council meetings and participate in the decision making process."
Roy Campbell has been the member of the at-large post of the city council for 12 years. He came to Georgia from his native Alabama first to Macon as a car dealer, then buying Chevrolet dealership in Thomasville.
--Asked what were the major issues that people were talking to him about, Campbell said, "Most of the people I talk to are pleased with the way the city is run. They like our police department, our fire department, they like the way our cable system is run and our Internet system. They are pleased that we have low utility rates. For the last seven years we haven't had any city property tax. When you get a tax bill, it is a city school tax, plus there is a fire tax that we inherited from the Emergency Services Agency. The fire tax doesn't even pay for half of what it costs to run the fire department."
--Campbell said, "Our revenue budget, and we're running pretty much on it, will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 94-million dollars. About 600-thousand dollars comes from the fire tax. We get some from sales tax money, but that all goes to recreation." Campbell said, "We do about 45-million dollars a year on electricity sales. We're looking at a pretty substantial surplus this year and have for several years. We're in good financial condition."
--Asked how much debt the city had, Campbell said, "To the best of my knowledge . . . our total debt - outside of the cable system - is something in the neighborhood of 16-million dollars. Our cable system cost us 10-million dollars by the time we had it up and running and the cable all run around. It is showing a profit and has been showing profit. Today we owe about 15-million dollars on the cable system. We've been paying down about a million dollars a year. The rest of our debt, including all our vehicles, is in that 16-million dollars. We're current with all of that and our goal each year is to reduce it by about 3-million dollars." Campbell said there was enough money held in trust by the city to pay off all lease obligations, but "the city is making 4-and-a-half percent interest on that money and paying the leases is costing less than that, so we're making money."
--Campbell said it was a good thing the city was involved in the cable television business, "We're helping to keep cost down for the citizens." Campbell said if the city was not in the cable business, "The competition in the city - MediaCom - would be charging close to 80-dollars for what they are charging 50-dollars a month for now." Campbell said part of the 10-million dollars to build the cable system was used to help build the Internet system. He said other cities in the area paid Thomasville to provide Internet service for them.
--Asked about issues involving the building department and zoning, Campbell said the city had problems with several of the recent heads of that department, acknowledging that they had the knowledge to do the job, but maybe not the "necessary people skills." Campbell said under a longtime department head, some of the building and zoning regulations were not followed exactly and that the several department heads that came after attempted to bring compliance back, causing some consternation. He said, "There are times when it's not black and white - sometimes it's grey and we need to use some reason on that." Campbell said the city was looking for a person to fill the position of head of the building and zoning department, "but we'll be very careful who we put in there."
--Campbell said he was very proud of the work the city was doing in rehabilitation of neighborhoods that faced difficulties in maintaining good housing, "I think it is going to be better." Campbell said the city would continue to work with grants and private organizations to build better housing.