9 candidates attend forum

By KENNETH HART
The Independent

CATLETTSBURG September 25, 2008 10:45 pm

— Nine of the 13 candidates running for the six slots on the Catlettsburg City Council on Thursday answered questions on a variety of issues affecting the city, from economic development to smoking at council meetings.
Randall Peterman, Jim Epling, Charlie Caperton, Sue Groves, Charles “Randy” Salyers, Steven “Jeremy” Spears, Ronald “Kevin” Stanley, Don Wellman and Julius “Dee” Young all appeared at a candidates’ forum at Catlettsburg Elementary School sponsored by The Independent.
Peterman, Caperton and Young are all current council members. Two other incumbents, David Marushi and Tim Thompson, did not participate in the event. The other current member of the council, Phillip Caldwell, is not seeking re-election.
Two others seeking election to the council, Fred Childers and Paul “David” Conley, chose not to participate in the forum, which drew an audience of about 50.
Independent Managing Editor Mark Maynard moderated the event. Panelists were Independent staff writer Carrie Kirschner, WSAZ-TV reporter Randy Yohe and Ted Robinson, news director for WLGC Radio.
The forum was the second of two question-and-answer sessions for candidates running for Catlettsburg city offices. Mayoral candidates James Allen Lambert, Pauline Hunt, Billy Cornette and Lonnie Ashley appeared at a separate event on Tuesday.
The atmosphere at Thursday’s forum was mostly congenial and the candidates agreed on many issues. All of them said they favored continuing with the city cleanup and beautification program initiated by the current council.
Several also said they supported the development of a riverfront park, although they acknowledged that a legal dispute over property along the river could hinder the project.
Caperton, 37, asset protection coordinator at the Ashland Wal-Mart, said he believed the biggest challenge facing the leaders of the Gate City was shoring up the town’s basic economic infrastructure. One way to accomplish that, he said, is to bring in more jobs by making the city more attractive to prospective employers.
“Catlettsburg is a great town. We don’t need to change it. We need to improve it,” he said.
Wellman, 73, who resigned as mayor in January after approximately a year in office, said city officials need to press the owners of buildings in downtown Catlettsburg to make improvements to their properties. That, he said, would help make the city more attractive and might entice more businesses to locate in the downtown business district.
“I think it’s time that we start forcing the issue,” he said.
Salyers said Catlettsburg has one element that’s usually attractive to businesses — plenty of traffic. He also said one of his goals as a council member would be to work toward more harmonious relations between the mayor and council.
“We have to put trust back in our government and work together as council and mayor,” Salyers said. “I think I could bring a different perspective to the council.”
Peterman, 52, a machine shop employee seeking his fifth term on council, agreed that relations between city officials had been somewhat strained and that efforts needed to be made to improve them.
“It seems like lately, we’re taking two steps back,” he said. “Everybody’s going to have to move forward.”
Epling, 51, an employee of the state Department of Libraries and Archives, said the council needs to make every effort to find out what happened to the city’s financial records from prior to 2006 that were recently found to be missing.
He said those records were important to the city from a historical standpoint, and the fact that they disappeared ought to be cause for concern.
“These are permanent records,” he said. “If you want to get a feel for what’s going on in the city, then you’re going to want to look at those records.”
Even though he’s a smoker himself, Stanley, 44, a lube and oil technician with an auto dealership, said he’d be in favor of banning smoking at council meetings, something that’s allowed in few towns other than Catlettsburg.
Stanley also said he thought Catlettsburg citizens should have had the right to vote on whether to allow limited alcohol sales, rather than being forced to accept the results of last year’s county-wide “moist” referendum.
Spears, 33, an engineer with Special Metals Inc. and a lieutenant with the city’s fire department, said he believes more needed to be done to involve youth in city government. He said a couple of ways this could be done would be through the establishment of a “youth city council” that would work with the council in an advisory capacity, and by forming a group of youngsters to paint a floodwall mural.
Young, 76, who was appointed by then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher to fill a vacancy on the council and later ran unopposed in a special election for the seat, said he had spoken to Boyd County Judge-Executive William “Bud” Stevens regarding the tax hit the city is going to take as the result of the state purchasing an entire block of downtown properties to build the new Boyd County Justice Center.
Stevens, Young said, “is sympathetic to our cause” and informed him the county was willing to help if it could.
Groves, 35, a homemaker, said she decided to run for city council because she was concerned about a lack of recreational opportunities for young people.
“My main goal is to try to get something for the youth of Catlettsburg,” she said.
KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.

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