JACKSON, Wyo. — Four candidates are jockeying for two open seats on Jackson’s Town Council, and each stated their case at a voter forum at the Teton County Library on Oct. 7.
Incumbents Jonathan Schechter and Alyson Spery were joined by former Councilwoman Jessica Sell Chambers and new candidate Gabe Koerber to field questions from a panel of reporters. Candidates discussed topics including immigration enforcement, Flock camera surveillance, large-scale developments, parking and more.
Below, see one key quote from each of the candidates, presented alphabetically:
Chambers: “I’ve definitely highlighted the fact that there’s a lack of transparency in our processes. … The process with the [90 Virginian Lane project] was not transparent, things were not done above board, [and] they were having private conversations with the developer behind closed doors that no one has ever seen, there are no meeting minutes, nothing. We have no idea what was talked about between elected officials and these private developers. … I made a public records request — it cost me $500. Is that transparent, to pay $500 to get records about a public project where the voters have paid $30 million and they’re being asked to spend another $15 million for a project that ultimately is not going to be affordable for most people? Is that transparent? I don’t think that’s transparent.”
Koerber: “Somebody once said, ‘Those who will sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.’ That was used in a slightly different context, but I think it applies very well for Flock. Just because our police force is underfunded does not mean that we should all give up our privacy on our public streets. There’s a difference between [license plate readers] in government-owned vehicles and a private company who sets up their cameras on public grounds and monitors everybody who goes by and stores them in a database where you’ve got histories and tons of records, tons of proof now, of other departments seeing abuse and misuse of them. … All I can say is that whoever vandalized these cameras, spray paint is very easy to remove. There are some other ways that might have been more effective, there are backup batteries in there, things like that — not that I know anything about that. We just don’t need Flock cameras. What we need is a properly funded police force and a police force that can go out and do their job and is not held back in regards to doing their duties by certain policies that keep them from being effective and keeping our town safe.”
Schechter: “In order to understand why we’ve got the problem that we have, we need to go back to the recession. We started revising and coming up with the underlying plans that we are now facing … in 2010. That was the bottom of the recession. At that time we were worried that our tourism economy and our economy in general wasn’t going to rebound, so we made a couple of decisions: one was in favor of the environment, to pull a lot of density into the town … We have a lot of regulations right now that encourage massive development. So, in the short run, we need to take a closer look at the proposed developments to understand whether they are, in fact, appropriate. Longer term, what we have to do is go back and fix the [land development regulations] that were appropriate for 2012 that are not appropriate for the economy and the pressures on our community today.”
Spery: “What we have discussed is the process in which we go about providing taxpayer resources to nonprofits that provide valuable community services. I have wanted to look at that process and perhaps reallocate it to a community board that would make those awarding decisions. Essentially, I think the Town has created a granting program with taxpayer dollars and because of our funding mechanisms at the Town, we don’t have a set amount of money that we’ve assigned that we can work with to support health and human services in our community. That, to me, doesn’t feel like responsible spending of taxpayer dollars. I have worked in nonprofits for years, [with] some of the organizations that the Town has funded for years. I value very much the work of our health and human services organizations. I’m just concerned about the way in which we allocate funding to them.”
See the whole forum unfold in this video recording:
These candidate forums are presented by the League of Women Voters of Wyoming, Teton County Library, the Jackson Hole News&Guide, KHOL Radio and Buckrail. News&Guide Managing Editor Kyle Leverone moderated the conversation, and questions were posed by Buckrail’s Hannah Trask, KHOL’s Evan Robinson-Johnson, and Alex Viveros with the News&Guide. Early voting is now open and Election Day is Nov. 3.
