Nick Gosnell (00:00):
In studio with us this morning, Jon Richardson, he's running for the Northwest district seat on the Hutchinson city council. Good morning, Jon.
Jon Richardson (00:06):
Good morning, sir.
Nick Gosnell (00:07):
All right, so everybody has an issue. That's the reason they're running. So what city policy was the one that made you go, you know what, I think city council is something I probably should do.
Jon Richardson (00:18):
There's a number of policies and issues. My primary background was getting involved a few years ago in regards to development and development issues. Things that I saw were costing us here in Hutchinson, that it doesn't cost me to develop in Wichita or McPherson or Newton. And that's where I started about a year and a half ago. I got onto a nonprofit board and a lot of other issues came up that I noticed, it's kind of a holistic issue where it affects a lot of other areas of our city, and it was a heavy decision to try to run for city council.
Nick Gosnell (00:50):
The thing is that I think people think for whatever reason that if you win a seat on a board or in government, that all of a sudden that changes what you have to do for a living. And let me tell you anything basically beneath Congress, that isn't the case. You're not getting, you're not getting paid to do this.
Jon Richardson (01:13):
Yes, no. There's been a couple of surprises in regards to running for city council or campaigning. I'm new to this. I've never won an election. I've never lost an election. Uh, one thing is the non-partisan nature and honoring the nonpartisan nature of running for city council. I try to attend different events of different political parties. It's difficult with some planning and zoning meetings falling at the same time. But I think it's important to honor that, even though it may risk me losing some votes with some political affiliations. The other surprise has been misinformation or misinterpretation. I've learned a lot better on how to communicate with people. I've heard people say things such as, I'm all about the rental registration and inspection program. I'm not...it's on my Facebook page. Uh, I do say, if something is presented, a city council needs to be driven or interpreted by the landlords and brought to the table. There are a lot of landlords that want to see better housing inventory. I'm not insinuating that my counterpart does not have nice housing inventory. They've invested in the community. They spend a lot of money in the community. It's not fair to them. I know there's a house near where I live that's extremely respectable and we need to encourage more of that in our city.
Nick Gosnell (02:25):
So, do you currently owe any obligations to any taxing entities for any years prior to this one?
Jon Richardson (02:31):
No, I don't.
Nick Gosnell (02:32):
Did you vote in the last city council election in Hutch?
Jon Richardson (02:36):
Unfortunately, no, I didn't.
Nick Gosnell (02:36):
Okay. Now, let me follow up on that...why should somebody, why should somebody say, well, I'm going to vote for this person, even though they literally didn't even vote in the last election.
Jon Richardson (02:47):
Absolutely fair. Really up until the last year or two, it wasn't on my radar as something important and I've had my eyes opened a little bit. I was naive. Honestly, I haven't voted in every single election that's been available to me. So yeah, I'm trying to fix that a little bit.
Nick Gosnell (03:05):
So, talk to the people because there are a lot, not only in Hutchinson, but across the country who say, oh, it's city council and school board that probably won't make any difference to me. Now, maybe they have changed their opinion after the last couple of years we've had. But, speaking generally, before COVID-19 hit, I think you'd have been hard pressed to see somebody, unless they do what I do for a living, that pays attention to every city council meeting or a school board meeting.
Jon Richardson (03:37):
You're right. Unless it's a policy or something that changes that directly influences your day to day, people don't tend to pay much attention to it. It did become a lot more dynamic in the last couple of years. I think people are paying attention to it more. Obviously I'm one of those people. But, uh, yeah, it is important. I can't emphasize that enough.
Jon Richardson (03:56):
So what can be done to reduce regulation on businesses coming to Hutchinson? You've been working on that, sort of from a subcommittee level. What do you think the city council should do?
Jon Richardson (04:06):
Well, where do you want to start first? I think one of the things we can do is we can really drive the building trades board to step up and be more proactive. It's traditionally been a reactive group. It is being more proactive. There are steps we need to improve how we communicate what's needed for permitting and applications for permits on different types of projects, so it's a clear picture for people. We need to have a process for investors to get a clear picture of what's going to be expected once they purchase one of our properties. Instead of talking to people, being told one story, then they purchase a property and find out that's not clearly what the story is because they made a purchasing decision and they're getting an unmasked or a nasty surprise once they purchase. We need to have a way to do that proactively rather than reactively. And we need to continue to support our Chamber and their efforts to bring more industry to town and what they need, what their current bottlenecks are for our industrial park, which actually our biggest bottleneck right now is we don't have empty buildings in our industrial park. We don't have any large empty buildings right now available. I get people calling all the time. Do you know any buildings? Any space for lease? That's a good problem to have, but we do need to solve that problem.
Nick Gosnell (05:14):
I asked this, and again, I'm apologizing again to poor Marla Jean and Charles, because I framed it wrong when I was talking to them. I asked them what a proper level of bonding for a city Hutchinson's size is. That's almost an unfair question. The policy question is when do you borrow? And when do you save for individual projects? I'll ask that to you that way.
Jon Richardson (05:37):
That's fair. So the bonding is a tool that we use to finance projects. It should be balanced out properly. I would like to see us reduce our bonding a little bit where somewhere in the neighborhood of $ 60 million. In comparison Salina, I think is around 65. I tend to use Salina as a litmus test on comparisons and we have the same bond rating and a AAA bond rating. But if we do get projects that come up that are unintended or unexpected, if we need to bond those projects, we need to make sure that we're not going to put ourselves into greater depth than what's necessary. So we need to be...I would rather spend our own money rather than bond things, if possible, to anticipate issues down the road.
Nick Gosnell (06:15):
What length should the city street maintenance program be? In other words, they've got it on an eight year rotation, do you think that's right?
Jon Richardson (06:22):
Well, the residential streets are on an eight year rotation. The arterial streets we're shooting for a 20 year cycle right now. Um, we're kind of, it's kind of try it and observe at the moment. It depends on the traffic flow. It depends on winter weather. I know that when we do snowplows and we're treating the roads that can weigh in a lot on the life cycle of the streets and roads, but the arterial streets are at a 20 year cycle trying to stretch that as much as we can, a complete redo of the road is going to be somewhere around $50 a yard, rather than just a mill and overlay, which is about $10 a yard. There's some other things we can do, maybe switching how we do traffic based on wear and tear a little bit down the road. But, there's a number of things we can do to try to stretch that out. But right now, we're kind of in an observation phase on the residential streets.
Nick Gosnell (07:06):
So the biggest project that has popped up and been on Hutch Post a lot is the Woodie Seat Freeway project. And so are you generally for or against taking the federal money to try to get some federal funds as part of that project? What do you think?
Jon Richardson (07:27):
In general, I am all for taking federal money for projects. I mean, that's kind of funny. It's our money that we give the government that then we have to jump through loopholes to get back, basically, in essence. But as far as the Woodie Seat Freeway project, I really don't like lose-lose situations. I'm generally for moving forward with it. I wish there was a way we could have made some adjustments to it to allow some, at least pedestrian and bicycle traffic on Avenue B to keep crossing over. I don't know how that would have changed the design, or if that's still possible, but I just don't like lose, lose situations in this case.
Nick Gosnell (07:59):
Sure. So the city's storm water utility fee has been a hot button issue because there's a lot of work that needs to be done and on the south end of town. And so that's has gone up substantially in the last several years, people are saying it was handled wrong...but, what do you do when you have projects that size?
Jon Richardson (08:21):
Well, in regards to storm water, utility fee, so EPA and the NPDES, the national pollution discharge, whatever it is, in the early two thousands, put out some new regulations. KDHE put it out there. We have a phase two permit. It created a situation where it caused more burden and costs on the city, and so the storm water utility was created. There was a lot of unpleasant surprises for business owners that had large lots. It might've been a small business with a large lot. So, it's a greater cost to them than it is for large retailers with lots. I know Target keeps getting brought up. Target...average Target...is over $3 million a month in sales. That's not a big deal for them, but if you go to a mini storage complex or a used car lot, it is a huge deal for you. In regards to capital improvement projects like the one going on. I know we have, we've created a little bit with good buffer of funds, but every few years we're going to have an improvement project. That's going to eat into that. Otherwise, we're going to be bonding more, which is something I'm not for.
Nick Gosnell (09:24):
Sure. So at the very least, there's going to be your seat and the one on the Southwest side are gonna have new council members. We'll see what happens with the at-large seat, whether the incumbent gets in there or not, but regardless, how do you build consensus among a city council and say, okay, we're going to come together on certain things?
Jon Richardson (09:48):
It goes over time, I've learned on some of the other committees I'm on. You need to, even if you disagree with someone, hear them out, don't interrupt them, listen to what they say, what their concerns are, address those concerns. When you're trying to drive home your own points and trying to win some, some consensus. When you're trying to bring something to the table, the more you do that, the more people want to work together to try to solve the problem, rather than just push against each other, because they're not being respectful to each other in a group.
Nick Gosnell (10:17):
Well, and maybe that's the thing to say to close this out much like I did with Greg yesterday is what I think none of the candidates want is to have a lack of turnout determine who ends up in these seats. You really want to see everybody come out and vote and get an honest representation of your district.
Jon Richardson (10:41):
Yeah. To be fair. I mean the last city election, I didn't vote. I didn't have it on my radar as something as important to me personally, it's as I've opened my eyes and been shown some things over the last two years, I think it's extremely important to get out and vote in your local elections, get to know the candidates. Feel free to reach out to them. I know there's a lot of issues going on in departments and the county, and there's a lot of moving parts going on over the next few years. So the communication is key.
Nick Gosnell (11:09):
Well, and if there's one job, I feel like I have doing this. It's getting you guys mad at the right level of government. In other words, if it's a city issue, I want people coming to the city council and talking to whomever that is, if it's a school board issue, I want them going to the school board. If it's a state issue, I want them talking to their legislators, but at the end of the day, if you can just get people to in be in the right arena for the issues that they have, that'll really help.
Jon Richardson (11:39):
Well, and having a district person, or your "internal champion", that can then communicate your issues to the next level on your behalf, because they're seeing it among other people, possibly in their district or at large, I think that's important to have.