On Monday, the first of three local PAVE (Pottawatomie County Advocates for Voter Education) forums was presented so residents could get a glimpse of where Shawnee’s four mayoral candidates stand on issues before the June 18 primary elections.
Candidates gave brief opening statements and responded to written questions from the public. Questions were submitted at the forum or in advance by email and were screened for appropriateness and duplication.
Ronnye Perry Sharp served as moderator.
Some of the candidate questions and responses are, as follows:
Incumbent Mayor Ed Bolt, 67, faces three challengers, Edwina Butler-Wolfe, 62; Rob Morris, 43, and Eric Stephens, 53.
QUESTION: In your view, what are the city’s core services and how do you plan to influence the city’s budget to prioritize the ongoing maintenance of the services based on growth? BOLT: The core services the city has are public safety, which would be police and fire; it would be transportation, which is like our streets; it would be other infrastructure like water lines, sewer lines, those would be top priorities. In Oklahoma, cities are funded almost exclusively by sales tax. That’s pretty well it. That’s over 90 percent of the money we have to spend comes from. So the way we can increase that is to increase sales tax. We’ve got to bring businesses to town and we’ve got to get people to shop here in the community to support businesses, and to support the city being able to provide services to the community.
BUTLER-WOLFE: The core for the citizens that is strictly, extremely important is safety. It’s the safety of our businesses, our citizens that travel our streets, that even walk our sidewalks. I can avouch to it’s not very safe out there. One night I was followed home from working out at the gym. And that’s not very safe. For the growth, we’ve got to get more grants … seek funding to help with our growth in our city.
STEPHENS: So the core services, as other candidates have said before – water, sewer, streets, fire department, police department, safety – got to take care of crime while we’re at it. As far as implementing the budget, I run a small business pretty much my whole life, I know you have to bring in more than you send out; we have to have a balanced budget every year. The city does get money from sales tax, utility bills, so on. As far as balancing the budget, my small business background – when you endorse the front of the check versus the back of the check, and you’re responsible for all your employees, not only them but their families, it gives you a different perspective on what money is worth. You’re not spending someone else’s money at that point, you’re spending your own money. We have to have accountability on all of our finances in the city.
MORRIS: I would agree with everybody on the basic fundamental things that the city is responsible for. A couple things I’d like to do, budget-wise, is No. 1, our fire departments, I believe they start out at $14 an hour. That’s pretty low. They should start out at $20. I would push for that to be higher. That is a needed resource in this town if you don’t want to pick up a phone call and they can’t get there. Now our cops need to be paid more too. Because, I don’t have anything against our cops, or our firefighters, but we attract what we pay. And it’s hard to keep people here when we don’t pay enough; they’ll go somewhere else. Now, the economic development aspect, to be real simple, even if Shawnee Forward kept it, they could use the Open Meetings Act and have executive sessions on each one that really was, by law, required to be behind closed doors. And we could still have economic development. You could do the same thing with the city government in how they do executive session; it’s no different.
QUESTION: Do you believe Shawnee police officers are properly trained, concerning citizens’ constitutional rights? Do you support a citizen police review board? STEPHENS: I believe they’re trained pretty well in all that, yeah. I think it’s an extremely difficult job. You have just milliseconds to make a decision on some things, you deal with all walks of life. Normally when you’re called out there it’s not to say ‘Hello’ and it’s not a happy situation. There’s usually a reason for being called out there. I agree we need to make sure they are fully staffed, giving them all the equipment they need to do their job, because it’s hard enough as it is. I think they are fully trained to do the job.
MORRIS: I do think cops are trained right; I think sometimes egos can get involved, and we’re all human. Everybody makes mistakes; I’m not taking up for a mistake or chastising one. I’m just saying mistakes happen. I absolutely do (support a citizen police review board) but I would ask them to do two things if they’re going to help keep accountability on the cops: I would also have them be a voice for the cops, so that if they’re not able to come to the commission, then that review committee can come tell us what the cops need. And also the accountability … why not ask them to walk and chew gum at the same time?
BUTLER-WOLFE: Cops are trained or they would not be passing CLEET. So I feel like they are trained, but to keep that training up they need to be more trained; someone needs to make sure that their certificates … life changes from day in to day out, and to get that full training – everybody needs training in their profession – and maybe this new committee that they’ve got in could make sure that our police officers are more trained and how life is with any race that’s out there.
BOLT: I think our police officers are very well trained. I’ve been very impressed with them. I’ve done a number of ride-alongs with them. One of the things that impressed me the most is how they look to de-escalate situations. We actually took a guy to jail that we did a warrants check on; he had some outstanding warrants and had to take him to the jail. The police officer I was so impressed how he dealt with him, that when we talked the guy off there, he was actually thanking the police officer for how well he was treated and how educated (the officer was) on what to expect there. So I think we have amazing police officers here in town. And I think our training staff does a good job of training them.
QUESTION: How many commission meetings have you attended or watched on TV the last four years? MORRIS: I’ve watched every single one of them; I’ve only missed three in the last four years, and that was when the City of Shawnee sued me at a court of law, a judge told me I couldn’t come in this building. Which is funny, because with that, I’m still not allowed actually to talk to anybody an hour before or after, even though it never had anything to do with those folks; it only had to do with the four commissioners – one of whom sitting here tonight that sued me for a bunch of stuff they couldn’t prove, and, as always, public record if you’d love to go read it you’re more than welcome to.
STEPHENS: I’ve watched city commission meetings quite a bit for the last four years; I’ve attended in person since I retired, and a little bit before then, so prior to 2022, when I retired I had at least two jobs working seven days a week; I didn’t get to go home at five. When you’re self-employed you don’t stop work until the work is done. You did most of your paper work afterhours. So I didn’t get a chance to come down here and watch them in person, but I did watch on YouTube. Since I have retired I have been here quite a bit, educating myself, getting the feel of everything that’s going on, getting to know who the players are, who the people are, and I’ve really been studying a lot in the last year and a half to two years.
BUTLER-WOLFE: I’ve watched; if I’m not watching it live, I’m watching as days gone by, pulling it up on YouTube and on the internet. So, I do keep up with some of the topics that are issues here in the city. I do watch the city meetings.
BOLT: I know this is surprising, but I’ve been to every meeting. You know, the six years that I’ve served on the commission I think I’ve missed one. And that was it. But that’s not really a surprising thing; in the 29 years that I worked for AT&T I never missed one day. Now that may be a good or a bad thing, but no. I take this very, very seriously; this is a 24/7 job in my mind and I just do not miss.
QUESTION: Please describe your abilities, education or experience you have had that qualifies you to lead this community through many challenges we are facing.
MORRIS: Well, there’s a couple things. I’m not a small business owner; I didn’t work for AT&T forever. I was actually an aviation mechanic for almost 20 years; I built airplanes. And, no, none of my planes crashed, so I didn’t work for Boeing. I worked for Tinker defense companies and things like that. However, I was in charge of $4 billion worth’ of aircraft. The tail end of that plane was mine. I helped design the program for it. And I didn’t just get to will nilly jump with whatever I wanted, I had to plan it out, get the engineers involved and find out what everything needed versus what money we had to be able to use to get it. Anytime there’s a challenge in this town – let’s take the tornado, it’s simple and happens every year – the minute the tornado’s over, my first thing is I check on friends; I check on family; I check on people I care about. If I’m mayor, that just gets bigger, because I don’t necessarily get to go ask one single person, I have to ask ‘how’s that side of town,’ and I will do that every time.
STEPHENS: My experience on that is self-employment and on small business and how to be accountable and responsible for day-to-day operations. I run a multi-million business. You learn how to identify problems, fix problems. You have to surround yourself with the correct people. You have to be responsible for those people. At the end of the day you have to make sure everything is running smoothly; you don’t get to quit at 5 o’clock. You keep going until the problems are fixed.
BOLT: Obviously I have been mayor for the last four years; I was Ward 2 City Commissioner for two years prior to that. I think that the 29 years that had with AT&T is very valuable experience. I had statewide responsibility for the very largest customers that AT&T had and that’s something you just could not screw up, and I didn’t. After I retired, I was a small business owner here in Shawnee. But I’ve always been in a relationship business that’s always been a very important thing in any job that I’ve had and I that’s something that I think I’m pretty good at and you know what, this is a great town; we’ve got a lot of good people and I know if we can just get everybody pulling the same rope we could do incredible things.
QUESTION: City officials do not seem to value our town icons, such as the Santa Fe Depot, the Beard Cabin, the Celebration of Life Park. Millions of dollars have been generated for restoration. How will you prevent a band-aid approach in these repairs as some councilmembers are only interested in return on their investment? BOLT: There’s a lot in that question that I think is hard to understand. I think the depot, the Beard Cabin and Celebration of Life Park are important to all of us. The city, when the 2018 sales tax question was passed the city said it was going to spend $400,000 on the depot. We ended up approving $1.3 million. So, we’re spending a lot of money and it’s going to cost a whole lot more money to get that done. The first stage has started; it’s going to be water-tight and then we’re going to have to move on to the next phase of it. It’s going to have to be a phased approach because of what that cost is going to be, but that building is a jewel and we’re so lucky to have it and we’re not going to let anything happen to that building. That building will be restored and I think everybody’s going to be really proud of it when we get it done. The park, same thing.
BUTLER-WOLFE: The Santa Fe (Depot) has been there forever and to see that it’s been neglected for so long that we need to do what we can to restore it. I know that some of the tribes have donated some money into that. I’m not sure where all the funding is coming to help restore, but there is a lot of preservations, cultural preservation monies out there. The key word is trying to find the funding to help with our issues here in the city. And without that particular person of being employed, whomever we get that … I rely on grants – that’s where the money’s going to be.
MORRIS: the depot, back in 2020 I was bringing up the depot here at commission meetings, asking when we were going to get started on it. I’ve been asking for years. I absolutely support the depot and will continue. I think there was a lot of misconceptions in how we were going to fix that to where everybody thought it was going to be this giant brand new building, but because of historical value, we had to keep some of the old tiles no matter what. We couldn’t replace them with new because it wouldn’t be on the (Historical) register anymore. Now, with the Beard Cabin, my proposal was to put a canopy of sorts over the Beard Cabin to help protect it from the elements. Celebration of Life Park, in 2018 we did pass the sales tax on that and it said six parks – Woodland, KidSpace, Boy Scout, slide park (Dean Weigant), Celebration and Optimist (Parks). Those last three got none of that $7 million; it all got spend on three. I’d like to know why. I’m sure those neighborhoods and downtown would like to know too.
STEPHENS: The Santa Fe Depot … so it was just said that we had a bid for $400,000 back in 2018 – this is 2024 and we’re just now starting it. Granted, we had COVID, we had inflation. Why did we not do it back then? The longer we wait – we identified it back in ’18, but it took us this long to act actually act. So, why don’t we identify the problem, pass whatever we’re going to pass to fix it and get on it and get it done? There’s no reason to kick the can down the road for six years. The Beard Cabin, I’ve been to that thing, I’ve checked it over top to bottom, I’ve taken some of my carpenter friends down there, that building probably needs to be labeled, taken completely apart and rebuilt by a competent professional so it’ll be here for years to come. Both of those buildings are very important to this city. They are the face of Shawnee. They’re (the Santa Fe Depot is) on the firefighter’s patches.
PAVE forum
PAVE is the successor organization to the county League of Women Voters. The non-partisan group has been hosting candidate forums for several years.
The next forum, focusing on Pottawatomie County races, will begin at 7 p.m., Thursday, May 23, in the Shawnee City Hall commission chambers and is open to the public. The forum will be live-streamed on the City of Shawnee website and recorded for later playback.
Voting
The election is June 18. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The deadline for voter registration to vote in the June 28 election is May 24.
The deadline for an absentee ballot request is June 3.
Early voting starts June 13 and 14, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and June 15, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
