‘Drama’ and roads: candidates for office in Mtn. View talk employee turnover and infrastructure

Candidates for Mayor

There are three candidates for mayor this year. Incumbent Mayor Charry McCann is not seeking re-election. Here’s how the candidates introduced themselves during the forum hosted by Howell County News Saturday morning at Ron’s Family Restaurant. 

 

Todd Mitchell says he is running to help the community as best he can, “We got problems and we need to get them fixed the best we can.” 

 

Karen Gaddy has lived in Mountain View since 1986. She says she is active in the community, serving with Mountain View Community Betterment, the Planning and Zoning Committee, and attending council meetings. She is a retired paramedic and RN. 

 

John Krasuski was mayor two years ago and an alderman prior. He described his term as mayor as having ups and down, but says he knows what the problems are in the city and is confident he can lead the city forward to good things. 

 

Aldermen Candidates

East Ward

In the East Ward, incumbent Judi Colter is challenged by Toby Orchard and Bryce Cooper. 

 

Judi Colter was born and raised in Mountain View and is an incumbent. She has served several terms as an alderwoman. She says her main drive is to protect the citizens from high costs in the face of inflation. 

 

Toby Orchard describes himself as “hometown boy” and family man with strong Christian values. As a former employee of the city of Mountain View, he has seen how the city operates from the inside. His priority projects are fixing roads and Jam Up Creek. 

 

Bryce Cooper is also running for this ward. He was called into work and could not be present at the event. 

 

West Ward 

Calvin Perry is the incumbent in the west ward alderman seat, and he is challenged by Rick Thornton. He highlighted the city’s comprehensive plan and the sewer project as accomplishments he is pleased with from his first term. He enjoys seeing things accomplished for the city.

 

Rick Thornton is also running for the West Ward. Despite two invitations, Thornton refused to attend any event hosted by Howell County News. 

 

Public record check

All candidates present Saturday morning were given the opportunity to disclose or comment on anything in the public record, but none made a comment. A routine check of public records showed a few items of significance. 

 

Mayoral candidate Todd Mitchell has two default judgments for full orders of protection for an adult. The original actions were filed in 2024. 

 

East Ward candidate Toby Orchard is currently on probation for an August 2024 DWI conviction. 

 

West Ward candidate Rick Thornton was trespassed from a Mountain View business last week. According to this week’s police blotter, a candidate, identified by video surveillance and eyewitnesses as Thornton, went to a business to confront the proprietor about stolen campaign signs. A disagreement followed. Police responded, and neither party wished to pursue criminal charges. However, Thornton was issued a verbal trespass order according to Mountain View Police Department. 

 

Issues Discussed Saturday

Employee issues

Employee turnover and “drama” was a recurring theme of the discussion. Responding to a question about attracting and retaining high-level employees, Krasuski’s solution is to try to keep employees out of “the drama,” and to give employees assurances that they will continue to have a job whether or not they, “kiss someone’s rear.” Qualified candidates will not put up with drama if they don’t have to, he said, pointing the recent city administrator, Evan Linden, who left his position after only two weeks.

 

Gaddy acknowledged wage dissatisfaction among city employees and suggested conflict training and avoid a “my way or the highway attitude.”

 

Mitchell praised the city’s electric crews and other worker, and said everyone needs to “calm down and quit having drama.”

 

Orchard said “getting rid of the divide we have,” is necessary for progress. “Until we come together, we’re not going to move forward,” he said. 

 

Perry’s comment on turnover is that supervisors should be letting city employees “sink or swim” instead of micromanaging. “If they’re doing their job, leave them alone. If they’re not, you find somebody else that will do the job,” he said. 

 

Perry was reluctant to blame anyone by name for high turnover, but he listed the employees the city has lost in the last year including a city clerk, a police chief, a fire chief, a streets department employee, and switching to a city attorney who costs $200 from one who cost $90 an hour. “This is the divide that is happening,” he said. 

 

Infrastructure

Roads and other infrastructure was the key challenge in the city candidates identified. Mitchell identified roads as the city’s number one challenge, tying it into the antiquated sewer pipes. “You can’t fix the roads until you fix the clay pipes underneath them,” he said. 

 

Gaddy agreed the infrastructure fixes must come before road fixes. “It makes no sense to do a new road and come and dig it up a month later.”

 

Krasuski said that repairing infrastructure and roads over the long term starts with retaining qualified and capable employees. 

 

Orchard pushed back on a “first things first” perspective, saying there are places where the sewer and water lines have already been replaced. “We can start somewhere,” he said. “We have to show the residents progress.”

 

Perry would like to see new water and electric lines throughout the town. He mentioned the city’s beneficial partnership with SCOCOG for seeking grants to for funding to keep up the infrastructure. Maintaining and improving the infrastructure is an essential step to attract business to town, he said. 

 

Colter said maintaining infrastructure is important, and that’s why she is in favor of maintaining a city administrator for Mountain View. An administrator can help bring in contractors and other businesses to help keep “everything up top.”

 

Transparency

Orchard, if elected, wants to give citizens straight answers, not vague responses left up to interpretation. 

 

Colter acknowledged, “People say there is no transparency, but there is.” Her thought is that transparency must come from the whole group, not from an individual alderman. 

 

Perry would like to see more citizens present at the city council meetings and praised the new web page the city has launched. 

 

Gaddy says she has observed that citizens often do not feel has if they have been heard, and that there is a disconnect that needs to be fixed.

 

 

City Administrator

Colter is certain Mountain View needs a city administrator because they citizens “cannot expect the mayor to be there all the time,” but “we do need someone that’s keeping an eye on the financials and the budget.”

 

Perry says he’s seen the times the city has need an administrator, and the times it didn’t need one. Common sense should prevail, and a city administrator should be a leader, not a person the city relies on to know everything. 

 

Orchard is not for a city administrator. He would rather see the salary put toward a full-time grant writer. 

 

Krasuski took the opportunity to weigh in on this question and said during his term, the city could not afford a qualified administrator, but if the city can afford one, “we need a qualified one.”

 

Economic development and taxes

Perry quoted, “If you build it, they will come.” He feels adequate roads, water, sewer, electricity, and other amenities are necessary to bring businesses into town.

 

Orchard wants to see the city offer businesses and corporations incentives to come to Mountain View. 

 

Colter said she thinks the town has let some things pass that would have helped, so she wants to be open to future opportunities for companies to invest in Mountain View and offer them incentives. 

 

Perry and Gaddy both touched on how difficult it can be to find housing in the area.

 

Orchard is “all for” a one-percent sales tax on fuel dedicated to the city streets. Perry has done some research during his term on taxes. 

 

Mitchell “is not a big fan of taxing people, but to get the roads fixed, there’s not any other way to do it.”

 

Gaddy is also in favor of a sales tax on fuel because the revenue will be “picked up by people who don’t live here.”

 

Mountain View youth

Investing in Mountain View’s youth was Orchard’s answer for how to make the town thrive. 

 

Mitchell weighed in on the lack of opportunities for high school graduates, saying, “there’s really nothing to keep them here. We’ve gotta do better than we’re doing as far as jobs.”

 

Questions for the former mayor

Tanya Miller, present in the audience, asked Krasuski to elaborate on what went well in his first term as mayor. He began to list projects, but then said that “a lot of stuff got slipped once I left that didn’t get communicated well to the new mayor and the new board, so we lost a lot of grants that we had already in place.”

 

He says he inherited city books that were in “complete disarray,” and that the city paid $100,000 “to straighten the books out,” and a vote to change the fiscal year to match the calendar year meant the budgets had to be done by hand because it could not be input into the city software. 

 

Miller also wanted to know what would be different in a new term if he was elected. 

 

“An educated, cooperative board,” Krasuski responded. “The board had problems.”

 

 

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