Nick Gosnell (00:00):
In studio with us this morning, the incumbent running once again for the at-large seat on the Hutchinson city council. Sara Bagwell is with us this morning. Good morning, Sara.
Sara Bagwell (00:09):
Good morning, Nick. All right.
Nick Gosnell (00:11):
So asking this pretty much as much as I can, the same questions to everybody running for city council, everybody has an issue. That's the reason they're running. Now, granted, this is a time running as an incumbent for you, but when you ran the first time, what was the issue that caused you to say, I want to run for city council?
Sara Bagwell (00:30):
Well, I really think it was my children. I have three children and I just wanted to make sure that they had an opportunity when they got to my age or in their twenties and they're starting out their life and they have the ability for the American dream and to work hard and get to where they're going. And I felt that the way that some of the policies that were happening within the city were probably going to deter that. And I know that from personal experience, because my mother is a 30 year resident of Hutchinson, Kansas. My father is, or was, he passed away in 2018. But, he was a California resident. So I actually grew up in California in the nineties and the early two thousands. And so I got to see what bad policy can do to an economy and I've seen it firsthand. And so I started kind of seeing those things here in Hutchinson and really decided I needed to just, I was a nine to five mom grinding it out like everybody else. That's why I say I'm here for the hard working people of Hutchinson to represent them. And for those voices that can't be heard because they're busy taking care of their families and just to make sure that our children have a future.
Nick Gosnell (01:50):
That is a separate issue that we hope to get to later. But just some basic questions. Do you currently owe any obligations to any taxing entities for any years prior to this one?
Sara Bagwell (02:03):
No, I don't.
Nick Gosnell (02:04):
Did you vote in the last city council election?
Sara Bagwell (02:07):
Yes, I did.
Nick Gosnell (02:08):
I mean, that's an obvious, but obviously got to ask the question anyway...so
Sara Bagwell (02:12):
Yeah, I think it's very important to vote in local elections, especially when you're running in local elections.
Nick Gosnell (02:17):
So, what can be done to reduce regulation on businesses coming to town?
Sara Bagwell (02:23):
To reduce regulation on businesses coming to town? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with our willingness to be flexible. I know just recently there was a business that was wanting to open up and he was needing a variance and I was actually really, I felt bad because he wanted to get a variance. And so the city council actually couldn't give it to them right then and there, it has to go through the committee first. And so then I asked the committee, well, when are you meeting next? And they said, well, if we have, I don't know, because if we don't have enough on our agenda and we're probably won't meet next month. And I thought, well, if there's even one item that can be on the agenda, meet, meet the next week. If you have to publish it today and meet next week, that's what that committee needs to be for and understand that that might be hard, but it's not, if you have light agendas in your council and your council committees in different months, but then we have a month where, you know, you might have to meet four times in one month, because it's a busy season. I think that's what you should be there for. And so it was very disheartening to find out that how long a process can take just to get a variance. And that had just happened recently. And so I definitely think that's something we need to look at, to do in the future to kind of help with not being so dead set on the rules and maybe having a little bit of flexibility because I don't think a one size fits all is good when you're trying to grow.
Nick Gosnell (04:00):
So what's a proper level of bonding for a city Hutchinson's size? In other words, how much debt should a city carry? What do you think about that after having been through the budget process?
Sara Bagwell (04:12):
Well, our bonding is actually very healthy and you can see that through our bond rating. So, if you want to get down into the numbers, we actually have less bonded right now than we had in 2018. So in 2018, we had about $76.8 million in total indebtedness. That's with, you know, principal and interest. 2019, we went down to about $ 65.9 million total indebtedness and in 2020, it was $68.9 million. So if you put an average of 40,000 population, that's a debt per person of, um, right now, $1,700 and some change. In 2019, it was a little shy of $2,000 per person. So we have a very good bond rating. I actually will say, I think our problem is what are we bonding and where are we deciding to prioritize our funds? I believe that is the issue at hand.
Nick Gosnell (05:16):
Sarah, it's important for people to know that the budget process is something that's difficult for lots of folks to understand. So, you at least have taken a somewhat, at least I think a novel approach to trying to figure out how to help with that process.
Sara Bagwell (05:34):
Yeah. So when I decided to look at the budget, I actually look at the audits. So you have previous year audits that tell you the actual spending dollars. And so I won't look at the budget year to year. I will look at the previous audits. So you have, you can go out there and they have the files. You have your 2018, 2019, 2020 audits, which tell you the real numbers, real things that happen. And I really look at that when deciding on the next budget, because budgets are really just projections and audits are the actual numbers.
Nick Gosnell (06:06):
So with that in mind, so one of the biggest things that most taxpayers still think cities ought to spend money on is streets. So the city street program is on a schedule. Now, what length should that be? Is eight years, right? More, less, what do we know about that?
Sara Bagwell (06:25):
Well, I know that it's a good program to want to rotate like that. The problem is that we have a policy in place that we aren't following through with, because we're not funding it at the $3.5 million that's intended for that process to work properly. So that's why you see our roads conditions declining, because if you take the last 10 years and we've underfunded by a million dollars, that's a deficit of $10 million into our infrastructure just on that road piece.
Nick Gosnell (06:53):
Okay. So with that in mind, are you for or against taking the money from the federal government to put roundabouts in at the Woodie Seat freeway?
Sara Bagwell (07:03):
So this one's a hard one because I'm just going to let you know that I don't think double roundabout is the solution, but do we need to do something? Absolutely. So I kind of take a different stance on this. I understand that the people...I went out and talked to the people in there and I told him exactly what I, what I thought about how I don't like the roundabouts, but we also need the federal funding. And I had a lot of feedback. So we had I know Garza did two sessions with them. I know the city manager did a session with them and, but it was like the city council already had its mind made up because I'll be honest with you. We need the federal funding, but I don't think we need the roundabouts and why I say that is because I asked them the first time around. So the first time, which would actually be the second time that it was passed through council, I asked them, can we come up with a different proposal, one with a more traditional? And they said, well, it needs to be innovative. So that's why we did the roundabouts to apply, to be able to be applicable for it. Well, I said, can't, we still do something more traditional, but maybe put in some green space or some other, something else that could still fall within the purview of the grant? And it is a dead end of a freeway and, or a highway or sorry. And, um, the Woody seat freeway it's the dead end of it. And a lot of times when they have the dead end of a freeway, they just reduced the speed and they put those ruts in that wake people up and it comes down to a stoplight and you can turn left and you can turn right. And I didn't understand why we couldn't do that. Alleviate both bridges, so future expense costs would be lower and maybe we could create some kind of green space in the area to still fall within the purview of those federal grants. So I thought if we tried it before and it didn't work, why not try a different proposal? And one with more feedback from the community and then apply for the federal grants, but they would not alter their course. So that's what I had a problem with.
Nick Gosnell (09:14):
Okay. So talk to me about the stormwater utility that's in place. We're still working on that big, long project down toward the south end of town, which Daveline keeps asking about quite frankly. And, uh, so what, what do you see as the future of that? Of using the stormwater utility fee for the long-term drainage uses in the city?
Sara Bagwell (09:40):
When they implemented it, it was an absolute mistake. You have to realize that we need to get this done, but you know, normally when you hike a fee that high, you would put it in steps so that businesses can have time to adjust their budgets in order to operate. You know, we almost lost a fair over the storm water utility fee when hiked almost a $50,000 annual fee. Walmart went from 12, about $1,300 a year to $12,000 a year in and, and target went up to about $450 a month. And you gotta realize that when you have these businesses, they have a lot of parking area. They have a lot of roof space. So I believe it was structured irresponsibly. I believe that it was implemented irresponsibly. You cannot go from collecting $600,000 a year and then the next year, $2.2 million to $2.4 million on a budget that some of these businesses are operating with slim margins. So I would say that I understand it was meant to catch up basically from poor funding in the past, but sometimes you have to integrate those things in, so businesses have the opportunity to slowly adjust their budgets. So I definitely think we need to restructure it for one, and I understand the need for it, but not at the rate that it's currently at and not at the structure that it's currently at.
Nick Gosnell (11:13):
Okay. So even if you're reelected, you're going to have at least two other council members that are new. How do you intend to work with the council to try to figure out a way to get some of this stuff done?
Sara Bagwell (11:28):
I really think we need to have more open meetings. So I don't think the twice a week...because I get the information on Thursday and we have to make decisions on Tuesday. So I have the weekend, and I honestly think that there needs to be better communication about what's coming down the pipeline. So I've always thought that we needed some kind of Google docs so that we have like things that we know are going to come up. So we know about it ahead of time and have a shared thing for the council, like Google docs, but it's not anything that we could communicate with each other, but the city manager and staff can put upcoming agenda items, upcoming bonding projects, things that they have in their works for us to be able to see it and then have the open meeting. So we could have where we have the public meetings, the first and third Tuesday, but then why don't we start also meeting on maybe every other Thursday on the opposite weeks and just have, not a public meeting...
Nick Gosnell (12:30):
Like a study session?
Sara Bagwell (12:31):
Study sessions over and over, a series of set study sessions where we can sit down and talk about what are our issues in Hutchinson? Where, where do we need to fix this budget? I don't think the budget process is long enough. And I got told a bunch of times when I wanted to implement things early, they told me, well, that's really a budget time session question. So you need to wait until we start the budget season to really start addressing those things. Because I was trying to address things right away. And I was told, well, that's really maybe something we should just get in budget time. And then I get to budget time. And they're like, well, maybe that's something we need to address, you know, during a special session. And I said, which one is it? Because I know there's a lot of work that needs to be done.
Nick Gosnell (13:19):
Sarah Bagwell running as an incumbent for the at-large seat on the Hutchinson city council.