Rob Clark and I attended the United Women of Color Huntsville candidate forum tonight. Margo Gray WAFF 48 did an amazing job moderating the discussion between four candidates for Huntsville City Council.
Below, I’ll try to summarize, based on my notes, Margo’s questions and what I took away from the candidates’ responses.
Margo’s first question dealt with what the candidates intend to do to support workforce development and retention. In other words, how should the Council help ensure Huntsville attracts and retains enough doctors, nurses, contractors, etc.?
Devyn Keith, D1 City Council incumbent, took credit for programs that have provided housing over the past 7.5 years. Cost-of-living makes or breaks where people choose to live. And housing is the biggest part of most families’ budgets. So housing is definitely key to this issue.
Michelle Watkins, running against Keith for D1 City Council, mentioned partnering with A&M and UAH, though it wasn’t clear to me what that would mean or how it would work. She also stated that no restaurants are open past 9 pm and a general lack of nightlife and recreation is a major factor in workforce retention. Five, certainly ten, years ago I might have agreed. But if you have money, there’s tons of nightlife and recreation in Huntsville. Watkins also wants to expand partnerships for mental health. I think that’s a great idea. But I’m not entirely convinced it will be key to Huntsville’s workforce. John had not arrived yet at this point.
The next question was on whether the candidates supported a dedicated bus lane for the Bus Rapid Transit project the federal government recently funded.
Watkins said she supports expanding transportation. However, she also said she wanted to conduct a study on where transit needs to go before doing anything else. I love studies much, much more than the average person. However, “we need to do a study first” is progressive for “let’s delay, but say we did something.” The reality is we don’t need a study to know where BRT should go first (between MidCity and downtown) and whether a dedicated bus lane would be great for workforce development, economic growth, economic mobility, carbon emissions, and public health (it would).
Reggie McKenzie is also running for City Council in D1. He said he’s been in meetings on a relevant advisory council and agrees we need this and was already involved.
By this time Meredith had arrived. He said he absolutely supports a dedicated bus lane for the BRT project. “I think it’s vital,” he said. He cited the fact that a dedicated bus lane would give our busses an unprecedented level of reliability without any wrecks preventing them from meeting their schedule. He also supports a transit node at the Village of Providence, as it would offer a great place to transfer to other routes. He also supports a new route, route 100, which would connect residents to their jobs at Mazda, Polaris, Amazon, the airport, and various businesses along Wall Triana, near highway 65. Excellent answer.
For his part, Keith said he’s already supported transit by tripling funding for transit over the past three years, ensuring the busses ran at later times, and lowering the cost of riding. As a result, he said ridership has increased and his district includes the bus route with the highest ridership.
Nearest and dearest to my heart, the next question was about whether the candidates support legalizing more affordable, “missing middle” types of housing like duplexes and ADUs.
McKenzie stressed the need to study to make sure affordable housing fits within the city’s infrastructure. He said he would conduct citizen/neighbor listening sessions. That answer gets a no from me.
Watkins had a similar line, but with a bit of snark. Yes, we need to see where it fits. “I don’t think it’ll fit in Bishop Farms where he lives at,” Watkins concluded.
Keith directly addressed recent efforts by ourselves and others to legalize ADUs specifically. “It’s gonna pass,” he said of a hypothetical ordinance. Keith stressed that he created the first affordable housing manager in the state of Alabama and directed $235m toward “affordable housing success.” Lastly, he mentioned the percentage of affordable housing in D1 (most of it) and made the point that Hampton Cove and Bishop Farms should also include some of it.
Meredith said he supports ADUs in theory, but would need to see the ordinance. Then, he said he “can’t imagine any poison pills” that would mean he would need to vote no. He also noted that citizens have been “clamoring” for ADU legalization (yes we have!). And he mentioned that on the west side of the city he’s pushed for new subdivisions to include various housing types rather than just single-family and mcmansions. This is much-needed.
There were other great questions as well. Unfortunately, for most of these either the candidates’ answers weren’t differentiated enough to make it worth summarizing or I’m not familiar enough with the subject matter to accurately summarize their talking points.
At this point in the game, I hope Devyn Keith wins re-election for D1 Huntsville City Council. I intend to vote to re-elect John Meredith for D5 Huntsville City Council. His only opponent for the seat was not able to attend the forum. UWOC organizers offered to read a written statement from her for the event, but she declined to provide one.