DOWNTOWN RESIDENTS QUESTION CANDIDATES

The Cape Girardeau mayoral candidates fielded a narrow choice of questions Thursday from residents of the downtown area.

The Downtown Neighborhood Association, a relatively new organization that boasts about 100 members, invited Melvin Gateley and Al Spradling III to the home of Tom and Teresa Neumeyer for the informal candidates forum.

Tom Neumeyer, a candidate for city council from the downtown's Ward 2, is president of the neighborhood association. About 15 members attended Thursday's forum.

"What we're interested in is issues that pertain specifically to this end of town," Neumeyer said.

Some of those items are a proposed minimum property maintenance code that the association has endorsed, an April 5 tax issue that would finance south-end sewer improvements, and rising fees for city services.

Gateley, a member of the city council for the past two years, is making his first bid for mayor. He said that while he supports some minimum property standards, he resists the adoption of a dogmatic Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA) national property maintenance code.

"Everybody should have the opportunity of having a decent home," Gateley said. "I am concerned, however, about the word-for-word BOCA because of some of the stringent language.

"We need to approach this as a partnership between landlords and tenants," he added. "When that breaks down, I'm definitely in favor of standards."

Spradling said he favors adoption of laws that would address no more than key health and safety issues as they relate to existing property.

"I don't like government being too big and too intrusive," Spradling said. "I like to see government stay out of people's lives.

"I do feel the city can pass ordinances to address some of the problems, but (the BOCA version) is too intrusive and will create more hardship than it's worth."

Spradling, who's been a council member for the past six years, gave high marks for the job the city administration is doing, but he withheld praise for the city's inspection department.

"We have a lot of confusion with our construction codes right now," Spradling said. "I'm not willing to add another level of bureaucracy to that department, when I'm not confident that enforcement will be fair and competent."

He said the city's challenge is to reach a "workable compromise" between proponents of additional housing codes and those who believe there already is too much building regulation.

Both Gateley and Spradling said a two-part sales tax and sewer bond issue on the April 5 ballot is crucial. The measure would extend the city's quarter-cent capital improvements sales tax for 20 years in order to finance $25 million in sewer repairs.

"This is a very expensive proposal, but it has to be done," said Spradling. "This is a way to get it done."

He said federal and state regulators already are mandating upgrades to combined sanitary and storm sewers, such as those in much of Cape Girardeau's old neighborhoods.

"We're living on borrowed time right now," Spradling said. "This is something that's been needed for a long time, and I think this tax issue presents a very reasonable way to accomplish that."

Gateley said he supports regular reviews of city services to determine whether operations can be streamlined.

Many citizens have voiced frustrations in the past year over trash service, and the city council stalled a proposed hike in the fees in order to consider bids on the service from private trash haulers.

"Trash is a never-ending issue," said Spradling. "I don't know if we'll ever solve that problem. But the costs that have been associated with that have not been the city's cost for collection, but they've been because of federal regulations that are mandated without any funding for compliance."