Q & A: AL SPRADLING III, CANDIDATE FOR MAYOR OF CAPE GIRARDEAU

Q: How does your background prepare you to be mayor.

Spradling: My background is varied. I have been a resident of this city for 46 plus years with about a 6 year lapse when I was in the service and law school. I sort of have a political background with my father, and I know a little bit of ins and outs there. I don't know if that gives you much of an idea of what's going on in the city, but it certainly gives you an idea of how to deal with people. That's one of the things I've learned over many years, how to deal with people, how to talk with people. I feel that's one of my strengths. I've spent the last 20 years here in Cape Girardeau practicing law. I think a lot of people bash lawyers, but it's certainly my opinion it gives you an idea about dealing with people, negotiating with people, talking business with people, and I do a lot of business with people. It's part of my practice. My background is in accounting and economics. I was a bank examiner for a period of time. So all of these things give me a basic understanding of business, economics, finance. I was involved with Boatmen's Bank and Farmers and Merchants Bank since I've been back here, so all of those things I think give me the background and basic understanding of the needs of the community. Over the years I've made many friends and know quite a bit about what the community has to offer. Coupled with six years on the council and the ins and outs of city government, I think I have strong qualifications in that regard.

Q. How would you evaluate yourself, strengths and weaknesses, while serving on the city council?

Spradling: The city council has been an extremely exciting time for me. A lot of people want to know why you would ever do something like that. But for me, getting in the city government and learning how our government runs has been very exciting. Being able to develop programs and being part of the programs developed with streets, sewers, the park projects, Shawnee and Osage park and the various understandings of our budget system have been issues I've been strong with, we've been fiscally conservative, and I think that has given me a good basic understanding of where I'm going after this. That's why I'm running for mayor. And I think that the city council itself has been rewarding from the standpoint of learning about our city.

Q. On the ballot April 5, there will be two sewer tax questions before the voters here. How important is this issue to the city of Cape Girardeau?

Spradling: Well it's extremely important for two reasons. One, we have a combined sewer system right now in the old part of town, combined sanitary, combined storm sewer. We have problems when we have heavy rains that these sewers exceed capacity and we have raw sewage running into the river or into our streams and creeks, and basements in some cases. We need to get that problem rectified. This tax that we would be passing, the extension of the sales tax, will be that catalyst to be able to correct that problem that has existed for many years. It has been one of the problems that we have tried to face for the last four years on the council. I think it's extremely important to be able to provide people sanitation and sanitary conditions. The problem runs through Shawnee Park when it overflows. We have lots of kids down there, we have people using that park. It stinks when it overflows. It is a health hazard and we need to get that problem rectified. So I think it's extremely important from that standpoint. I think it's important, also, that we are able to expand our sewers so that people who don't have sewers right now in some of the parts of the south end of town can be provided with those sewers that are not being provided for right now. So I think it's an extremely important, from a health and safety issue it's very important.

Q. While campaigning, you have spoken about the city's debt, that you want to keep a handle on that and keep it from going too large...

Spradling: That's right.

Q. At the same time, this tax issue will impose greater debt on the city to be paid back over the 20 years. Do you have any problems with expanding the debt to do something like this sewer work?

Spradling: Well, this is an extension of our existing sales tax and will be paid from sales tax and is not going to be a direct problem with revenue that we have coming in. So, while it is a little scary to continue expanding our indebtedness without paying some off, these are some very necessary improvements that have to be accomplished. For that reason I'm advocating, although we still have to keep in mind the expense of our debt and try to keep it in control, but this is one area that I think is so important that we need to take care of it.

Q. There has been some talk about a need for a transportation tax to fund street projects. What is your position on that?

Spradling: Well, before I came on the council there was an attempt to obtain a transportation sales tax, and it failed. That's been one of the areas that we have not been able to get a grasp on and we've not been able to take care of some of our streets like we might want. I think it's probably something that if you look at Jackson and their transportation tax, they've been able to expand their streets, put in new streets as well as correct some of the old street problems, and it's been very good. Now, we've got a problem. We don't want to have too much tax on the people, and it's another sales tax, which is a regressive tax, and so we've got to be careful in that area. One of the situations that I have looked at is whether or not we would trade off a transportation sales tax for some of the revenue that might be generated from riverboat gambling and use that in some of our development. That is, since that has recently come up, that might be a tradeoff and keep our sales tax down. At some point in time we're going to have too high a sales tax and people are going to go elsewhere to shop. We don't want to price ourselves out of the market.

Q. One of those alternatives you've said is riverboat gambling, how else should riverboat gambling revenue be used?

Spradling: Well, my concept of riverboat gambling is you bank it for a year and then spend it. You don't spend it before you have it. Then you use it on specific projects. One could be transportation. We're going to have infrastructure needs as time goes on and this may be one. Another issue is we've recently seen the Senior Citizens Center having some problems with their funding. The city could allocate some money to help the Senior Citizens Center on an annual basis or a one-time basis, whatever the case may be. I don't have any figure in mind, but I think certainly, the senior citizens because they're a very integral part of our community could benefit because they're obviously going to be involved in the gambling issue themselves from this revenue. So I would hope to put some of the revenue aside for the Senior Citizens Center.

Q. Would you be in support of some of the riverboat gambling revenue also going into promotion of tourism that would include riverboat gambling?

Spradling: Well certainly, I don't have any problem with a little promotion. But I think that should be the object of the boat itself and it should be the promoters to do their promoting. Overall promotion of Cape Girardeau, yes, I don't have problem with that. And we may want to use it for attracting people to Cape Girardeau. I think we can set some aside for that. I would like to set some aside in a rainy day fund I've advocated also. We bank some of it and just let it sit there as opposed to using general revenue or some of our excess revenue, use the gambling revenue as a rainy day fund.

Q. How would you evaluate the job the current city management is doing and how you see yourself working with them.

Spradling: For the past six years, and we've had a recent change in our assistant city manager and there has been an overall change in some of our department heads over the last two or three years, but from my standpoint, I think we have one of the finest city administrations you can find. They're very knowledgeable, they're very cooperative, they work extremely hard. They're certainly not overpaid by any stretch of the imagination. They're all very competent. They all come with very good backgrounds in public administration or in the areas in which they were hired. The fire chief we've just recently brought in is an outstanding person in terms of his competence, and he's working well with the people. You talk to the firemen and they're real pleased with Bob Ridgeway. Same way with Butch Boyd. Same way with Doug Leslie, that's our new assistant city manager. I think we have a very competent, very hard working staff and the employees that work for them. I'm real pleased with that and I don't think that we have a lot of need for change in that area. In fact, I don't know of any area that we need to change in with one exception, and I really don't think we need to have a change, but we need to probably have a reassessment, and that's in our inspection staff. We've got some problems in integrity at least from the general public's standpoint. But for the most part I think that we have a very, very good staff and I work very well with them now and I don't expect that to change.

Q. Talk about the city inspection.

Spradling: There has been, ever since I have been on the council, an issue raised about the city inspectors. Are they too severe? Are they not severe enough? Is there problems with one inspector saying one thing and the next inspector coming along and changing his mind? There are lots of issues there and we don't have a real good comfort level, I think, with the general public and our inspectors. Now, there may be some problems, too, with the general public who deal with them in not being as up front with them. We've had some problems with contractors, architects and engineers themselves. But I think there is a lack of confidence with our inspection staff right now with the general public and that's got to be changed. Either through education or reevaluation internally, or externally through somebody coming in and looking at our situation and telling us what we need to do, we have a lack of confidence out there. And we need to change that because their position is very important for the vitality of Cape Girardeau. If we don't have inspectors who can oversee our building we could have problems with our building. But we don't want to have a situation where they're so overzealous that we're running people out of town and not wanting people to come in and build their commercial buildings or houses or whatever it may be.

Q. What is your position on minimum housing standards?

Spradling: That gets into a whole realm of problems and it can carry over to public housing also. Minimum housing standards is another government bureaucracy in my opinion. There is no question about it, we have to upgrade some of the housing in this town. But, I don't think that minimum housing standards is the answer, totally. We may need to refine some of our existing ordinances that might give some better tools to our staff to deal with some of these problems. Give them a little more enforcement. But minimum housing standards gets us back to the same problem. We have another level of bureaucracy, we have more inspectors, we have a greater dependence of more city assets to pay for this. There is no return on it, particularly. There may be a safety and health issue, certainly, but I think that we can police ourselves with a few ordinances as opposed to completely overhauling and putting a whole new set of ordinances that in my opinion will become draconian. I'm just not in favor of another level of bureaucracy, another government organization. Government is too big as it is and it's getting bigger on the city level whether it's Cape Girardeau or any other city. I'm in favor of less government than more government. And that's exactly why I would oppose minimum housing. I don't think it's necessary. I think we can handle it with some ordinance changes but not an overhaul of our system.

Q. Let's shift to public housing. What is your position on that?

Spradling: Totally opposed to public housing. And I'm opposed to it, not because we don't need affordable housing in Cape Girardeau, because we do. There is a need for that type of affordable housing. There is not a need for public housing. Public housing is another government bureaucratic development. We have no control within the city council over a housing authority, and frankly, I think private enterprise works much better than a giveaway program with the federal government. And that's what we have with federal housing, whether it's scattered site housing, group housing, whether it's high rise, whatever you have, it's another federal program administered by the federal government, mandated through the federal government. If we have the program and all their rules and regulations, again, it's more government which I'm opposed to. The cities, state or federal government for that matter, but certainly the cities cannot solve every social welfare problem in the state, or in this community, or in this nation. We can't keep heaping on the cities more problems to deal with. I think private enterprise is the way to go. I think we need to instill private enterprise to come out and develop private housing for low income. There was a recent article that's in this week's U.S. News and World Report, a short blurb, where the Federal National Mortgage Association, Fanny Mae, is going to commit one trillion dollars between now and the end of the decade to low income housing. One trillion dollars to instill ownership of homes in the low income sector and that's a complete shift away from HUD type housing or federal housing programs. It's instilling, at least in my opinion, implicitly, that the private ownership of property and the private development of property is going to be better than public money being used to develop housing. It's a mind boggling figure when you talk about a trillion dollars, but that's what is being proposed by the Federal National Mortgage Association and I think that's indicative of my position. Let the federal government stay out of it. The money could be available through the government, but filter it down to the private sector and let them try to manage this housing.

Q: A couple of months ago, you had discussed the possibility that Boatmen's Bank was working on some private financing for some housing development, can you explain where's that at or what that involved?

Spradling: Well, that was in conjunction with other lending institutions in town trying to get together a consortium of money to loan to developers who would be willing to build low and moderate income housing and sign up for Section 8 or whatever type of subsidized funds that were available to them to put people in there and get their rent subsidized, if, that was necessary. But again, it would be a private ownership of property and private development as opposed to a public development. That is still being discussed, it hasn't gotten too far, right after that came up this other group with Mercantile Bank and Semo Bank and Sweat Equity, which is not the same type of program we're discussing, but in other words, the problem we have the more we branch out the less funds will be available in the pool. I hope we can get that back on track but apparently there is another group that took its own direction.

Q.You mentioned that the banks could work together on something like that.

Spradling: Yes, it's not competitive because they're all going to be charging the same low rates and it will be money that they will pool and have available for contracts. We're not trying to get a competitive edge amongst the banks in bargaining out this money. It's for everyone's best interests.

Q. You talk about private enterprise and watching that government doesn't grow too quickly or beyond what it needs to be. How does this coordinate with your position on trash collection.

Spradling: Well, it's kind of an interesting situation because trash collection in my opinion is an essential city service. What people are wanting with our trash collection is cheap costs. And I think under the circumstances that we have, with all the government regulations coming down the line that we have no control over, the city is probably in the best position to control the costs to the general citizenry than private enterprise. That's totally opposite of what I've been talking about. But this is one of the essential services. Because when we have had private enterprise handle the trash in the past, the city hasn't had control over that enterprise and we've had trash strewn all over the city. It hadn't worked. It's one situtation where we've had a public utility that has not worked. Health and safety are vital interests in this town. We don't want rats running around town, we don't want trash strewn all over town. That's an image that you don't want to see. And so I think there are certain city services, some are the police, some are the fire, similar to our water system, that are essential city services that should be run by the city, maintained by the city, because of the control factor. If we have to pick up trash where somebody doesn't pay it, their trash bill, it will be picked up. In a private enterprise situation that's not the case. They may not pick that trash up if you don't pay your bill, and so that trash sits on the street and rots. So we have a worse condition. That's why I favor the city continuing to run the trash service. We have contracted out part of that, the hauling system, that's private enterprise, but the essential city service in my opinion is very vital to the city and should be run by the city. The residential service.

Q. I'm going to make a large shift. How does annexation fit into growth plan for Cape Girardeau.

Spradling: Annexation is a vital part of the city's growth. Many cities grow through annexation. Cape's no different. We have just recently annexed the Twin Lakes area. We've got the possibility of annexing out in the north part of town, Cape Rock Village, although there are some problems that have to be dealt with before we can get out there. So, annexation is a vital part, but you've got to be able to provide the sewers and the water, the roads, the protection that's necessary in a reasonable manner in a reasonable time to those areas before you annex them. And, right now, before we continue annexing you've got to have those services available and you got to be able to provide them. And that means orderly growth, orderly road and street development, orderly sewer development, orderly water line development. So I think that you will see us continually seek annexation in a limited controlled form over the next several years, but not just to bring more people into the city for the sake of bringing them into the city. It has to be controlled, it has to be planned.

Q. In your view is the Port Authority a proper venue for a gambling boat?

Spradling: I guess if the state commission licenses the port, I mean that's up to them. I'm not going to speak for the state gaming commission. I don't think that boats five miles apart, whether it be Cape and Scott City and Wilson City and Caruthersville or wherever they may be, are going to be able to survive. I don't think the gaming commission is going to issue licenses to any gaming organization that wants to put a boat on any part of the river. I think they've got to look at saturation, the continued viability of a location, what's going to happen if that boat can't make it there. Obviously there is a point that you can't continue to put boats and make a return and somebody is going to lose.

Q. Is there anything that the city can do to support education in this area? Specifically, in Michigan, they've gone away from property taxes to statewide sales taxes to support education. Here in Missouri, Kansas City has a city wide sales tax to support their public schools. Is that something you see the city involved in and if not what can the city do or should it do to support our local schools?

Spradling: I think the city and schools are vital to one another and I think the city should support the school system 100 percent. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about a sales tax issue with the city and whether or not we could generate enough out of a sales tax to have any impact on the school system. One of the problems we have right now is we're relying too much on sales tax. We have another sales tax here, we have another sales tax there. Quarter cent here, quarter cent there, it all adds up. Somewhere you're going to get yourself so heavily sales taxed to death, people aren't going to shop in Cape Girardeau. They'll go to Paducah, they'll go to St. Louis, which has a high one, or they'll go over to Illinois. And so a dependence continually on sales tax in my opinion is a bad omen. Because somewhere, we've budgeted a couple of years ago for two years zero growth in the sales tax. We've been lucky, we're having large growth this year in spite of flood and disasters in the area. But I don't think you can always depend on that.

Now if we keep bringing industry in, keep bringing retail and wholesale in, that's certainly something we can hopefully use a base for to develop. Dependence on sales tax continually, in my opinion, is a misguided direction. We talk about a transportation sales tax, we talk about a school sales tax, we talk about a continued sales tax to fund the city development. Somewhere down the line that has got to stop.

To answer your question specifically as to where we go from the city's standpoint with schools, the city should be in total support of the school's bond issue and try to help develop and build better schools. If we need that, they should help promote it for the schools and be behind them 100 percent. How do we help finance anything? I don't know if there is an answer for that. I don't know if there should be an answer from the city's standpoint. We operate independent of the schools, the schools operate independent of the city in a lot of respects, and I don't really feel that we should get in partnership with funding issues because once we do that somebody starts depending on the other and we have some problems. So I don't think that's a real good direction to go.

Q. If you're elected mayor you'll be presiding over a body constituted of four members elected at large, three from zones. We're entering into a new experiment in city government with zone elections.

Spradling: Actually we'll have four elected from zones. Because whoever gets elected, either Gateley of myself, they'll hold a special election to fill another ward person.

Q. Do you see any challenges in a body that is part zoned elected and part at-large.

Spradling: I don't see any challenges in that respect. I certainly see challenges with four new council people coming aboard who have had no city background, and we're coming in right in the middle of a budget process and tons of issues that are very significant to the city and getting those people up to speed quickly to be able to face those issues, that's a challenge. In fact, we've already planned a retreat the last week of April to try to bring people up to speed and let them understand what each department does and get them acquainted with the city government and the budget process as soon as possible because that's very important. So, I see that as a challenge. I think we have to wait and see how the ward issue filters down. I don't think that people will, the new coucil from the wards, will be promoting their ward right off the bat, but I expect them to somewhere down the line. It may not happen, I hope it doesn't happen. I hope we all talk about the City of Cape Girardeau and not ward one, two, three or four or whatever it may be. But, I do see a challenge that the remaining councilmembers and the mayor, basically myself, Mel and Mel Kasten, get everyone up to speed in time to know what's going on.

Q. In our charter form of government council members and the mayor are pretty equal. Where are they not equal and what special responsibilities do you see that the mayor has in representing the city.

Spradling: The only place he has a different responsiblity is he runs the meetings. The rest of council does not run the meeting. He is the figurehead of the city obviously. He represents the city at official gatherings if it's necessary. The only appointment that I believe the mayor has right now separate and apart from the council joining in is the library board. Now if the housing commission comes about that would be a different one.

The mayor's responsibilities also include leadership of the council and that's very important. Being able to get the council together, being able to form a cohesive council and try to stay away from as much controversy as possible. That's not a duty of the mayor, that is a role of the mayor as a leader of the community. He has no duties greater than the rest of the council except what we mentioned, but he has significant role in leadership amongst the council and that's the key to a successful council and a successful mayor. I think that's been a problem we've had over the last few years.

Q: Why should someone vote for you specifically instead of your opponent?

Spradling: Frankly, I feel that I'd bring two things to the table that my opponent doesn't. First of all, I think I'd have specific issues with specific answers to how I'd go about handling those specific issues. That is one area that I don't think my opponent has faced. He hasn't talked about budgets or fiscal issues, community development, any of those issues, other than that he says he has a plan that he thinks the people need to get behind. He's more people oriented. That's fine to get the people involved, but the council has to take the responsibility to move forward on these issues and I have five specific issues that I have raised that I think need to be addressed and should be addressed.

I think I have over the last six years, Mel's been on the council two, I've been on the council six, developed a very good reporte with the city administration. And probably I have had a little bit more experience in dealing with the council issues than he has. I feel that I am a better negotiator, better handler of people, probably tougher on some issues than he would be. I think I'm not necessarily going to please everybody, but I'm going to get the job done. I don't think the mayor or city council is going to please everybody, and I think my opponent wants to try to please everybody so that puts him in the middle of everything without making a decision. I'm certainly able to make decisions, and for those reasons I think it's important that the people see me in the light I am. I also work right now. I know my opponent worked for many years as a teachers and he's retired. He indicates he has a lot of time to be out in the city. I'm out in the business community every day, I'm still in touch with a lot of people. And I think that continuing to stay in touch and see what is developing within the area day in and day out is important.

Q: You mentioned five issues, since we haven't really gone over the five here in this interview. Can you summarize those real quick?

Spradling: Well, there's three that deal with budget, primarily, money. One, is that we need to make sure we don't keep our debt level so high that it's going to infringe upon our operating revenue and operations of the city. I want to look at capping fee increases. I have proposed a five percent operating cap and if we go over that we need to make sure that the people vote on anything above a five percent increase in any of our levels as long as Hancock doesn't interfere with that. Also, to look at our budget process so we have efficent revenues, and we don't spend off budget. We've done that before. We were supposed to be putting money in our sewer depreciation fund and we didn't have the money. And without being told about it we spent money to pay for sewers that we thought was going into the sewer depreciation fund, so we didn't have the depreciation money set aside for repairs and maintenance that we thought we had. It's not bad to have sewers and we need them, but we should be told that. We've got to keep an eye on our budget.

I have a community development program. I want to continue community development block grants. I want to continue what we have in that area. Parks and recreation, and what's in that area. I want to instill in people through city participation, but not public participation, people developing their own property, in terms of buying homes or renting homes, or instilling pride in themselves. I want to stay away from the public aspect of it.

Finally, my other issue is that I have a strong leadership quality. Because of my background in finance, and law, and in dealing and negotiating with people, I think I have that quality that is unique. We have a time ahead of us with the gambling issue, with others that I'm sure are going to come down, that we're going to have to play some hardball with people. We don't want the city to get taken. We've gone through some tough times. If we're going to bid out the trash, there's going to be some tough negotiations there. We've still got the development of the boat if the vote April 5 and the local vote go through. Those are tough issues that somebody is going to need some strength about them to deal with these people.

Nothing wrong with trying to make everyone happy, but sometimes you've got to do what's best for the city, even if that might displease some people. I can do what's best for the city.