Politics

Hendersonville candidates Q&A

By Bill Moss, Published: October 24, 2013

The county recently completed a study of business regulation. Would you be in favor of convening a similar committee to examine business attitudes toward city regulations?

RON STEPHENS: "Any time there's an ordinance, I would bring in the people — have a public meeting so anybody could attend — but certainly bring in the people that it's going to really affect and get their input. I want it where when a business wants to expand, relocate or establish in Hendersonville they go into City Hall and someone says to them, 'Welcome, we are here to help you establish or expand or relocate your business.' That is not true today. When I learned that 65 or 75 percent of the people that went to the county complained about the city, I told the mayor we need to do that. She said 'we don't need that, most of the complaints would be about water and we're working on that.' That's partially true. We need to get into that and be of service to our business people."

BARBARA VOLK: "I would go along with what the council would like to do. We have had people from the chamber come. If there's an issue we have public hearings. About the only thing people talked to me directly about were the system development charges. We worked on that. my phone number's in the book. If you look at what we've done, we have agreed to everything we've done after a public hearing. If the business community is concerned about something, come and tell us. We have public comment time. I asked a representative from a business organization, specifically, what do you want the city to do? The only thing I was told is, 'We need to know a month ahead of time when there's an opening on city boards and commissions.' Tell me what you want, and I will work to help you. We have changed ordinances, we have changed zoning at the request of businesses."

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JEFF COLLIS: "I would. This question has come up quite often. Councilman Stephens has mentioned over and over again that 70 percent of the complaints that they received were regarding city regulations, and that probably is true. I'm proud of the regulations we have. We were operating on a 1950 land-use plan in Hendersonville and that's really not leadership. ... We're in an urban area. We have to look all types of regulations when you're building such as parking, infrastructure, things like that. You don't have out in the county. So that's where a lot of the complaints come from. I'm proud of the things we've done but we can always do better. I would have no problem with that. I would pick a larger variety of folks rather than just picking the same folks that are anti-regulation over anything."

JERRY SMITH: "My proposal if I'm re-elected will be to create a seven-member board. That board will be composed of business owners from around the city of Hendersonville, and it will include a wide variety of people either by number of employees, geographic relocation or size of business by receipts. ... I hear people complain about zoning but we have hearings for every single zoning and in the past four years I only recall voting against one of them. So we are very receptive."

Jeff MillerJEFF MILLER: "I guess my question is why hasn't this happened before? Did it take the system development charge issue to really bring a lot of these things to light, that the businesses didn't really have a voice. Sixty percent of the revenue is on commercial property. Yet, most of the people that own that don't live in the city, so they have no voice, or no vote anyway ... I don't want to cherry pick people (for a regulation review committee). To me, if you're going to get into something you need to get possibly your biggest opponent, and get them in front of you so you can talk about it. It would need to be a good mix. I know there's attacks on PEP but PEP really pushed the issue of system development charges. Let's not look at this as a controversial issue. Let's look at it as a way to build upon. A lot of the things in these inspections are left up to interpretation."

DIANE CALDWELL: "I haven't given much thought to additional boards but I have always felt like ... we have to depend on businesses in the city. I know the majority are owned and operated by people that live in the county. And if they live in the county but have a business in Hendersonville they should have a right or a say about what's going on in Hendersonville, because it is their businesses that keep Hendersonville afloat."