Maple Valley’s half dozen City Council candidates tackled a variety of questions at Thursday night’s debate at Rock Creek Elementary School, agreeing on some issues and offering differing opinions on others.

There are three City Council races at stake in the Nov. 3 election. Jim Flynn, a former councilman and Bill Allison are campaigning for Position No. 2. Erin Weaver and Councilman David Pilgrim are challenging for Position No. 4 and Stanette Marie Rose and Councilwoman Victoria Laise Jonas are seeking the Position No. 6 seat.

Moderator Gary Habenicht told the candidates and the audience the questions for evening would focus primarily on the future.

To start with, questions offered by the editorial staff of the Reporter tackled topics like the city’s financial health, the City Council’s relationship with the staff, how council members should balance being involved in community organizations that receive funding from the city and what kinds of businesses the city needs to attract to Maple Valley to create jobs, especially living wage jobs.

Allison described Maple Valley as “a hotel. We get up in the morning, we eat elsewhere, we shop elsewhere, we work elsewhere. If we really focus and build the right businesses, we will see foot traffic build in Maple Valley and see money stay here in Maple Valley. The focus needs to be on what do we need to do to be proactive rather than reactive.”

Flynn said the city needs “to live within our means and I think the Council has done a good job of that.”

“I don’t think we’re in a financial crisis,” he said. “I saw in today’s paper Covington is looking at a $1.1 million cut to their general fund compared to $220,000 here in Maple Valley.”

Weaver said the city has three options when it comes to the budget: increase revenue, make cuts or look more closely at the assumptions made in the budget.

Like other cities in the region, Weaver pointed out, Maple Valley has seen a decline in the real estate excise tax due to a drop in housing development and that’s caused a hit to the city’s budget.

Bringing in more business could increase revenue into the city’s coffers, she explained.

“As for cuts, the city is already running pretty lean,” Weaver said. “We’d have to look very carefully at what cuts would need to be made.”

She suggested looking at the city’s capital improvement program and delaying some projects when the city can better afford them.

“All those things need to be looked at and carefully discussed,” Weaver said.

Pilgrim said the Council is looking at both increasing revenue and decreasing expenses and both are challenging propositions.

“In the long term, the long, long term, business development is what we need to do,” he said. “In the short term for 2010, we may need to raise the utility tax.”

The candidates all praised the city staff for working hard with few resources and that things have settled down in recent months with the hiring of David Johnston to serve as city manager and Steve Clark as public works director earlier this year.

“As the City Council, we only have one employee, and that’s the city manager,” Jonas said. “Our direction goes to the city manager, not to the city staff, and sometimes that’s hard to do. We could all do a better job focusing our questions through our city manager. We could do a better job interacting with our staff, an overworked and very lean machine.”

Rose said she thinks “there is the tendency to intimidate … and it’s sad for staff. I believe that creates a somewhat hostile work environment. I can see it while I’m there (at Council meetings) on Monday nights and it’s so unfortunate.”

Weaver added that anything that may have caused problems between staff and the city in recent years “has to do with an ambivalence, I feel, on the part of the Council of the vision of our future.”

But, Weaver said, that out of tensions comes spirited discussion, which can create resolution.

All of the candidates agreed it is important for the council members to be part of community organizations, with Pilgrim saying it is “a natural way to get where we’re at.”

But there has been some concern with how council members in the past were involved in discussions related to funding requests for organizations they have leadership roles in, as well.

This year, after a state auditor’s report suggested the Council make changes, city staff proposed a change in protocol, Jonas said.

“What we have in place now is excellent,” she said. “It’s transparent and it will avoid any potential conflict of interest in the taxpayers’ eyes.”

Economic development has been a centerpiece of discussion in the city for a number of years now and it remains a crucial topic.

Rose said that in her discussions with residents she has heard specific requests for, “a hospital, a business park, a community college satellite, and a technology incubator, all of which would create living wage jobs.”

She also suggested looking into finding ways to make money off recreation.

Flynn suggested finding ways to create a daytime population in Maple Valley, pointing to demographic information collected by Fred Meyer, which shows that during the day there are about 18,000 people in Maple Valley and by contrast, 47,000 in Covington.

He pointed to the Mutual of Enumclaw Insurance building in Enumclaw, which adds to the city’s daytime population because “there’s a lot of bodies in there.”

“You have to have a synergistic situation where you have the daytime population, the retail anchor and the smaller businesses,” Flynn said.

Allison said one thing he would like to see is family friendly businesses because Maple Valley has a number of young families living here.

“People are talking about how we need entertainment, how we need things for us to do in the city,” he said.

Weaver pointed out that there needs to be a “variety of jobs in our city” and “the solution is balanced growth” as well as finding a way to help sustain existing businesses.

Pilgrim added that the city needs to put together a plan that evaluates the Four Corners area to the south, the donut hole to the west and the northern part of town, because what happens in one area impacts the others.

A member of the audience posed a question that asked the candidates how they felt about changing the city’s mitigation fees.

The general consensus was that the timing of the collection of fees needs to be changed.

“Before they’ve even broken ground (for Fred Meyer) they’ve had to pay $3.9 million,” Allison said. “The timing of the fees is something we should look at to make it more viable. The way we collect those monies is something we should look at.”

While collection of mitigation fees is important to protect the interests of Maple Valley residents, Weaver said, “we can no longer afford to take a hard line.”

Another topic of discussion was the future of the city owned, 54-acre Legacy Site, which is across the street from the Tahoma School District administration building on Maple Valley Highway. It’s about a half mile north of Four Corners.

Among the potential uses would be to build a municipal campus with a City Hall.

“The Legacy Site, we’ve sat on that for eight years and we’ve done nothing with it but spend $500,000 studying what do with it,” Allison said. “It’s in the middle of the city. It could be the cornerstone of the city. Rather than keep punting the issue and delaying it, we need to get something done.”

Weaver likened the Legacy Site to New York City’s Central Park because “it will serve our city for generations to come.”

“A public private partnership is absolutely possible,” she said. “It’s going to take collaboration. Selling it is not (an option) because it truly is the legacy for the city.”