Boog Highberger was elected to City Hall in 2003. He said one of his key successes in the past four years was a living wage ordinance, which requires companies that receive a tax abatement to pay a living wage of at least $10.38 per hour, which is 130 percent of the federal poverty level. He also said the city’s planning process is now more responsive to new residents.

jade

The grassroots initiative that produced Lawrence’s Living Wage ordinance is something we can all be proud of. Thanks for giving it your support. But how can we feel proud when, also with your support, the city gave a 95% tax abatement to Berry Plastics for its expansion? The company admitted it would subcontract the hiring of new employees, thereby circumventing the Living Wage requirement.

cowboy

Boog ,
What do you feel is the root cause of the city’s inability to accurately project and budget sewer/water capacities and new project costs & rate increases. It seems we get a new story about every three months on these issues and the result is always the same , rate increases.

Meatwad

An issue most important to me is that Lawrence doesn’t turn into a huge ugly suburban sprawl chain and box-store-filled metropolis. Walkable neighborhoods developed and planned the right way are important to our future. I feel that you and David Schauner are of the same mind as myself on this issue but how can voters know what other candidates we can trust to ‘grow’ Lawrence the right way?

zimmerman

What is your opinion on bringing in a more direct democracy approach to local government by having public votes for contraversial issues such as the new Library proposals? If you are for it, how might you go about making it happen?

abby

On the issue of job growth, you often cite the Chamber’s number that the City added 500 new jobs last year. Is that a net number? If not, why would you say this commission has been successful in bringing jobs to the community?

komorgan

What is your position on building a new library in Lawrence?

average

I’ve voted for the PLC candidates in the past, but am feeling anti-incumbent, particularly regarding Naughty but Nice. If reelected, do any other local merchants selling legal products run the risk of being bullied out of business?

bluerose

hi.
do you think it is too late for the kind of communities we dreamed of in the late 60’s and 70’s? those where sharing and consideration and consciousness positive attributes? where the things of nature and the earth and spirit were more important than … more, bigger and better-than-yours?

it seems to find that, we must go backwards a bit, or extremely forward, and that is what so many people can’t fathom, so we keep doing the same things that just aren’t working. for our lives. and for our communities.

justthefacts

What do you say to your critics concerning the time taken by the city council to discuss and then pass measures that “feel good” but have no real legal impact? And what is your position on legalizing pot?

justthefacts

Is someone getting wealthy off putting in all the round-abouts in town? Seriously, who or what entities are actually paid for the supplies, labor, etc. that goes into putting them in and are those entities or persons related to (or good friends with) someone in city hall?

consumer1

If you are elected for another term. Would you consider dropping your affiliation with the PLC, and begin working for the city as a whole? And the next time you want to know why citizens of Lawrence spend their money out of town, would you look at where the city spends our money? Do you remember the commission contracting with an out of town agency to find out why we spend money out of town???

drake

Commissioner Highberger,

Can you tell me exactly how many new jobs have been created under your living wage ordinance? Are you proud of this?

commuter

Commissioner Highberger, you appear to be a supporter of :New Urbansim.” if so, why don’t you start with your neighborhood first or get a group of people together and but property to redevelop? To me this would be leading by example.

chic

Will you vote YES or NO on Walmart?

ThomasJefferson

Do you support an independent Citizens Police Review Board?

Do you support expanding the purvue of the Resource Conservation and Recycling Board?

HoosierPride

Do you have a proposal for eliminating the eyesore that is the former site of Farmland?

JrMints

How do you respond to the consultants from Placemakers who said that Lawrence’s planning process is broken because developers:
1. don’t know what to do,
2. don’t know what the City Commission wants, and
3. it takes forever to get anything approved.

JrMints

How would you prioritize the following 10 topics for city funding (rank from highest priority to lowest priority)?

New sewage treatment plant
Road repair and maintenance
New library and associated facilities
Expanded and new sports/athletic facilities for children
Additional parks and green space
Expanded hiking and biking trails
Expanded bus service
City beautification projects (art, landscaping, etc.)
New city building code ordinances
Water line and sewer upgrades

SettingTheRecordStraight

What was behind your decision to officially recognizize Dadaism Day? If you could go back, would you recognize it again?

nekansan

You spoke about growth needing to pay it’s own way, but I wonder if you believe that the city has properly accounted for the growth that has already occurred. In any capital improvement project there are incremental costs as the size of certain facilities are increased. It seems that much of the cost currently associated with the growth in Lawrence is related to hitting some of these incremental thresholds such as increasing sewer treatment capacity or building new fire houses, not just laying new sewer lines or hiring additional firemen. If that is the case, do you feel those incremental costs should be passed to the existing property owners or do you believe the city’s current rate structure properly allows for such expenses?

Thats_messed_up

oh my god.

justthefacts

How much – what % – of every dollar earned do you think Lawrence residents should be expected to pay in taxes? Do you know what the % is now?

Moderator

Thanks for joining us for our online chat with candidate and current commissioner Boog Highberger. I’m 6 News reporter Laura McHugh and will moderate this chat.

Boog Highberger

Howdy, folks– I look forward to answering your questions today.

zimmerman

Do you think we need a new public library? If so, do you believe we can afford it? If so, which of the proposed plans do you support?

Boog Highberger

I support an expanded public library downtown, subject to a public vote. Compared to other Kansas cities, our library has been underfunded for a long time. A new or expanded library with additional parking and expanded meeting space could add a great deal to the vitality of downtown. I am not committed to a particular site at this point, but expanding on the current site has a lot of appeal to me.

Souki

What is your view of the proposed domestic partnership registry?

Boog Highberger

I support creation of a local domestic partnership registry. I share the view of former Attorney Phill Kline (as reported in the Journal World) that a domestic partnership registry would not conflict with the recently passed Marriage Amendment. A domestic partnership registry could help give a lot of Lawrence citizens access to health care benefits that they are not eligible for now.

lawrencian

Boog, what are your views about transit in Lawrence? Do you support the “T”? On the “T” website there are reports from a study about possible coordination of services with KU on Wheels — what do you think about this idea?

Boog Highberger

I support moving toward consolidation of the T and the KU transit system. I support the option that has been preented to us that would consolidate some routes and extend evening hours on some routes.

cowboy

What is your opinion of the efforts by the C of C and the various economic development groups to bring decent jobs to Lawrence , what are the concrete steps you would recommend to improve the results.

Boog Highberger

While we always hope for better, our job creation efforts have been fairly successful. Jobs created by new & expanding businesses in Lawrence have increased steadily from 2003 through 2006. During my term as mayor we concluded an agreement for the largest private investment in this city’s history. All the jobs created by that investment will pay a living wage. As part of the negotation for that investment, I helped secure an additional payment of $120,000 to the school district to make sure it was financially beneficial to them. I serve on the board of the Lawrence Douglas County Bioscience Authority and I think we have a great opportunity here to turn KU research into high-paying local jobs.

Meatwad

I attended some of the Placemakers presentations and I feel they have some great suggestions for our city. Their zoning ideas been successful in many other cities. What are some of your thoughts on their suggestions?

Boog Highberger

I was elected to stop sprawl, not stop growth. I think the local Smart Code that we will be receiving from the PlaceMakers group very soon will give us the tools we need to grow without sprawling. The Smart Code will help us build great new neighborhoods, places where kids can safely walk or bike to schools and neighborhood parks, and it will help us make older neighborhoods better, too.

abby

Do you agree with the statement made by the consultant from Placemakers that Lawrence’s planning process is broken in that developers “don’t know what to do, don’t know what the City Commission wants, and it takes forever to get anything approved” and that the level of distrust in this community is “striking and more than in most communities”?

Boog Highberger

I don’t think it was a surprise to anyone to learn that there is a high degree of mistrust here. I think that stems at least partly from a long history of people proposing projects here with little or no consideration given to the impacts on the neighborhood and the community. What I’m hoping that the we can get out of the Placemakers process and a new Smart Code is public confidence that our development rules will give results that almost everyone can agree is good for the community, and that will allow us to make the development process smoother and more predictable, so that every has fewewr meetings to go to and that we get great new & revitalized neighborhoods that we can all be proud of.

Pardon me for tooting my own horn a little here, but it has been very important to me not just to oppose things I don’t like, but to put forward solutions to our problems, and I think that encouraging people to consider a traditional neighborhood design code is one very important contribution I have made during my term on the commission.

just_another_bozo_on_this_bus

Should growth and development be required to pay their own way for the increased infrastrucure and services that they necessitate, or is the
future growth of the city so important that rest of the city needs to continue subsidizing these costs?

Boog Highberger

Bozo– I love your on-line name, by the way– I see you are another Firesign Theater fan– I think basic principles of equity suggest that new growth ought to pay its own costs, considered over the long-term, rather than shifting those cosats to existing usinesses and homeowners. I won’t go into all the details here about the different opinions about whether new growth pays for itself, but if anybody tells you that new growth pays for itself, ask them to pay the increase in your sewer bill for the last few & next few years. Two-thirds to 3/4 of that increase is growth-related, but this is one instance where the current commission decided that the health of our community in the future required a significant expenditure, in this case on construction of a new wastewater reclamation facility.

Raider

Boog, what do you feel you have done during your time as commissioner for affordable housing and job growth? What should we expect from you along these lines if re-elected?

Thank you,.

Boog Highberger

One great development over the last four years is the creation of a local Community Land Trust to create a permanent stock of affordable housing. The city made a significant contribution to this program through its Housing Trust Fund. (Many of our previous housing efforts subsidized purchase of houses that then were sold at market rate when the family moved– this doesn’t happen with the land trust model). During my term as Mayor, I appointed a Housing Needs Task Force, which recently recommended adopting an incentive-based inclusionaryy zoning ordinance, which would provide density bonuses or other incentives for a eveloper to either include affordable units in each new project or to contribute to a fund for rehabilitating affordable housing in older neighborhoods.

Thats_messed_up

are you for or against the SLT and why. If you are for the SLT then what will you do to make it happen?

Boog Highberger

There is currently no funding available for construction of the SLT, and there won’t be any money available until we find a route that most of the community can agree on. The federal Highway Administration uses a process now called “Context Sensitive Solutions”– under this approach a 32nd Street route would never have been approved in the first place. I have proposed building a southern connecting road around Lawrence on existing right-of-way that would connect to the existing interchange east of Lawrence on K-10. This route would have far fewer environmental concerns and could have a lower cost than a route straight through the Haskell/Baker wetlands.

l3roy

Why should Lawrence Firefighters vote for you, instead of other candidates?

Thank you.

Boog Highberger

I think the city should be a goood employer, and I have worked to ensure appropriate cost-of-living increases for city employees during my term on the commission (although I regret not being able to do so in 2003, when we unexpectedly lost over a million dollars in state transfer funds). I have suported changing ouur benefit package to be competitive with other jurisdictions, and I supported former Chief McSwain’s plans for construction of Fire Stations 4 & 5 to better serve our community.

Moderator

We still have more questions, but that’s the last one we have time for. Boog, thanks for joining us today.

Boog Highberger

Thanks for your questions, and i hope to have a chance to answer all the ones we didn’t et to today. You can find more information and contact through our campaign web site, www.voteboog.com. It has been a real honor to serve as a commissioner for the last 4 your years and as your mayor last year, and I hope to have the opportunity to continue to serve this great community.