COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- Last week at a forum, the Colorado Springs mayoral candidates and several of the city council candidates were asked what their funding priorities would be if elected.
Monday FOX21 News spoke with the rest of the at-large candidates to find out their answer to that very question.
At-large city council candidates Ed Bircham, Douglas Bruce, Richard Bruce, Helen Collins, Gretchen Kasameyer, Tim Leigh and Dan Reifschneider, all agreed that public safety and infrastructure were at the top of their lists for funding priorities.
"Those are the most important because that's what government is supposed to do," Kasameyer said. "Government isn't supposed to be intrusive on our lives and they're not supposed to entertain the populous."
Kasameyer and four other candidates have put together what they are calling a reform team, led by anti-tax activist Douglas Bruce.
The other members are Ed Bircham, Richard Bruce, and Helen Collins.
"We're always interested in safety, the police, the fire department, infrastructure," Richard Bruce said. "It really concerns me when the basics that the city is supposed to be taking care of begins to get neglected."
The reform team said the current city council punished citizens after they didn't agree to a tax hike, by not taking care of the parks, turning off streetlights and letting weeds run wild.
"The public needs the weeds cut, the potholes fixed," Bircham said. "They need to know, and they need to be told the truth."
The reform team said there is plenty of money, it's just being wasted.
"I think the biggest waste for us right now is SDS, the Southern Delivery System," Collins said. "It runs $10,000 a foot, for 62 miles of pipeline that runs uphill from Pueblo."
Douglas Bruce said the city wastes tens of millions of dollars each year.
"We want to save the tax payers money, reduce fees, attract businesses," he said.
Bruce said he wants to create jobs in the private sector, not more government jobs.
"We shouldn't be paying people to come here," he said. "We shouldn't be paying people like the Olympic headquarters not to leave here. We should make Colorado Springs so attractive that people will naturally want to come here on their own without being bribed."
At-large city council candidate Tim Leigh said he wants to draw more young people to the area, which would boost the economy and make the city an overall better place to live.
"If we draw this young creative class to Colorado Springs, employers will naturally gravitate here to employe those folks and that will make the economy take off," Leigh said. "Then a lot of these things that we argue and talk about, that are really interesting and important, become less arguable because we have sufficient funding to pay for a lot of things that we'd like."
Dan Reifschneider said there are ways the city can save money just by looking under its nose.
"You don't always have to cut," he said. "If you ask people how to make stuff faster, better, quicker and easier, ask the people who do it everyday. They usually will surprise you and come up with some great ideas, and the question is will we have any city council people and mayors who are gonna listen?"
FOX21 News also called Merv Bennett, another at large city council candidate, but he did not return those calls.
There are 22 candidates running for seven open city council seats: five at large seats, one district two seat and one district three seat.
Ballots are due back April 5 by 7 p.m.
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