MACON MAYORAL CANDIDATE FORUM TRANSCRIPT

On February 26th sponsored by The Home Press, Journalist Benjamin Nelson moderated a Mayoral Forum between the two candidates that will be facing off on Tuesday April 3rd, Incumbent Mayor Dale Bagley and Local Businessman, James T. Holman. The forum was held at the Macon Middle School Gym. Each Candidate was asked the same number of questions, had the same time to answer the questions, and there was a limited one-minute window for any rebuttals. Mr. Holman and Mr. Bagley were given the rules a head of time and two questions were released before the forum. The public was encouraged to attend while even with some technological problems, the local newspaper was able to get a video onto social media where those online could watch, too. Prior to the forum, for several weeks, Mr. Nelson had been taking questions from the public in which he would ask some during the forum to the two candidates. It began at seven in the evening.
In the moderator’s introductory speech, he outlined the rules (in which the public was told to listen and not boo, clap, cheer, etc.). Mr. Nelson also talked about how this was a unique opportunity giving the public the opportunity to view the candidates in a raw and up-close atmosphere. He ended his introduction with stating that in the coming days and weeks, we are reaching a crossroads in our town – thus why it’s important to get to know the candidates and the possible elected officials of the great town of Macon. Mr. Holman won the coin flip at the beginning of the evening, deciding not to go first – Mr. Bagley would start the evening off during the opening statement.

Opening statements kicked off the evening – candidates had two minutes to say anything about their background, job experience, etc. From this moment on, is the transcript of the Macon Mayoral Forum.

Moderator Nelson: “Candidates you both have two minutes to give a brief bio about yourself and anything you feel pertinent to your opening statement.”

Dale Bagley: “I am Dale Bagley I am currently the Mayor of Macon so I am running for re-election. The thing I want to start with is that a lot of people don’t know about is I was born in Brookfield Missouri, went to high school in Edina Missouri and I went to college in Kirksville Missouri and I worked my way through college. I started working when I was 10-years-old delivery papers for the St. Louis Post Dispatch in Kirksville and delivered all over town and that’s a pretty big job for a 10-year-old kid. I continued to work my way through school I worked as a meat cutter at the Leopard Plant I helped process beef, pork and at the end season deer, which I hated, it’s hard to bone out deer I’ll tell you that. One of things I will tell you I have 3 things that drive me, it’s my family, my faith in God and my love for the community of Macon. We have spent most of our lives here I actually lived in Macon for 2 years before coming back a second time to Macon. But I love Macon it’s a wonderful place to raise a family, they have a good school system and I really know that my job as: I don’t really know how much time there is, there’s no clock. I will tell you one things I‘ve done from the time I have been in Macon is dedicated myself to helping the people, helping teachers, helping students and also help them as members of alliances and others organization that give benefits to children.”

Talt Holman: “My name is Tilt Holman born and raised in Macon Missouri, my father is Gary Holman. I am a businessman here in town. I started high school here or went to high school here and graduated in 98 and he was actually one of my science teacher and went on got a degree at Missouri Western State College in human resources with the influence in general manage. I then got out of college and started my own business in 2004. Most of you probably seen me around town I am a general contractor. I work out of the city of Lemons, Columbia, St. Joe area and Kirksville. I raise a family here I have 4 kids and my home is Macon. The reason I am running for Mayor is I want to see Macon; I want to see more out of Macon so I am invested here I want to stay here and I want my kids to stay here.”

Question #1: “Surrounding information of what you stand for, state an elevator pitch that you would give to anyone. You will have one minute.”

Dale Bagley: “I want to say that my experience and my leadership that I have shown to the city of Macon over the past few years have indicated to everybody who deals with Macon knows that Macon is a better place for the work that the city has done this by working with the citizens and helping to solve problems that the citizens bring to the city. We are dealing with them as quickly as we can and trying to do the best job we can to be good steward of the Macon city taxes.”

Talt Holman: “I personally, as most people know I am a hard worker, I am aggressive person I’d like to see more progression in this town. So my elevator pitch would be lets get more business here because without business this town doesn’t grow we got to have growth so we don’t have to raise taxes for streets and fire equipment. If we have the growth we can have sales taxes to keep up with the city. So personally I think the town needs to grow at a faster rate or growth period.”

Questions #2: “In the Federalist Papers, James Madison talks about the powers of the Federal and State/local government. "Powers of the federal government in the proposed Constitution are few and defined. Powers of the State (and implied local) government, are numerous and indefinite." He was likely pointing to model of a more influential state and local government(s); that can directly impact a person's life - rather than a brute of a federal government. Please in detail, describe the powers/job description of the Mayor of Macon. You will have two minutes.”

Talt Holman: “From what I read out that there is not one I have called down to the city asking for a description of the Mayor and there is not one available. So I went to the state rules and commotion, basically the mayor is 3rd class city so therefore he residence over the city of administrator, police department and fire department. He also does the tiebreakers if the city counsel meeting. If the city counsel is made up of 8 people and if there is a tie then mayor has to break the tie. Also a lot of times he sets on commotions for city, and I believe that’s it.”

Dale Bagley: “Pretty much everything that Talt said there is correct about the job of the city and mayor. I will state that among other things the duties of mayor are kind of prescribed state statues wither then in local ordinance. They do mention the local ordinance some of the things that we’re talking about but the important thing to realize is that the mayor has to be available to work with the city administrator to work with the citizens and even with something issues that come before the community which then I sign all the papers I got to go to the real estate offices I go to the lawyers office and sign papers when we’re making other deals I sign all the orders that get passed by the City other stuff but to me the most important that the Mayor provides the vision and leadership that makes the city prospect.”

Questions #3: ”Michael Nutter, the 98th Mayor of Philadelphia (Elected on November 6th 2007 and November 8th, 2011) said, "I didn't run for Mayor to be the caretaker of the status quo." In your eyes, what does this quote mean? What is the status quo here in Macon? Is it good or bad? How will you deal with it if elected/re-elected as Mayor of Macon in April? You will have three minutes.”

Dale Bagley: “Well status quo basically means things, as they are at a particular time line my perspective on it is that Macon has never been a quote assibilation community there’s only one thing that you can do within a community you’ve got to either move forward or you’re going backwards I think Macon has continue to move forward we work with the businesses in the community we work with many of the businesses that all benefited from their interactions of the city we understand that as it’s good or bad the status quo as possible means that were taking care of the people properly and we’re listening to what they have to say and we’re responding that’s a good status quo. Bad status quo is when you let the streets go to pots when you don’t when you don’t have good utilities in the community when your fire department have bad brakes and police department have bad cars that won’t make it to a crime scene so this is things that need to be fixed and the City of Macon will help with the community to be able to work towards solving those problems.”

Talt Holman: “My version of the status quo is the same, one of the issues I believe that is a problem in Macon is I think a lot of people can botch for this is there is no communication from the city. We have 2 ways of communication we lost one of our newspapers a few years back, but we still have Facebook and then there’s the home press now. There’s over 5,000 people on Facebook and then our area news so there should be information coming out from the city council meeting it’s just like the pool deal everyone knows that the pools are not here, and has we’ve started over two years ago. There has been people asking me about it personally I have served on the committee to help the particle one to try that ideas in to try to get this thing moving. The way I understand we just finalized on the property, but this should have been done before the other pool shut down we should of known our numbers before that and what it was going to cost before it shut down and took it from there don’t shut down the pool then try to figure everything out. There’s been other people the YMCA has tried to talk to the park and counsel about different ideal they had, and they turn them down I was at the meeting. The streets are a big issue with a lot of people and I am one of them I understand the city until they have the sale tax they didn’t have any money but there’s proper training and this is my field on how to take care of the streets better than we do there ‘ s got to be a way and I can fix that also with my leadership in business if we can help with a budget numbers and try to get this stuff fixed faster the streets are a big issue and so is the pool we got to get it resolved.”

Dale Bagley (REBUTTAL): “I have a couple of comments I would like to say, one of the things I would like to say is one of the reason we had to move the pool is because it was becoming unsafe for the people who were utilizing the bottom was cracking last few years the pump went out and we had to looking all over the United States to try to find a pump to replace it. The ground water level because of it seeping under the ground and causing damage making it impossible without spending a million dollars to rebuild a pool were it was. The reason we didn’t go with the Y’s faculties was because the Y was going to cost us at least 3 hundred thousand dollars just to move the utilities on the site and it was also still the site that they were talking about with the ditch that water from the highway comes under that goes down into the Blees Lake so it was a drainage area filled with soil so it was a no brainer it was not a good place for a pool.”

Talt Holman (REBUTTAL): “With the pool shut down the issues were pier to it shutting down and this should have been talked about years ago not now not after the fact. Now the only pool we have in town is the Country Club and the Country Club is not in that good of shape but it’s a place people can go and thank goodness we have it. So the planning was the big issue on the pool.”

Questions #4: “Fiscal Audit Reports show in the course of over 13 years, expenses in Community Development have dropped roughly 529,775 dollars – 89%. Street project expenses have dropped roughly 347,889 dollars. I understand cutting taxes can be good, but do you think money is being well spent in the aspect of Community Development? In the report it talks about how the biggest reasons why it decreased are due to land easements, work that stopped at the Airport, and the Community Development Director position was eliminated. It also talked about how no chip-seal or street overlay projects took place in 2016. Are we spending enough in our city’s development? You will have two minutes.”

Talt Holman: “That’s a long one… well I haven’t seen the budget as much as you have. I do know we do have the fuel tax that’s supposed to be used for our city streets. And I am not saying that the streets… so your telling me that 3 hundred thousand has not been spent that it’s dropped? Well that would be a good question for the Mayor.”

Dale Bagley: “I experience … I don’t know are you not going to answer the question?”

Talt Holman: “Well I don’t know the budgets. I mean there’s got to be a way I understand that we a sales tax and I am not for high sales tax but the sales taxes in place and there should be a lot more, the only street I have seen done in the last 10 years is Maffrey to my knowledge that’s had major repairs now the street should be maintained and kept up the best they can with the budget numbers we have. Of course, we have a half cents sales tax from what I understand for half a million dollars a year into the budget to do that. So, for my calculation it should be close to 3 miles of payment of 2-inch overlay now will with that you’re only as good as what’s under it so the road is breaking up underneath that we can do the proper steps to prepare the bad part of the road the overlay is not going to hold up. Now you said something about far as the community … I don’t remember what you said.”

Dale Bagley: “Yeah one of the things that we’re talking about here is using the funds available to get the most for the community one of the issues we have run into here is that we have run on cash basis we cannot go into dept so therefore everything that we again we have to we can’t spend more than we take in but there we don’t have because off the expenses and the cause of inflation and that is that the general fund revenue hasn’t really gone up much we’ve been forced to use sales tax for helping the fire department that get new fire truck we had to run and when we say we get to community to do this all happened we had to least get city of Macon proposed to the citizens that if we passed the quarter sales tax we would be able to add upgrading on the fire department and also same thing with the street, there’s about 65 miles of streets in Macon so like Talt said 3 miles of street repair overly would have to be very very judiciously used around the community so that the community people who live in the community can see some benefit from it. That’s why we have the City Council working so hard to make sure that the money is properly spent and the streets around the whole community and not in just one area.”

Talt Holman (REBUTTAL/EXTRA STATEMENT): “From what I have seen from the street department I believe they need proper training and need different equipment because a lot of those pumps would be fixed just by gridding them off and making them smooth and we can get the street fixed; there’s a lot of things that can be done that don’t cost that much money to correct a lot issues.”

Dale Bagley (REBUTTAL/EXTRA STATEMENT): “He’s right about that, it has to be done. We know that there are some equipment out there one of the things that we were talking about doing is we can maintain the streets that we have a good street if made out of asphalt we need to occasionally overcome chip sealed to keep them from going bad I know these people who have large parking lots every year or so they go and put a lay on there to help maintain so they don’t have to place replace them so often. So that’s one of those things that we’re looking at doing. There so much we want to get we want to make sure that we spend money, so it’s been something that will be better than what we’ve had in future.”

Question #5: After reviewing provided Park Board Minutes from 2014 until September 2017, there is clearly a discussion that has taken place about the pool. From deciding to go with WestPort Pools with the contract, with the generous donation of land by the Davidson family, there has been some progress with moving toward a new pool in Macon. Mr. Holman your name came up several times in reviewing the minutes (possible donation of construction equipment), Vicky McLeland City Administrator through discussion outlined in the minutes seems kind of “disappointed” if you will about the progress in getting a new pool, Survey Monkey shows that the people of Macon are tired of traveling to neighboring towns during the summer to enjoy pool festivities – mainly because they are supporting another community and would much rather support their own community in Macon. Correct me if I am wrong, we are heading into our third summer without a working pool since the old circular pool closed several years ago. As Mayor, you are the top political figure in our town. You have influence. What do you think of the progress so far with getting a new pool, when do you think we will have a pool, where will it be as a priority to you, if elected/re-elected as Mayor of Macon? Also, there hasn’t been a concrete plan made for long term financing of the pool. A lot of people have expressed their concerns with the cost – please discuss that point in your answer. You have 3 minutes to answer.”

Dale Bagley: “One of the things about the pool that I mentioned earlier we happened to move the pool because of the location being unsuitable and search the entire community to find a location and we were fortunate enough that Jack Davidson volunteered to donate some land for us to put the pool on then the river baseball folks come to the park board meeting and asked us to reconsider what we’ve done with the rule from the south side of the road on Lake Street to the far side of the road on Lake street the group that came kindly did the drilling to make sure that it was suitable soil and it was suitable the park board voted to make that switch from the south side over to the north side so that there would be land there available. Jack Davidson has annexed in 20 acres the annunciation will be complete tomorrow the 27th so that will be done after the demonstration is over then we go about the process of obtaining city ownership with bankers have been donated that will be the way to go and once we get the property it turns out that you cannot get financing for a pool unless you have a property to put it on so once we get the property then we can go through the process of financing them we’ve already gone through the primary financing steps and waiting for possession of the property and we inspected with the pool design coming in spring that construction will begin this year and hopefully if they build real fast maybe to get Talt to help do some building and excavation and other work out there maybe they could get it done in time for a little swimming in Macon.”

Talt Holman: “The pool is a big priority far as keeping our youth entertained. The pool and streets are a big issue, the pool need to be going like you said I don’t know all the big legalese like you pointed out, but I do know that we should progress as fast as we can. I have worked on 3 or 4 pool projects worked on Mobley’s, Monroe City’s worked on Marceline and you start a pool in August and you open them in May. So, it’s not going to be here this year that won’t happen. So, we have to I suggest at the beginning of this pool issue that we need to go after grant money I know there’s grant money out there for it. I don’t know if they pursued that or not but I brought that up at some of the meeting we’ve had the committee I ‘have served on but I think we need to get grants for the pool and figure out what it’s going to cost to operate as far as I can tell they don’t know that. So, is it going cost 3 million for the pool, what’s it’s going to cost a year? Pools don’t make money, I have talk to Marceline about it and they just don’t make much. Marceline sports went on to have the fan company donated the dome to go over the pool, so they can swim year-round.”

Dale Bagley (REBUTTAL): “I would like to say we have applied for a grant we took the grant material down about 2 weeks ago to Jeff City it’s a $250,000 grant that would be applied to the pool you’re not going to get enough grant for the entire pool so we’re going to have to finance our partial portion of the pool. We’re looking forward to getting the financing done and we have a lot of work on looking at the way the financing is set up and are ready to move forward as soon as possible.”

Talt Holman (REBUTTAL): “I was on the other committee to try to get the ball fields over there too there’s a lot of community support behind the ball field I am not saying the city shouldn’t replace the pool for the ball field. But it would be a nice complex to have uptown for our youth. One of our biggest problems is there is nothing here for our youth we have a skateboard reek and some other ball field and the Y. But you know the school don’t have enough room the whole you know all tournaments for districts and stuff like that, that I needs a bigger opinion and I think with the end goal yet also had many I talk to the Y I talk to the school and I talk to the Macon Baseball Association and it’s I things we need to work on.”

Dale Bagley (REBUTTAL): I would like to point out that the ball fields are the cities and they maintain them the city it’s spent 100 and 100s of dollars getting to maintain and I think the ball fields look as good as they’ve looked in years and we have a wonderful cooperative relationship with the Y and I couldn’t be happier with the way that things are going with that and I think it’s a good win-win situation for both groups.”

Question #6: “What do you do on a daily basis to make yourself a better person and a better leader? You have one minute to answer.”

Talt Holman: “I work hard, I wake up every morning and I have a business that has 40 employees 30-40 employees depends on which time of year it is. Of course, I have to budget, I make payroll and I’m always generous to my employees. I work hard, and I love what I do.”

Dale Bagley: “I work hard, too. And, I spend a lot of time outside. I come to the city every day. I don’t necessarily stay there very long. If anybody needs to deal with me, all they got to do is let Sue at the office let me know and I’ll get with them. I done that with hundreds of people. It’s not very hard. I’ll call them. I’ll meet them. This sort of thing. What I’ve done to, I’ve spent my whole life helping people and I started to say earlier. In the JCs we built parks, we built the shelter house at the lake, we built the cook shack out at the fairgrounds. The Lions, The JCs are a wonderful organization. The Lions we built a shelter house out at the fairgrounds, we’ve provided eyeglasses for needy kids, and we’ve helped with scholarships for students from our school. We do a lot of things for our community. And I do that because that’s my goal.”

Question #7: “We are now moving into some of the questions I received from the public. How do these candidates view the school system in relation to the economy of the city? Do they believe a progressive school system can help attract new business to town, and how can the school be progressive without the support of the community, since we live in one of the lowest-taxed cities north of I-70. Do you support seeing our school get the improvements it needs along with possible new additions to help shape programs for the future? You have 2 and a half minutes to respond.”

Dale Bagley: “I’m a very strong supporter of the school. Of course, I was a school teacher. I have a good working relationship with the administration of the school. I come up here several times a year to help work on scholarships and help work on Boys’ State. I’m um very positive about the school. I think the school is one of the pillars a community needs to be built. The vocational school is wonderful. The whole school is an asset to our community.”

Talt Holman: “I also think the school...when people come to town to put a business in or put their family in, they look at the school system. Go to Kansas City they don’t want to be in that school system because this one is better. I think the school is a very important part of the community. I’ve also talked to Mr. Jarvis about the school addition also. I think he’s spot-on, he’s taken time and figured out the best way to get the biggest bang for our buck on the school. So the school is important and the city also helps out with the police being out here for the safety of the school also.”

Question #8: “If you could change, get rid of or create a tax here in the City of Macon, what would it be and why? If you could change, get rid of, create, a City Ordinance here in the City of Macon, what would it be and why? You have a minute and a half to answer.”

Talt Holman: ”I think the projected numbers on the fire department was quarter cent sales tax and the projected numbers were $200,000 a year. I’m not for tax, but if we’re going to get fire trucks, we should have asked for half because I looked at the numbers and I looked at the price of fire trucks and we’re way behind on fire trucks. I want to change that to a half. Now I’m not a tax person, I said that reluctantly, by looking at the numbers last seen, it should have been half a cent sales tax. I don’t know if it would be changing an ordinance but working with a business we need to help the business and not go against the business. I know there’s ordinances and stuff like that but just like anything else there’s loopholes. You’ve got to make it easier on people to expand or come to town and try to build a business.”

Dale Bagley: “The fact is Macon is just barely scraping by financially as it is. I will say we have not raised property taxes from the city of Macon since I’ve been mayor. The property tax has fluctuated within four one hundredths of a percent. It usually goes down because as you add property to the city of Macon and the assessed value of the community goes up, because of the Hancock Amendment, the taxes that we pay the property taxes go down so the city’s not getting a windfall. They built a lot of beautiful homes and stuff like that in Macon in the last 10-15 years that really hasn’t raised a whole lot more money for the city. It’s raised some but it hasn’t raised a lot but we do have them. It’s not because we’re raising taxes. As far as an ordinance, most of the time when an ordinance is an issue, people come to the city and say we did have a situation where a fellow wanted to raise some sheep in a pen behind his house and we looked at the ordinance and thought it wouldn’t let him do that but it turned out that after we read the ordinance he could do that but he had to keep the number of sheep down to a smaller number than he was planning, so that’s one thing why we have ordinances.”

Question #9: “A lot of people are talking about a Bypass around Macon. There are a lot of mixed feelings about this topic with many different people on each side. What are your beliefs and views about having a possible Bypass around Macon? You have a minute to answer.”

Dale Bagley: “I would tell you if you want to have a bypass around Macon you just as well kiss about 50% of the sales tax goodbye. I have a lot of people who travel through Macon and when they’re driving through, and their speed is down around 35 mph and they see a McDonald’s they will stop. If they are going 70 mph on a bypass past Macon, they’re not going to make that turn and drive a mile and a half into town to get one. If you look down 63, you have Haymaker’s, you have Break Time, and you’re going to have a new Casey’s. All those are gas stations that were there because they got the speed limit and the car and the road goes through Macon, not around it.”

Talt Holman: “I’ve thought a lot about the bypass thing, he (Bagley) is correct, it would hurt some local businesses but with that bypass if it did happen it could spark an economic growth. You go to different towns, it hasn’t happened in Kirksville yet, but with a bypass a lot of times you move the city limits out and you have a need maybe to put a truck stop or something like that out there. You know, we could basically double the size of Macon by putting a station out by the bypass. I haven’t really studied it that much. I do think it could be beneficial, but he (Bagley) is correct. It could hurt their sales tax, too, but it’s getting to the point when you come through Macon I know on a Friday during deer season, it’s like driving to St. Louis on that highway. I know you can’t just base it off deer season. On Fridays it’s really bad on the highway.”

Dale Bagley (REBUTTAL/EXTRA STATEMENT): “I would say I’ve spent a lot of time talking to MoDOT about how much traffic is on the highways - one of the issues we’re having, is the entrance off the ramps past 36 and onto 63. I think they’re aware of that problem and they’re trying to deal with it. I think they’re being creative. I think they’re coming up with new ideas and then they actually give a relief to some of that traffic concerns that you’re talking about. I’ve been coming down 36 going east and there have been people backed up all the way out on the highway trying to get up that ramp so we are going to have to do something for safety reasons.”

Talt Holman (REBUTTAL/EXTRA STATEMENT): “Well there is 4,000 cars coming up 63 everyday, so…”

Questions #10: “Due to recent events, I decided at the last second to throw this question in there. Mr. Mayor, I noticed in one of the City Council Meetings, the appointment of a resource officer to the school. To both of you, I understand that the school makes decisions on their own separate from City Government, but as someone with possible influence as Mayor, is there anything you would provide or discuss with the officials at Macon R-1 School to ensure the safe learning environment our kids deserve? Is there anything you would recommend to the school? You have a minute to answer.”

Talt Holman: “I don’t want to open that can of worms...I think in the high school there’s like 13-15 I believe doors coming into the school you know that the days of being able to leave the garage door open to the Vo-Tech is over. I mean we’re dealing with ISIS, we’re dealing with crazy people, so we need to keep the doors locked down other than the front doors and do what they did in the Middle School put another set of doors to stop them and glass which we’ve done in a building before so they can talk to the secretary and let them buzz them in if they should be able to come into the school. The High School needs one, the Elementary School needs one and I think that that’s two big issues there that all these other doors on lockdown during the day. We need to make sure that these doors are secured with cards you swipe or whatever. Let the faculty do it.”

Dale Bagley: “I was up to the school today and in order to get in you have to push the button and they look at you to make sure you’re a person that they would want to have in the school. I suppose that if someone showed up with an AK-47 or something like that they wouldn’t push the button but the important thing to look at is when I got inside there was the police chief from the city of Macon, there was a Highway Patrolman, and there was a resource officer and another officer. They were here in the city and in the school making sure that it was safe. All this stuff that’s going on down in Florida, it’s got everybody on edge and we want to make sure that people that go to school here feel safe and are able to learn and that’s what the purpose of schools are not just to block people in or block people out. We want to make sure that they’re safe.”

Talt Holman (REBUTTAL/EXTRA STATEMENT): “I understand that there’s extra police during a game but normally there’s one and that’s covering the whole school. I believe there needs to be one on every division of the school, Middle School and Elementary. I understand that costs money but maybe if you as a student can walk up there with a trench coat on and they know you and they let you in, then you’re in. There’s a lot of precautions to take on that. I have kids up here and it scares me just as it does any other parent.”

Dale Bagley (REBUTTAL/EXTRA STATEMENT): This is a funding issue that the school has to deal with. It’s pretty expensive to do that and with how spread out our campus is I would that at least a second officer would not be a bad idea but I want to make sure it does get done in a way that’s proper. I do think, though, that the most important thing is having a strong ?? of security around the school like the door being locked and I think that’s our first line of defense and then the second, of course, is our security officer and I know Officer Taylor would do everything that he possibly could do to help ?? any problem that might come up.”

Question #11 TO MAYOR BAGLEY: “On December 12th, Tony Petre posted in Macon Missouri Area News, “How do you see Macon in 5 years, 10 years? What does it look like? It garnered hundreds and hundreds of comments. One comment stated “I love Macon, always have, but I got tired of being broke so I moved away. Sad but true.” Another comment said, “Macon is missing out on trying to attract distribution centers. Macon is a central location in the USA.” Someone said, “Things could be better no doubt, we need to find someone to step up and take the lead. Fight for us.” Several people stated that our town is slowly declining and becoming a town of gas stations. One person even talked about the nepotism case that occurred several years ago. To be fair, there were some very positive comments as well, comments stating the positives of our small town – Royal Theatre, our Restaurants, etc. How do you respond to these statements and does this illustrate your performance as Mayor for the past 14 years? You have two and a half minutes to answer.”

Dale Bagley: “Well I would say that one of the things we (asked for question to be repeated)...In five years, I see Macon as a much better community than it is now. I think that if you look at Macon five years ago, we’re moving in the right direction. We’re doing a lot of improvements that had to be done. I guarantee you in five years we will have better streets, we’re going to have a better fire department, equipment wise. I have no quarrel whatsoever with the personnel there, we have great personnel at the fire and police department. We need to keep moving forward on things like that. I see Macon as the thing that a city can do. The city’s job is not to go and beat the bushes for businesses. That’s why we’re a part of Macon County Economic Development. Macon County Economic Development’s job is to go to places and call/contact people. We wouldn’t have Love’s Truck Stop here in Macon County if it wasn’t for the work of the Macon County Economic Development Group. We wouldn’t have a lot of other businesses here if weren’t for the Macon County Economic Development Group. The job of the city is to provide an environment where it will be conducive for the community for people to come to our community to have a community that is business from a community that has resources here that they need enough water and sewer and enough natural gas for them to function. These are the things the city can do and we can make sure that our streets and our schools and everything like that are good so that we can work together to be a better community.”

MODERATOR NELSON STEPS IN: “To be fair the question was about some of the negative comments on Tony Petre’s post about Macon. Does that illustrate your job performance as mayor for the past 14 years?”

Dale Bagley: “You can’t make everyone happy. I try to make people happy. We work with people to try to solve problems. There’s going to be disagreements at times. Honestly, I think the community has benefited as a whole from the things that Macon has been doing while I have been Mayor.”

Question #11 to TALT HOLMAN: “Mr. Holman, I received dozens upon dozens of emails and messages from concerned citizens throughout this town on the motivations of you to run for Mayor. Many talked about the big discussion around the Wardell Mansion, your lost one year ago for City Council, and now all of a sudden you are running for the biggest position in the city. You are young, you have a young family with kids being very involved in sports, you have a very successful and busy business, why another iron in the fire? Why this? We have a President who has handed his business to his children to try and keep conflict of interest from existing. What will you do and what can you say tonight to assure the people of Macon that your motives are for the right reasons, you aren’t doing this to benefit yourself, and if elected what steps are you going to take to make sure there isn’t a single doubt in the minds of those you are working for and the voters of Macon, that conflict of interest won’t exist in your administration. You have two and a half minutes to answer.”

Talt Holman: “The Wardell Mansion thing is the least of my worries. I bought the house from the gentlemen that owned it before me. It’s sitting over there right now like it has been for the last 30 years. The tax base of there on that house is over 282 dollars a year. It used to be 12,000. If people are really worried about Wardell Mansion, there are bigger fish to fry in town than that. I am not worried about it. Now the reason I have stepped up is because I am young and I am eager and my family is here. I have lived here my whole life other than college. I have a lot invested into this town, I am always moving, I am always tearing down delipidated houses here in town. I have built nice apartments. I don’t want to see the town go down because it will not only impact the town, but it will also impact me. I see a steady decline here, not a steady incline. I am stepping up to the plate. I worked on trying to get someone to run for mayor for over two years and couldn’t do it, so you know what, I decided I’ll run. I do have young kids but you are only as good as the people in front of you. Get people trained properly, giving out the right information, it’ll work.”

MODERATOR NELSON STEPS IN: “Is there anything you can say to everyone here tonight that, um, will there be conflict of interest if you are elected Mayor?”

Talt Holman: “There will be no conflict of interest. I have to recuse myself. If I go up in front of the city council, I am a citizen at that point. Now I may have to sit with the council as mayor and throw the gavel and start the meeting, but I will step down with my issue. I’ll have no vote in that. So there will be no conflict of interest. I have been asked by several people, I am not a cheater, I am not looking for financial gain, or any of that. I care about this town, I live here, I want to see this town progress, and that’s why I am here. I could be making money somewhere else. What I found is most of my money is not made in Macon. It’s made in Kirksville, Columbia, and different places. There’s not enough growth here to keep a company my size around here. We need more growth so we can get more people to come here. Let’s rock and roll and get this thing going. I want to meet people that I know so that we can get people to come here.

Dale Bagley (REBUTTAL): “Macon is a great town to raise a family. It’s a town that has stepped forward when there was time we needed to deal with important things. Macon Leadership helped in getting highway 36 four lane from Macon to Hannibal. That’s made a huge difference in traffic and there are some businesses here that wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that. City of Macon is always looking for progress as we go along.”

Talt Holman (REBUTTAL): “Well with the four lanes, I don’t know about everyone else, but there should be a lot more going on here than that. You go over to Cameron and they have four lanes and there is stuff going on over there. There is a lot of potential here, but we should be having a major economic boom here.”

Question #12 TO MAYOR BAGLEY: "Mr. Bagley last year during the city council race, a candidate had brought up a certain case of nepotism. "City Council has been negligent in handling money. Nepotism would be an accurate description. Recently there was on job that was created for a family member by another family member higher up in the local city government. The position was full time Ordinance Inspection/Code Enforcement Officer. That person had no experience. The city has to set priorities." You were Mayor at the time. How do you respond to that? Justify it? How can you assure voters that something like this won’t happen again? You have two minutes to respond."

Dale Bagley: “First off it wasn’t nepotism. In order it to be nepotism, the person who makes the selection is the supervisor of the person selected. I was actually the supervisor of the person who got selected and that job wasn’t created, it was already in existence. It was a job that involved code enforcement and we still have the job now. We didn’t get rid of the code officer – the individual left. Kevin Meyers is now the Code Officer. We had Joe Evans as a Code Officer before. We have a lot of things that happen and for quality purposes we asked for applications and the best qualified person got the job. Since the employee was not being supervised by another employee of the city, it was not nepotism. It was a case of hiring the best person for the job.

Questions #12 TO TALT HOLMAN: Mr. Holman, I was emailed multiple times about something you had did back when the school was trying to pass the tax initiative. Several of these people told me that you had sent out letters to people that lived in your houses or properties and stated that their rent would increase if the tax was passed. Is that common behavior or was that intimidating voters to vote a certain way? Will that happen if elected Mayor if the city is trying to pass something, or in the future, if the school is trying to pass something? You have two minutes to respond."

Talt Holman: “Well for the record, this last school levy I didn’t send out any letters. The other one was going to impact in such a way in terms of money I had to tell my people in my apartments that their rent was going to go up. I couldn’t sustain the amount of money it was going to cost for property taxes. No, I don’t plan on doing that I again, I got enough backlash on that one, but I wanted my people to know I was going to raise the rent. It was going to be so much, like 26 dollars a month, that I had to do something. I am not against the school. Now, the four-million-dollar levy wasn’t that big so I am probably going to keep it the same.”

Questions #13: “ConAgra is the biggest employer in Town. Recently the Trenton ConAgra closed down, laying off hundreds of employees. God forbid, what would you do as Mayor of Macon to fight for ConAgra in case there were talks of our facility closing down too? You have one minute to answer.”

Talt Holman: “Well in towns, big or small, it’s like Walmart, they ask for tax abatements. They’ve been here for so long that it probably wouldn’t incentivize them any. To that magnitude, they are a huge employer in this town, we would have to do everything we could to try and keep them here. Whether it would be utility rates or something. 400 and some people have to stay working. It would be worse than Toastmaster.”

Dale Bagley: “If something were to happen, it would be a devastating blow to the economy of Macon because of the number of employees. It has one of the largest employers in the city. You would have to do exactly what Mr. Holman said. There have been times as mayor that ConAgra actually considered pulling out of Macon. You have to sit down with them and work things out, solve the problem. We worked with them on the sewer issues we had, water issues and utility issues. So right now, they are running it pretty lean and a pretty successful business in Macon. If something were to ever happen, god forbid, we would have to deal with it the best we can.”

Question #14: “Picture the City Government of Macon as one long chain. The chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Where do you think that weakest link is, why is it the weakest and if elected Mayor, how will you make sure, that link strengthens? You have a minute and a half to answer.”

Dale Bagley: “As much as we try, but one of the areas that the Macon Government can improve on is the communication with citizens. We have a Facebook Page. We have a website. We put things in the paper and the City Administrator talks to the radio. I have written articles for the paper. One thing you cannot do is not communicate. You have to. You have to get everyone on board because then you’ll be successful.”

Talt Holman: “Reading for Citizens of Macon County, the biggest problem is communicating with citizens – the lack of. I have been told that the Facebook Page has not been updated since October. During the process of me running against him, now we are seeing more information released. We need to be more transparent. We need to make sure the community knows what is going on and as much heat as the city has gotten on this pool, I would have thought they would have been more transparent long ago. Having to go the city hall and look on the bulletin board to see when the next meeting is, isn’t right. It needs to be in the paper, on Facebook or wherever on social media.”

Dale Bagley (REBUTTAL/EXTRA STATEMENT): “There was a very thorough article in the paper about the pool. Now there have been changes made since then, but the article was there, and it was put on Facebook. The people who would have been interested in it, had access to it.

Questions #15: Mr. Mayor, I guarantee that when you were a teacher, you would have never guessed that you would be running against a former student. Mr. Holman, I guarantee when you were a student, you would have never guessed that you would be running against a former teacher. What is one strength and weakness of your opponent? Please elaborate and be specific. You have one minute to answer.”

Talt Holman: “I would say that the weakness would be, I think the city needs to be ran by a business. He isn’t a businessman. Sorry. He has a naturally ability to communicate. I would say that is his strength and weakness.”

Dale Bagley: “I would say that the obvious positive trait that Talt has is that he is ambitious. He likes to accomplish things in his life and he is a good business person. He has built wonderful buildings. I don’t have anything personal against him. He’s very caring. I just wish that he would wait a few years before he would have done this. HA. HA.”

Questions #16: Mr. Bagley, what are your three biggest accomplishments while in office and what did you contribute to them. You have a minute and a half to answer. Then, what have you don’t to keep the young people here in Macon?”

Dale Bagley: “I would say the three biggest accomplishments would be getting the four-lane highway. I have been able to communicate with the citizens to understand their needs. Fix the firetrucks, stop the flooding, and in the process of working to improve the streets. Onshore Technology and helping them being around here so that young people could get jobs in the Internet Technology field. Working with MACC and allowing young people to take classes. A city can’t build someone’s success, they have to build it themselves.”

Questions #15: “Mr. Holman, If you are elected Mayor will you be attending the two days of the Missouri Municipal Elected Officials Training to learn about the legal issues related to governing? You have 10 seconds to respond.”

Talt Holman: “Yes.”

Question #16 (Part 2): Mr. Holman If you are elected are you planning to keep the current appointees to the Planning and Zoning Board, the Board of Adjustments, and the Macon City Park Board, until their terms expire, or do you plan to replace them immediately? Mayor Bagley also wanted me to include the City Administrator too. You have one minute to respond.”

Talt Holman: “I am not doing this to replace people. I just want the city to progress. I do think there needs to be training done. I don’t have any intentions with replacing people.”

Questions #17: "Will you defend the police department if elected Mayor? Sometimes our police get thrown under the bus, will you defend them? Do you have faith in the abilities of our local law enforcement to conduct a fair investigation and bring guilty parties to trial without prejudice? You have two minutes to respond.”

Dale Bagley: “I have always defended our police department. We have an outstanding police chief. Always looking for the best officers to serve our community. Always looking for proper training. Our new chief has found ways to save money with this training, so that is good. Last person that would throw our policemen under the bus would be me.”

Talt Holman: “Yeah. I wouldn’t throw them under the bus. You would have to gather facts and release a statement in a certain situation of course.”

Question #18: What is your overall view on this election. There are many citizens that want change, in all due respect, believe that you Mr. Mayor haven't done the best of job, but are skeptical of you Mr. Holman with conflict of interest and a stench of personal gain for you if elected. You have a minute to respond."

Talt Holman: “I don’t understand why people would think I would get financial gain. There is no financial gain. There is a bid process. I miss the sidewalk project last year by one thousand dollars. This isn’t about me. This about you the people of Macon. I want to see growth. We aren’t even moving at all. I build Boone Heart Center, that’s a positive project.”

Dale Bagley: “I am not going to impugn anyone’s motives. That’s not my style. I believe in that people of the community and that they know me and that I will be straight with them. I will never lead them astray. I have a bad habit of telling the truth whether or not they like it. I hope I can continue leading this town.”

Closing Statements: You both have 2 minutes to give your closing statement. Feel free to say anything! Please include information about your campaign – finances, etc.

Talt Holman: “I just want to thank everyone for coming out. I am doing this for everybody. This isn’t about me. I feel like I could help the community and town itself. I am financing my campaign with my money. My beautiful secretary is helping me with my campaign. Missouri Ethics Commission has all of my information. In my closing statement, if you aren’t growing, you are dying.”

Dale Bagley: “I would like to say that Macon is a wonderful community with a citizenry that is involved. So glad to see everyone here tonight. I am paying for my campaign out of my pocket. I have one person helping me, I have a friend of mine that helped me set up signs.”

MODERATOR NELSON’S CLOSING STATEMENT: Thank you for coming. This concludes our first Mayoral Forum. We hope that these answers spark some discussion in the coming weeks. Thank you to the Macon R-1 School District for allowing us to be here tonight and thank you to The Home Press for sponsoring this. I would like to leave you with a quote by Clarence Clemmons, “Being involved in the advancement and well - being of one’s community is the most natural thing to do.” Thank you all and good night!