Tempe council candidates address voter questions

 by Emma Breysse
 published on Thursday, March 27, 2008

John Battaglia / THE STATE PRESS

WHO WILL IT BE?: City Council candidates Hut Hutson (left), Julie Jakubek, Joel Navarro and Corey Woods listen student questions on the Student Services Lawn on Wednesday night.

All four remaining Tempe City Council candidates emphasized the need to build on Tempe's progress during a forum at ASU's Student Services Lawn Wednesday.

ASU's Undergraduate Student Government hosted a question-and-answer session in which the four run-off candidates for the two contested council seats addressed student concerns.

More than 50 students and community members asked questions for more than an hour in an effort to acquaint themselves with the candidates.

Each of the four candidates — incumbent vice mayor Hut Hutson, insurance agency owner Julie Jakubek, Phoenix fire captain Joel Navarro,and ASU grad student Corey Woods — agreed that Tempe's current progressive thinking ought to be continued.

Hutson said he hopes to add to his years of work on city matters.

"Eighty percent of the population approves of the way the city's being managed and how it's doing," he said. "That's part of the record that I stand on."

Candidates also agreed on the need to expand public transportation and revitalize neighborhoods.

"We need to get people out of their cars and into the public transportation systems," Navarro said. "We need to continue embracing what Tempe is all about."

Differing opinions arose concerning the city's course of action regarding the surplus of property tax money that the city is barred from spending unless a bond election is approved in November.

Hutson and Jakubek supported immediately refunding the money to taxpayers.

Navarro and Woods supported retaining the money to see if the bond is approved for use on future Tempe services.

Other issues discussed included the affordability of housing and the expansion of Tempe's "green" programs.

Woods said the city needs to provide incentives to make it more practical for organizations to use alternate forms of energy.

"The biggest thing is making sure that it is always profitable to do the right thing," he said.

The event was organized because Tempe's primaries were held during ASU's spring break and general elections are held during the summer, which Jerrod Longoria, USG director of local affairs, said excludes students from the process.

Longoria has worked for the past three months to put the event together.

"We make such a big impact on the city," she said. "ASU is so integral to the election, and students deserve a voice in this."

Reach the reporter at: emma.breysse@asu.edu.