Wellington Board of Trustees election: Q&A with candidate Jon Gaiter
The Coloradoan sent all Wellington candidates questions to learn more about their priorities and why they're running for office. Below are Jon Gaiter's answers, which have been edited for AP style, length and clarity. You can find the other candidates' questionnaires and more coverage ahead of the election here.
Name: Jon Gaiter
Race: Wellington Board of Trustees
Question: What makes you qualified to hold a town board seat in Wellington?
Answer: As a current trustee, I have represented the residents and have fought for responsible spending of your taxpayer money for the last four years. I've been willing to ask hard questions and work towards solving our problems. I have not just rubber-stamped everything that came my way, even if it has meant that I was the only NO vote on the Board.
Q: What are your top three priorities if elected and why?
A:
Accountability - As public servants, we need to be accountable to the residents for how we spend taxpayer dollars. When we, as a government body, make a mistake, we need to own that and work to make things right.
Transparency - This is one of the keys to having trust. Accurate information must be provided promptly, especially financial information. This has continued to be a challenge for Wellington and must be addressed.
Engagement - We must do better at bringing the residents' voices into the decision-making process earlier so that it can shape our decisions. We need to be actively working together with residents rather than against them. We should also be looking for ways to solicit citizens' views on a subject well before we vote on it.
Q: What are the top three challenges facing Wellington and what would you do about them?
A:
Financial shortfall - I will work towards ensuring accurate financial reporting, reducing expenditures, reevaluating priorities and not allowing deficit spending.
Lack of community trust - I want to work towards trustees working together instead of majority rule, creating a culture among staff to engage resident input before solutions are presented and making more information readily available to the community.
Water/wastewater rates - Poor planning and poor financial tracking in the past, along with the size of our expansion projects, have led to us having massive rate increases over the past years. I would focus on reducing our expenditures and continuing efforts to renegotiate our raw water contract.
Q: Wellington’s population is expected to double in the next 20 years. What should the town be doing to prepare for this growth?
A: The town needs to get a handle on cost and expenditure to stay within revenue, no more deficit spending. The town needs to be able to pay expenses without having to continue to grow just to pay the bills. We need to be self-sufficient, and independent of growth.
Additionally, there needs to be appropriate zoning to protect residential areas. We need to maintain our character as a small agricultural town as we grow.
Finally, growth has to pay its way, we shouldn't grow on the back of the existing residents.
Q: Some current Wellington trustees have said there is a lack of trust among the board that makes it difficult to govern. How would you address that?
A: We have been working under majority rule for two years and that destroys trust. The majority has made no attempt to compromise with the minority. The majority have attacked dissenting views of the minority. I raised this concern with the trustees during my board report in our December meeting and asked that we respect our differences. I will continue to be willing to work with people I disagree with.
Q: The water and wastewater treatment plants that will help meet the town’s future growth needs are opening later in the year. How do you see the plants affecting water rates residents are paying now and going into the future?
A: The opening of the water/sewer expansion will allow the town to provide service to more customers but will not have any direct positive impact on water rates. The cost of the new expansions and the loans we must repay are one of the key reasons rates are so high. The only way that we can reduce rates is by removing some of the burden from the residents. This can be accomplished by reducing expenditures and allowing more growth to come in. New homes means more impact fees paying for the expansion loans and new residents sharing the cost of paying back the loans.
Q: Other items you’d like to discuss that weren’t mentioned in the questionnaire?
A: Growth - The Planning Commission adopted the comprehensive plan in 2021, which spells out the vision that they want the town to grow to 40,000 people in 20 years. This is a choice. Our current plant expansion only serves around 20,000 people, so we would have to expand again to accommodate 40,000. Because our current loan is a 30-year loan, the town would still be paying off the loan from our first expansion when the town starts its second expansion, adding more loans to the cost of water and effectively raising the water rates again. We need to plan so residents aren’t paying for two expansions at the same time. We should slow our growth as we approach 15,000 to 20,000 population to build up enough reserves to handle another expansion project. We should not be rushing to grow to 40,000 and be a big city. I've lived in the big cities before, and I don't want Wellington to be like them. If we continue to push for a 40,000 population, we will lose our small town/agricultural identity. The small-town feel is not just a feeling; it is an aspect of size.
More about Jon Gaiter
Occupation: Account manager
Have you held elected office before? Current trustee
If you have a college degree, where did you attend school and what did you study? University of California Riverside, Bachelor of Science in Business Administration
Length of time in town? Five and a half years
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Wellington Board of Trustees election: Q&A with candidate Jon Gaiter
