2020 Cullman Municipal Election Debates: Woody Jacobs and Mark Bussman, Cullman mayor

0:42 coleman tribune we are back uh continuing our series on of uh 2020 municipal election

0:51 debates this is the last one for this day for this particular saturday and we are meeting with the

1:01 candidates for mayor our incumbent mayor woody jacobs and challenger mark bussmann we are

1:08 being careful to keep our social distance and uh we are masked in keeping with current

1:15 coveted 19 regulations so we'll be just having to speak up a little bit extra here

1:23 we will begin with mark please introduce yourself and tell us why you're running for mayor

1:34 i'm mark bustin and i'm running for mayor and i am running for mayor

1:38 because coleman is very important to me and has been all my life i am a graduate of coleman high school

1:45 graduate of southern benedictine college i'm a cpa i have a audit experience in governmental accounting i have audit

1:54 experience in governmental finances my family is all from coleman julian tyler just moved to huntsville

2:04 tara and barrett live in coleman john busman and emily live in coleman and coleman is important to my entire

2:13 family i have served on the coleman regional medical center board i have served a

2:19 long time on the city of coleman industrial development board and i was elected for one term

2:25 to the coleman city school board and chose not to run for re-election this is an important crossroads in

2:32 cullman and i would appreciate your consideration august 25th thank you all right mayor jacobs thank you uh

2:43 i'm running for mayor to continue the pillars of the campaign that i currently

2:48 have which are infrastructure public safety education quality of life and economic development i think the last four years have been

2:59 some of the best four years that coleman has experienced and i have a wife

3:07 connie jacobs i have a son tyler i have a daughter hannah i was talking to the group the other day

3:13 and i told him i said i'm kind of glad hannah's not running for mayor because

3:17 she's very well known she helps me on the campaign trail and i'm glad to have her uh

3:24 talking about the campaign trail i appreciate y'all having this later in the day because trying to go

3:31 door-to-door takes a long time many hours and days and uh spent most of that out

3:37 today knocking on doors and yes it's hot yes it's tired but it's worth it that's where you get

3:44 to meet the people find out what they want kind of get a kind of get a feel for what's going on

3:50 in goldman and uh it's a privilege to serve and work as the mayor of colgan

3:57 all right we will get on into our questions and we will start with you

4:03 mayor coleman is growing and our school buildings are not do you think the city of coleman does

4:13 enough to fund education infrastructure if not from the city explain how the coleman

4:21 city school board could fund expansion well currently they have some expansion plan they have some funds available for

4:30 that and we've met with them a couple times on you know some of their current plans

4:34 it's adding on to the uh up at the primary school we're working with them to get it

4:40 road out the backside on the oak drive to alleviate the traffic problems that's

4:48 created in the morning anybody has ever gone up there realizes you know it's one way in and then the same way

4:54 out so once we work with them on that they'll be able to come in and get out

5:00 and get rid of that traffic jam that they now experience funding primarily comes

5:08 for brick and mortar through the sales tax uh that was i was a part of the council back in 2003

5:16 when that sales tax uh was passed and that goes towards the brick and mortar that's

5:22 you know how they built the high school and then the there were some additional sales tax

5:27 that came into i think around 2006 so any additional funds that they may

5:32 need were willing to sit down with them at any time discuss it work with them

5:37 and if uh you know if if the public wants it we would be willing to put it

5:41 on the ballot and vote for it okay mr bossman same question do you think the city of

5:49 coleman does enough to fund education infrastructure and if not from the city how would the

5:57 school board find funds for expansion i served on the school board from 2004

6:03 to 2008 and construction projects in the school system are difficult to fund they're difficult to pay for because a

6:11 lot of the resources in the city schools go for payroll student workbooks books textbooks and

6:18 things like that and there's a limited amount of money for construction money inside the city

6:24 school system i learned that when i was there we had a proposal at

6:28 the time i was on the school board to move second grade back to the primary

6:32 school we sat down with the city and asked them if they could help us with that project

6:37 and at the time we were told that they could not and would not and that project now has

6:43 gone on 14 years before finally we're getting some traction on on moving the second grade

6:51 back to the primary school in my opinion moving the second grade back to the

6:55 primary school is only going to buy some time for the elementary schools because

7:00 obviously you'll flee a free up classroom space at both east and west elementary but in

7:06 my opinion the bigger problem lies at the coleman middle school which is old

7:13 like west elementary and and will have a problem quicker than the elementary school

7:19 quicker than the elementary schools will if second grade goes back to primary school

7:29 and our next question will come to you first mr busman reliable and sufficient broadband access

7:37 downtown has been an issue that many businesses have expressed concern over do you feel that it's a problem and if

7:45 so what do you feel is the best way to address that need the broadband service providers in the

7:54 city of coleman are under franchise agreement with the city downtown area obviously is underserved

8:01 because a lot of our businesses have redundant services they have both a t and spectrum in case one's not

8:08 working one day and they have to have internet service if coleman is going to continue to grow

8:14 we're going to have to attract younger people they demand broadband services and i

8:19 think it just needs to be a priority in this community to continue to work to solve this

8:24 problem and i'm not altogether sure but maybe the solution is the coleman electric cooperatives

8:31 sprout which which they've got it out there and i think it may just be a

8:35 question of sitting down with the coleman electric cooperative and figuring out how they can get it inside

8:40 the city limits of coleman that would put pressure on our internet service providers in

8:45 coleman to do a better job okay mayor jacobs well we are fortunate to have two

8:53 providers a lot of towns just have one you know one one and that

8:58 makes you know for to be very bad we have been in talks with the co-op and their new

9:04 product that they're rolling out in the spring of the sprout broadband it's you know it's intended

9:11 for the rural areas but it's coming from the north substation up there so we're

9:16 going to be able to provide it to uh you know our businesses in

9:21 places in coleman so you get three providers and that creates a really good competition and

9:27 anytime you know in america you get good competition you get better prices and better service

9:37 the other situation we have is we have people especially now that we've had issues with virtual learning

9:43 at the schools that don't have proper internet service and that's another situation that we've

9:48 got to figure out how we're going to solve because we have a group of students in

9:52 the schools that are getting further and further behind when they go virtual because they don't

9:56 have the same access that everybody else does in the community anything else no okay

10:05 all right and mayor we'll start with you on this one this next one uh paving has ramped up

10:12 around coleman this summer lots of folks claim that it's because it's an election year

10:19 but the city has said it's because paving equipment has been acquired making it easier and more affordable for

10:26 the city to do paving do you feel that equipment was a good investment

10:32 and why and why or why not uh obviously i do the uh kind of looking

10:38 back you know historically at paving and coleman we looked at the previous four

10:43 years and i think 10 streets of roads were paved during this four years

10:51 we're at 75 and next week we'll be you know adding some more that did not

10:58 happen by chance the first two years we were got a little frustrated about paving

11:04 because you know you bid it out you get a con you know your contractor

11:09 and then we had a really good contractor i don't want to name their name but they

11:12 were great the problem is they had a lot of interstate work and every time we'd say

11:17 all right we're ready to pave and i said we'll be there in three or four weeks

11:20 but we can only be there about five days so and talking with the council i said look

11:26 if you know if we're going to pay we're going to buy some equipment and train our guys

11:31 so oh i think last summer middle of summer we've after we ordered the equipment it took a

11:37 few months to get here and then we got them trained up since then we started some of the back

11:42 streets and alleyways to you know to train them around town and then we've been able to accomplish a lot of

11:49 paving and uh you know i think it was a great investment because we can do it

11:54 cheaper and get a lot more bang for our buck all right mr busman yeah i think it was

12:00 probably a good investment obviously we've gotten more roads paid uh this year than we have in the past

12:07 uh it just seems like if you go back and look historically we're paving more

12:11 roads right now than we ever have before my biggest concern about paving is the

12:17 roads that provide access to our new developments in coleman like the east hansefield highway

12:23 deer trace uh the meadows out it just seems to me that we're we're

12:29 putting more traffic on roads that are not designed to have access and to be used to the extent that

12:36 they're being used and at some point we're going to have to go in there

12:40 and and help straighten that situation out in some of these cases they're county roads

12:46 and the county would not help us on 24th street with the traffic light

12:51 and i'm assuming it's going to be very difficult for them to help us

12:54 pave roads and get residents of the city of coleman into the city going forward

13:01 all right and the next question will come to you first a major complaint from many local

13:10 motorists are the concrete dividers along highway 278 and everyone has heard about them and talked

13:18 about them for for some time now while we know this is a roadway

13:22 maintained by the alabama department of transportation aldot and that al dot itself installed the

13:27 dividers uh do you think the city could have done anything about it if not

13:34 when they were put in is there something that can be done now to address them i have no knowledge

13:44 when the dividers were put in what communication happened between the state and the city of colin

13:48 so i'm not in a position to do anything other than speculate and i won't do that

13:53 at this point with the dividers anything that would be done obviously would have to be communicated

13:58 to the state of alabama and i'm sure you would have to have a

14:01 decent reason as to why you would want to change the barriers i'm sure they were done to

14:06 prevent accidents but it did hamper some emergency services and if something needs to be

14:12 done it needs to be looked at and then obviously would have to be communicated

14:16 with state of alabama to see if we could make some adjustments in those barriers

14:21 james yeah i mean marcus you know mark is correct you know on what he's saying about the

14:27 barriers unfortunately you know they were happening right when i became mayor we you know we

14:35 tried paul his brother would send it to them we tried them successfully to

14:40 you know to get him to alter him just a little bit for you know

14:43 for some emergency access and but they were you know too far down the road it

14:47 didn't you know just wasn't going to happen but uh the way that we're

14:52 trying to alleviate them now would be a great plus for coleman and uh you know recently we've got 157

15:00 project bid and let you know it's going to happen it's going to become a reality

15:05 and we had already been working on the 278 access so like i said the best way to make them

15:11 go away is the four lane 278 build a new bridge this ain't burned and tied in all the

15:16 way to east point and then we have no concrete barriers all right uh let's see the next question

15:25 we'll come to you mayor do you believe that the city was transparent enough in its planning for

15:33 the new rv park at the borough property off county road 222. yes i mean you know it was brought up at

15:42 council you know different times you know park and rec if there are board meetings at different

15:47 times it came for the planning commission and uh you know it just kind of was odd

15:52 that one person all of a sudden kind of came up against it and you know

15:56 kind of stirred up a little bit of you know media there in the short term but

16:01 it's like a lot of other you know projects that we have you know we didn't necessarily have

16:07 public involvement meetings don't you know something like that because it was a it was a park and uh we had it had been

16:13 well received you know within from the council and you know what meetings we had in the park

16:18 and wreck and the meetings that they had and they've done a lot of research

16:23 going into putting that in went around and looked at numerous rv parks and other places that

16:29 land was you know given to us had to be used for a park

16:33 and that seemed to be a natural fit something that would not cost the taxpayers money but

16:39 make the taxpayers money mr boston thoughts on the rv park again i think the rv park is a good thing

16:48 obviously everybody that had input in it thought it was going to be a good

16:52 thing for the city of coleman and again i think the primary benefit to the city of coleman is is what clint

16:59 said earlier today anytime we can bring outside revenue into this community and outside

17:04 people into this community to spend it helps our tax base it helps our businesses and it is just a

17:11 win-win for everybody and whether it was done properly not properly at this point

17:17 that's not for me to say one way or the other all right our next question will come to you first

17:25 mental health has been on a lot of minds and in the news across the country

17:31 recently it is something that the news has shown impacts our community a great deal

17:41 do you think coleman does a good job addressing that issue if not how could

17:46 we do better i think coleman addresses the issue in in little different areas and

17:57 primarily when when we reduced the number of mental health beds in the state of

18:02 alabama it affected every community in the in in the state of alabama obviously the

18:08 state is going to have to correct that one day if that's going to happen my concern is

18:12 that mental health patients either wind up in jail or at the emergency room and both

18:19 situations cost us a tremendous amount of money especially at the hospital and some and

18:25 these people do not need to be in jail we treat them at the hospital we can't

18:29 keep them overnight because we don't have a c-o-n for mental health beds and so what we do

18:36 is treat them stabilize them and turn them back out on the street and if they have no family to

18:41 help them if they don't have people or network to make sure they take their medicine

18:47 and do what they're supposed to do they wind up back in the emergency room

18:50 or back in jail and and i don't know that we can any any

18:55 foot you move that ball is going to help mental health and i think at some point we just

19:00 all need to sit down and compare notes and see if we can find

19:04 some ways to help each other to kind of reduce that cost because that cost leaving our community

19:09 is is going nowhere it's just a it's just a cost that leaves and

19:14 and it never comes back um but it's spending money that that obviously as we go forward money's going

19:22 to be tighter and tighter and anything we could save there would be a great help

19:30 mental health that's the tough one and we don't you know get to play a large role in

19:35 that from the steedies standpoint we we do give some money to wellstone i still call him the you know the mental

19:43 health place but mark sits on the hospital board and they've also you know begin to take up

19:48 some of the mental health and we really appreciate that because you know what he said is it's such a

19:54 difficult thing because they do wind up you know being on the street or you know

20:02 committing crimes and it's sad because that's not really who they are and uh there's you know from the state

20:11 perspective there's just not enough money and there's not enough beds if you had somewhere you could put them

20:16 you know in the short term and you know treat them and get them you

20:21 know back to a more stable condition it could be such a wonderful thing

20:26 and so hopefully if the economy stays good the state can get enough money to

20:31 come back and help helping these communities because that's it's a real problem i mean

20:35 it's probably coming but some of these big towns it is a real problem

20:41 all right and our next question will come to you coleman police officers and firefighters

20:51 are some of the most at risk citizen when it comes to coming in contact with

20:57 individuals who may be covid 19 positive how does the city support them well as soon as this started happening

21:10 we had some involvement meetings with you know alabama public health the sheriff ourselves the

21:17 hospitals you know we all got together and we had you know these i call them team meetings

21:23 trying to figure out where you know where all this was going because it was all new and

21:27 you know and scary not only you know for the community but for the providers the city was able to

21:35 secure a couple of specialized pieces of equipment that worked that you could sanitize

21:41 ambulances and rapid responders vehicles and things like that took us a few weeks to get them so you

21:49 know if they handle coveted patient there you know they can sanitize it not hurt

21:54 the electronics and even though those things were over ten thousand dollars a piece we felt

21:58 like that was a very good investment and we've shared them a few times in

22:03 situations where people had some you know had some uh problems we also got another piece of equipment

22:08 that we uh have shared with the uh wellness and aquatics so they can keep

22:14 you know keep it sanitized as you know as people work out but we have very strict protocols if uh you

22:21 know we have someone that comes in contact then you know we we uh quarantine them

22:26 we continue to pay them and um you know but we we're very careful about keeping them

22:34 apart all right what should the city be doing or what more could the city do

22:40 well i mean as long as they've got the equipment they need and they're being as careful as they can

22:45 be it's an unfortunate situation our rapid responders fire department police department are in harm's way just like

22:51 the nurses er people at the hospital and again i think the only thing you can add to the

22:56 equipment and and what they're already doing is communicate when someone has been around somebody that's positive

23:04 so that at least we can trace it back and notify everybody that was in that chain that

23:10 they may have been exposed to covet 19 but it is a very difficult situation it proves

23:17 how contagious this is and how serious it is in this community and the next question will come to you

23:25 after years of planning and work water from the duck river reservoir is now flowing to the city water plant

23:33 looking back over that do you feel the project was handled the best it could have been

23:40 i don't know where again i don't know where you would have made changes in

23:45 what was done i made the statement at the time that project went under construction before it's over

23:54 with in the united states there will be ghost towns because of the unavailability of water

23:59 that duck river right now is going to be one of the most tremendous assets we've

24:03 got in this community because we've got water and when people start running out

24:06 of water and don't have the resources they're going to have to find a place

24:10 that has the resources now it's everybody's understanding and everybody's aware of the fact that

24:15 there's a leak out there to what extent it is i don't know but

24:19 the but the lake filled up much much faster than it was supposed to

24:24 obviously there's a legal situation going on now between three people that ultimately the city of coleman has i don't think it

24:32 affects the city of coleman i don't think the city of coleman has any

24:35 liability in this right now i don't know whether the leak will cure itself over time

24:41 or what the result is going to be but duck river is one of the greatest things

24:45 that's ever happened in this community all right mayor uh you know mark is

24:50 correct water you know without water in the future you'll be you know you'll be nothing

24:55 and we're fortunate here to live in a part of the country that uh

25:00 there is a lot of water we were unfortunate because we we weren't like

25:04 other parts of the state we could just dig some whales and have access to water we're on the

25:09 geologists say we're on some kind of a plateau where that's just not you know part of it so without building

25:15 another reservoir we were going to run out of water you know they they talked about going to

25:20 tennessee river but that's proven to be a problem for other places that's done

25:24 it with the quality of water unfortunately for the duck river project you know

25:30 there were lawsuits that delayed it uh you know the government gave some money

25:34 to get it going and uh things were just rock along and then the lawsuits come along and it

25:38 delayed it delayed it drove the price up you know like a lot of things

25:44 but had the you know had the lawsuit not happened that river would have been

25:47 completed a long time ago a whole lot less cost but we're so fortunate to have it now

25:52 and we have you know i drank a little water out of it and um

25:56 you know so the lawsuit you know i'm involved in that with a little bit but

26:02 it's it's confusing because you know it's uh engineering and construction and things that are you

26:10 know hard to prove so it's very close to being resolved and we hope

26:16 uh to the satisfaction of the ratepayers and it's not leaking very much you know but

26:22 are very little not any more than what they call just they make us release downstream so

26:28 all right if i could just add to that sharon knows as well that i do that

26:32 ultimately the cost of the project came in less than what it was supposed to

26:35 which is a tremendous the payers are going to save money right out of the chute simply because the cost

26:41 came in much less than it was estimated at that question no a lot of that has to do

26:49 you know not with brilliance or anything like that but really good rates now uh and still on board um

26:59 there were a few proposals on the table at that time do you think

27:06 the duck river project was um the best choice for the city wasn't really involved then you know in

27:16 that aspect of it so i'm i'm going on some things that were told

27:19 and some things that i read but according to the corps of engineers who you know helped guide the

27:26 project early on they said that the duck river basin there was one of the best

27:33 damn sights you know in reservoir size i'd ever seen no artifacts no snail dirt or you know

27:42 endangered species you know all those things normally can you know kill a project prevent it so we

27:48 were fortunate to have one and so close seven miles is not far as you know as

27:55 far as a reservoir that's about how long the pipeline is and the amazing thing though it's basically

28:02 a basin over so the water quality mimics lake katoma so they don't have a lot of trouble

28:09 treating the water so far we've been fortunate some of the water that we get out of duck river is

28:14 better and cleaner than what we get out of katoma not that kokomo water's dirty

28:18 but it's just a better water quality so you have less treatment costs which relates back

28:23 to you know to the ratepayer again mr buffman what's duck river the best

28:29 choice i think it was the best choice and i'll say that for two reasons the

28:33 first reason is the cost of pumping water from the tennessee river would have been

28:39 prohibitive and it would have kept increasing every year year after year after year that was a

28:43 cost that could have never been controlled secondly we have a recreation area out

28:48 there that we can continue to develop that will help our residents and help

28:52 attract people to the community it brings us to our last question on here and we'll begin

29:02 with you mr busman take a few minutes to share with the citizens of coleman

29:09 anything else you would like for them to know the floor is open yeah everybody i've been in cloven a

29:15 long time i moved here the first time when i was three years old

29:18 left for about four years when i was eight came back when i was 13.

29:24 my family story there were people in this community that went to my mother and said you need to

29:29 come back to coleman you knew we had five kids i was the oldest i was 14

29:33 years old and she brought us back to coleman and it has been the best thing that has ever

29:38 happened to my family my mother always taught me that you have to give back you have to give back you

29:44 have to give back and that's what i have tried to do my entire life because everything that i

29:49 am everything that my family is everything that i have become i have a

29:55 debt of gratitude to the city of coleman and the people in this community

29:59 for helping me and helping my family and helping my mother raise five kids

30:03 without a father in the house and i will always be grateful for that i

30:08 appreciate everything that everybody has done for me ever all my positions in my campaign are out

30:15 there on my website my platform is out there i would just humbly ask for your support

30:22 august 25th and vote for mark bushman for mayor thank you jacob to close us out all right thank

30:28 you my christian beliefs have always led me to compassion and hard work and

30:37 this is how success is grown and nurtured i will run on my record

30:45 it doesn't matter when you have to because you can't hide from your record

30:49 you know coleman's a small town it's out there i may not you know have the most money

30:57 behind me and that's nothing against mark i'm not saying he does i'm just saying

31:00 hard work wins out and that's what you know i'm known for i go out on job

31:06 sites a lot if there's issues i go out with our engineering department and

31:12 you know see what's going on so my shoes stay dusty and worn quite a bit and i don't

31:19 think coleman uh wants a mayor of any other sort and uh i think they want one

31:24 like that and i believe i'm that guy i think the last four years

31:29 kind of speak for themselves we've been very fortunate we built on the on the backs of our you

31:34 know predecessors you know it's not necessarily just this council or me as mayor but we've

31:40 been very fortunate to have the largest economic economic growth ever in the city of coleman we hit the

31:47 lowest unemployment rate right now that's not necessarily the case with covey it's kind of back up

31:53 but uh we've been very fortunate to be able to refresh our neighborhood parks

31:57 which i think stephen meyer i've got them rent down here culpepper carroll lakers

32:03 engle park art park and we got a grant we're fixing to bid in east smith park

32:09 that uh where the pool used to be so that's gonna be a a great part with that neighborhood our

32:15 paving for progress has shown a lot of success uh most money ever given to schools in four years

32:24 and uh the largest grant that comes ever got the city was able to procure a 14

32:29 million grant to pay 157 and that's fixing to happen we got two new bridges thanks to the

32:37 flood and uh i pledge to continue my five pillars that i spoke of earlier

32:43 and uh i plan you know i pledge to continue to work for the people of cuba

32:47 all right gentlemen thank you thank you we appreciate you all doing it great day thank you