Greenville City Council candidates discuss issues

The Aug. 11 Republican primary for two Greenville City Council seats is closing in, and if a recent candidate forum is any indication, the contenders have distinguished themselves from one another.

Encouraging development while protecting the poor. Traffic on Woodruff Road. Protection of trees. Down to how city leaders are elected.

All were up for debate at a forum Wednesday night at Stone Academy moderated by The GreenvilleNews and organized by the North Main Community Association.

Two incumbents face challengers for their seats in the open primary, which likely will be the last opportunity to vote for a candidate.

Councilwoman Susan Reynolds faces two challengers for her at-large seat, which covers the entire city: Gil Crouse and George Fletcher.

Councilwoman Amy Ryberg Doyle - who represents District 1 that encompasses the North Main, Summit Drive, Stone Lake and Bob Jones areas along with portions of the Overbrook community — faces a challenger in Bob Beam.

Reynolds, a small-business owner elected in 2007, pointed to her experience working with other council members.

“There are times when we disagree, but I think that’s healthy because we always have healthy discussions when we do,” Reynolds said during the forum, which accommodated about 150 audience members and can be viewed in full at GreenvilleOnline.com.

“This council is extremely productive, and I look around and I think there’s really no reason to change because we’re working together well.”

Crouse — a Vietnam veteran, retired hotel administrator and current management recruiter — said that he would put the focus on the people of Greenville over the interests of developers.

“The focus should be on the people of Greenville,” Crouse said. “The dollars are going to development rather than the community.”

Fletcher, an engineering consultant and former head of South Carolina’s Council on Competitiveness, said that he will be a good listener bringing strong community and business experience to foster the city’s economic development, like closing on the missed opportunity of attracting Fortune 500 company Sealed Air.

“I have time to do the job and believe that I can have an impact,” Fletcher said.

In the District 1 race, Doyle said she is a leader who makes thoughtful decisions from the perspective of a mother and a small-business owner.

“We have tough decisions that we have to make in City Hall,” Doyle said, “and you need leadership that’s going to make these tough decisions.”

Beam, who serves as CFO for a building products company, said that he is running so that the district would have someone who listens to constituents and won’t allow neighborhoods to be overrun by development.

“When they start throwing grenades in your backyard, you wake up a little bit, you get involved,” Beam said.

The at-large forum began with the question of gentrification — concerns that Greenville’s wave of high-end development, particularly on the West Side, could displace the poor.

“The neighborhoods and the people in those neighborhoods are the strength of Greenville,” Crouse said. “Private property is the root and seat of freedom.”

Fletcher said that he has studied new methods of accommodating the less-affluent — shared equity, housing trust funds, inclusionary zoning, below market rate ordinances.

“There are models all over the country where cities have successfully addressed that,” Fletcher said. “In some ways, we’re victims of our own success, but I think this is a huge concern.”

Reynolds said the city needs to assess the inventory of housing in the city and find where to include affordable housing and keep small businesses.

“At the very root of the problem is that you have to create jobs in the areas where people can stay,” Reynolds said. “When you keep the jobs and the wealth in that community, then you have stability.”

The development of the city will require a revision of the city’s ordinances concerning in-fill development in subdivisions and protecting trees, Fletcher said.

“We do need to preserve the pattern in neighborhood development,” he said.

Crouse said in-fill development is a main reason he ran. A decision to allow a 4,000-sqaure-foot lot threatens traditional neighborhoods that have grown over decades, he said. “It only takes a month or two to bulldoze them out of existence,” he said.

Reynolds said the city needs to encourage small commercial development within neighborhoods that keeps people in the neighborhoods for what they need.

On traffic, Crouse said he would like to see the use of off-duty school bus drivers to drive during the day and encourage use of park-and-ride to alleviate rush-hour traffic.

Fletcher said he was disappointed that leaders in the state couldn’t support the wishes of the business community to raise the gas tax to fund road improvements that would help alleviate traffic on places like Woodruff Road.

Reynolds said city leaders are set next month to examine intersections. “We’re going to have to be creative, understanding along the way that we have to work within the system that we have,” she said.

Each of the at-large candidates staked their positions on the city’s failed move to nonpartisan elections. A petition movement that resulted in more than 6,500 signatures calling for a return to partisan elections prompted the City Council to repeal its decision in a split decision.

Reynolds said she stands by her decision to move to nonpartisan elections, because “people ought to be able to run on their own merit.”

Crouse and Fletcher said that they oppose nonpartisan elections because thousands of people have spoken against it.

In District 1, Doyle said that she stands behind the leadership role she took on nonpartisan elections, saying that the intent was to involve younger candidates who are increasingly more disillusioned with party labels.

Beam said that he opposes nonpartisan elections because of the number of people who opposed it, which he said will probably be about the same number of people who turn out for the Aug. 11 primary.

Beam said that residents on his street in the North Main community have felt “dismissed” over concerns of urban development moving northward from downtown, which he said results in too much traffic and a home being torn down to replace it with three.

“People with big egos make big mistakes,” Beam said.

Doyle said that she spent years in consultation with the community and heard resoundingly that residents wanted the elements of downtown to move to Stone Avenue and Wade Hampton Boulevard.

The city engaged the 500 neighbors in the Stone Avenue Master Plan, Doyle said, which is beginning to manifest in the multimillion-dollar Main + Stone mixed-use development and encourages restaurants like the Universal Joint.

“Because we brought downtown up to Stone Avenue, now everybody wants to live here,” she said.

Beam said the Stone Avenue plan is too disjointed and long. “On the 300th page, I turned my printer off,” he said.

Beam said the election comes down to differences over in-fill development. He said the committee formed to craft guidelines was tilted toward developers and resulted in watered-down restrictions on how houses are built in established communities, resulting in crowded lots and clear-cut trees.

“Developers are laughing at us,” he said. “They really are.”

Doyle said that she’s sympathetic to concerns over in-fill development because it took years to develop on her street but that it’s part of battling sprawl and results in job creation.

She said the in-fill ordinance the city adopted made compromises but resulted in new landscape regulations, restrictions on garages and elimination of detention ponds.