By Jason Stone
Twitter: @thestonecave

Perhaps the most contested race in the Surprise City Council elections on Tuesday, Aug. 4 is one that’s only good for two years.

District 5’s race between incumbent David Sanders, ballot challenger Jack Hastings and write-in longshot Kawika Henderson is for a seat that’s officially filling the one vacated by Skip Hall when he became mayor. The term ends in 2022.

If there was ever a time an incumbent felt like a challenger himself, it’s this race, with Mr. Sanders joining the City Council by appointment a year and a half ago.

Since then he’s been part of guiding the city through a rough budget period because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also a period of tremendous growth in the city.

Mr. Sanders said he believes “absolutely” the city is heading in the right direction.

Mr. Hastings said things are good but could be so much better.

Mr. Henderson said he believes there could be more opportunities for city benefits to help residents.

The three candidates squared off in a Surprise Regional Chamber of Commerce candidate forum July 14, while Mr. Sanders and Mr. Hastings each sat down with the group at EPIC Networking Series for one-on-one interviews this month.

Here is a sampling of what the two men on the ballot had to say at both interviews and what Mr. Henderson said at the Chamber event.

Pushing for change

Jack Hastings, a graduate of Valley Vista High School and now a U.S. government and civics teacher there, has been aggressively pushing his candidacy for months now. So much so, it may have partly cost him his position on the city’s Arts and Cultural Advisory Commission, from which he was removed in the spring.

But that didn’t deter Mr. Hastings, who has powered on with his message that Surprise is missing a lot of opportunities.

“I’m not trying to sound mean, but nobody comes to Arizona and says, ‘Let’s go to Surprise,’ Mr. Hastings said at the Chamber event. “We need to stop making Surprise a garage with all these storage facilities and actually bring some family-friendly entertainment here.”

Mr. Hastings said one of the problems with the current City Council is the frequent unanimous decisions.

“They’ve turned into a rubber stamp,” Mr. Hastings told EPIC. “We have to have someone who’s not afraid to stand up and say ‘no’ every once in a while.”

During the Chamber event, Mr. Henderson pointed to a higher power for his reasonings for pushing his long-shot write-in campaign.

“I feel like I’ve had the calling to do something like this,” Mr. Henderson said.

But despite these challenges to his seat, Mr. Sanders said he believes he has what it takes to earn his own election to the post.

Mr. Sanders is touting his banking background and experience going through two budget cycles on City Council as major bits of experience under his belt.

He currently serves on the Grants and Sports and Tourism Funding committees and is on the elder board of the Westgate Community Friends Church.

Business recovery

One of the big issues the next City Council will be dealing with is business recovery in a time of COVID-19 shutdowns.

In his EPIC interview, Mr. Sanders detailed his experience working as a co-owner of a small pizza restaurant in Costa Mesa, California.

“We failed miserably, but what it did was give you the opportunity to be on the other side of the counter, the other side of the checkbook,” Mr. Sanders said.

Mr. Hastings told EPIC Surprise needs to be a little more business-friendly. He said he found out a surprising fact about local business owners after talking to several of them.

“If they could choose to start their business all over again, they wouldn’t choose Surprise,” Mr. Hastings told EPIC.

Mr. Hastings is pushing for eased regulations for businesses so they can open faster.

Mr. Sanders agrees that Surprise needs to make it easier for businesses to open. He said streamlining the process in one centralized location would help.

Mr. Henderson pointed out in the Chamber interview that he believed it was “almost 20 years to get Costco here because of red tape.”

“Every politician is going to say we’re business-friendly, but are we really?” Mr. Hastings asked during the Chamber forum.

City Center

All of the candidates have ideas for a vibrant City Center, although it might be too slow for one of the challengers.

“I talked to my students about Surprise Downtown and they didn’t even know where I was talking about,” Mr. Hastings told EPIC. “In fact, I think I saw some cattle roaming around in it the other day.”

For the most part, the candidates across the board in all the districts all calling for more family-friendly entertainment in the city.

“Our families want places to go that are here, that aren’t in Scottsdale, that aren’t in Arrowhead, that aren’t in Westgate,” Mr. Hastings said.

Mr. Hastings said residents have told him they have money to spend but no options.

“We can’t keep going with this philosophy that ‘it happens when it happens,’ Mr. Hastings said. “We want to put Surprise on the map.”

Mr. Hastings has been critical of Surprise’s economic prowess of late, with some nearby misses. He pointed to Nike and Amazon coming to Goodyear, the White Claw and Red Bull factories right outside Surprise at Peoria Avenue and Reems Road and the Microsoft location in El Mirage.

“When it happens this many times, you need to take a look at what we’re doing isn’t working,” Mr. Hastings said on EPIC. “We have to do better.

“Surprise doesn’t have a lot to offer other than a lot of empty land and a lot of empty promises.”

Mr. Sanders said many of those companies go to other places because of brokered deals that Surprise “has no chance in getting those.”

He said the City Council is leaning on Economic Development Director Jeanine Jerkovic to lure big tax-based companies to the city.

“We have to rely on her expertise to bring in these jobs,” Mr. Sanders told the Chamber.

Mr. Sanders said the city is doing the best it can with economic conditions.

“We can’t demand somebody come here and develop,” Mr. Sanders said during the Chamber event. “You take what commercial gives you.”

Mr. Hastings has complained that the last three big projects in the City Center were housing units for the Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers and a new hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn, but “nothing for residents.”

He wants to create job-based incentives where companies get breaks for reaching certain hiring thresholds.

“We’ve got to give these businesses something,” Mr. Hastings said at the Chamber event.

He pointed to Goodyear waving permit and planned development fees.

“If I’m a business today, I’m going to go where someone gives me a good deal,” he told the Chamber. “In a perfect world these businesses would just come here because they like us.”

Mr. Sanders said businesses in adjacent cities still helps Surprise.

“If jobs go next door to Glendale, well, it doesn’t say you can’t live in Surprise and work there,” Mr. Sanders said during the Chamber event.

Mr. Henderson is calling for incentives such as the first two or three years tax free.

“We want to keep our residents here and be able to work here,” Mr. Henderson told the Chamber.

Mr. Henderson said he wants to set up incentives for local organic businesses with Economic Opportunity Zones, either with federal government or the city’s own.

“I want to reach out to banks to get established loans and grants to mom and pop startups,” Mr. Henderson said.

Recycling views

Mr. Hastings has made a big issue out of last year’s loss of curbside recycling.

One of his gripes is not giving the public a chance to weigh in on the matter before the city pulled the service. He said some residents he has met with during campaigning have even told him they didn’t know the blue recycling can was also going to the landfill almost a year later.

“We need to educate residents about recycling once it’s brought back curbside,” Mr. Hastings told EPIC.

Mr. Hastings said he has a problem with wastewater fees increasing July 1 despite the city dropping curbside recycling.

“People look at this and scratch their heads and wonder how this works,” Mr. Hastings said on EPIC.

Commercial diversity

Diversifying the city’s economy has also been a topic of the campaign.

The city was left without a third of its revenues from spring training when it was canceled before it was over. Plus, there is no guarantee it will happen normally next year. Certainly crowd sizes will be a concern.

Mr. Sanders and the rest of the City Council approved a Fiscal Year 2021 budget that featured millions in cuts to departments across the board to offset a sales tax loss.

Mr. Hastings said the city is too reliant on spring training.

“We have all our eggs in one basket, and someone dropped the basket,” Mr. Hastings said at the Chamber forum. “We didn’t have a rainy day fund to fill it. We actually got bailed out by the state government. That’s why we’re OK.”

Government dictating behavior

None of the candidates support any push to defund the police in Surprise.

Mr. Hastings said he personally wears as face mask as a courtesy as he goes door to door to campaign.

“I don’t want it to be a requirement,” he said. “I don’t want it to be forced.”

Mr. Sanders said he doesn’t like what he called the “overreach of power.” Mr. Sanders, however, was also part of the City Council that unanimously decided unofficially to impose a mask requirement in public places before Maricopa County did so.

“We need to make sure our residents have a voice and talk rather than just shutting down all the businesses, everybody has three hours to shut down,” Mr. Henderson said. “I don’t believe that was a good call.”

Public transportation

Candidates aren’t seeing much of a hunger for public transportation in District 5.

“There is hesitation that Surprise could turn into a downtown Phoenix,” Mr. Hastings told EPIC.

There’s more excitement for a circular trolley that would move people around the city or West Valley.

“We have to create more stuff to transport people to,” Mr. Hastings told EPIC. “We don’t want buses up and down Bell Road. We need to discuss this with the residents before we do this.”

Mr. Sanders said even if the city desperately wanted to pay for a bus line on Bell, it wouldn’t be as easy as it looks.

The city has already considered the option of a Bell Road line between Surprise and Arrowhead Towne Center.

“It’s extremely expensive and extremely difficult,” Mr. Sanders told EPIC, adding it would also have to involve Sun City and Peoria in the agreement since the line would go through those areas as well.

Engine 305

Mr. Hastings is making an issue of last year’s temporary removal of Engine 305 from the Surprise Fire Department active fleet. He believes the city’s residents should have been notified first and the City Council should have listened more to the Fire Fighters’ Union.

Mr. Sanders said Council did the best it could while awaiting another grant to put the engine back in service.

“We listen to them because they’re the pros,” Mr. Sanders said about the Fire-Medical Department’s decisions. “I’m not going to question Chief [Tom] Abbott on what he needs. He brings it to the table. He puts it in the budget, and we address it.”

Editor’s Note: Jason Stone can be reached at jstone@newszap.com.

Jason Stone
News Editor | Surprise
@thestonecave

jstone@iniusa.com

Former NAU Lumberjack who loves going to concerts (or I did), watching sports (or I did) and hanging out with friends (oh, never mind). I also enjoy backgammon, surfing and men who are not afraid to cry.