The Journal posed five questions to the two candidates running for mayor in Mancos.
The questions offered the opportunity to highlight goals for the town and past accomplishments, as well as strategies to help the town prosper.
Both candidates opted to respond to the questions verbally, so direct quotes were transcribed to compile their responses.
Will Stone
Co-owner of Mancos Livery
1. What would be your goals as mayor?
One of the things I think I can increase is promoting the town. We no longer have an economic coordinator. The mayor’s office can step up and take that on.
There is a lot of things the board has accomplished the last two years that I’ve been in on. They have really focused on infrastructure and some of that is due to the staff. They have kind of pointed it out to those who would listen.
I think we’ve done great things, and I would like to see it continue.
2. What accomplishments on town board are you most proud of?
It was a real struggle from me to get Boyle Park to become a bio park. I enlisted the help of several of the town’s concerned citizens and knowledgeable citizens, which educated the board into how to the park was being treated and what the dangers are, which caused them to finally realize if we’re going to have a toddlers park, then we needed to go all the way and not cringe when some little toddler was rolling around in the grass. We don’t need them Round-Up Ready.
The other thing on that park, we didn’t have streets designated, we didn’t have a survey (of it). They spent $182,000 on that park putting a playground in it, and they didn’t even have a survey. That’s all straightened out.
The park has come a long way in being bio- and being at least cosmetically friendly on the back, and now we have a designated street in the park. I don’t want to take all the credit for that because staff worked very hard.
The (U.S. 160) corridor was another thing I was involved in, with the crosswalk.
3. What do you see as the biggest challenges for the town?
The biggest challenge is to get the majority of the town’s people involved in their town. … I think that’s always been a challenge.
4. What kind of economic development would you like to see?
Our biggest asset is our proximity to a global destination. All we need is a certain percent of that off of there.
Tourism is the No. 1 thing. That encompasses the small shops, it includes even our biggest and largest stop which is cox, the grocery stores, Family Dollar. All those are going to require more customers than we see living in Mancos. So they are going to exist off of tourism and there is good reason for them to be optimistic about that because of that National Park.
However getting even 1 percent of that 800,000 that visited that place is quite a feat, but I believe I can do it. I have some ideas about how to advertise and how to really attract people.
I used to lead my steer with another steer with a banner on it that said check out downtown.
I know that there are things that will attract them. I used to stand on my head while I was driving the coach down the highway.
Those are the kind of things I would like to see implemented.
Through the business and through the fact that I’m a ham is going to help the town.
5. What separates you from your opponent?
Our views are not that far apart. Queenie is a little more cautious, and I think reserved than I am. I am more to the point.
My business is local. If need be, I can be at like a ribbon-cutting.
Queenie Barz
Office manager at Hospice of Montezuma County
1. What would be your goals as mayor?
I would like to see us continue working on the infrastructure, replacing or repairing. I’m excited about the Highway 160 crosswalk to get that completed for the safety of our children and our community members. I’m excited that the trail to Mesa Verde is moving forward – that’s major excitement. I would like to work on bringing new businesses to town, economic development. I personally would like to see the board more involved in the ordinances and things that’s going on. It feels to me like Pand Z and the other committees are doing all the work and they are bringing it to us and then we’re saying “yes” or “no.” I would like to be more involved in the decision-making.
2. What accomplishments on town board are you most proud of?
I think one of the accomplishments is the sewer plant. Even though we’ve had our problems with it. It is top of the line new technology. We kind of took a leap of faith. It was a major decision and I am proud of it. Soon as we get some of the bugs worked out of it it’s going to be a great asset to the town. The new water tank is amazing. I just feel like we’ve come a long, long way. I feel like there’s things that we can do to grow our town more. But I think we’ve really come a long ways. We’ve started the replacement of infrastructure. We have new water meters, some of the lines are replaced, and we are working on infrastructure right now. Those have to be done before we can more forward. But those are big steps.
3. What do you see as the biggest challenges for the town?
We’re kind of limited on our economic development because of boundaries. If we can annex some people in or buy some property, we may extend our area to grow in. We do have the Highway 160 corridor we need to fill up. A big motel over there would be nice.
We’ve got to come up with some ideas. We’ve got to come up with a plan we can offer these businesses to come to town. Then we can have an economic development person that goes out that. Having somebody in that position without having infrastructure behind it is going to fail.
If we had beaucoup money, and we had all these empty buildings, and we could say: “We’ll let you have this building for a year and $300 a month.”
But right now we have no buildings and so anybody that builds has to do streets and gutters, they have to do new water taps, they have to build new buildings.
We don’t have anything to offer, so our economic development kind of is at a standstill because of our own fault, we don’t have anything to offer, no real estate.
There are some places in the highway corridor, but it doesn’t belong to the town, so the town can’t offer incentives.
4. What kind of economic development would you like to see?
I would like to see some more mom-and-pop stores. Love to see a hardware store. I would love to put the flea market back in, that was just a gathering place for people when we had it. It became a social event for people to come on Saturday and Sunday and visit. You know just those things the community can support and the community can afford. We’ve got some nice businesses in town with the galleries but I would like to see more smaller businesses too.
The RV park it could go in and be the hub for our families to stay in Mancos but then visit Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Silverton, Aztec. But let Mancos be their hub in the RV park. That will bring people to Mancos, I’m excited for that.
5. What separates you from your opponent?
We both really want what’s best for the town. We are both really involved and want the infrastructure fixed. It’s been many, many years since anything’s been done, and it is expensive, but it has to be done before we can grow before we can pave streets before we can do any of those things that infrastructure has to be done and growth. Will and I both want growth. I think we just have different ideas on what that can be.
I don’t believe in having an agenda. You can’t and be on the board and be fair. You have to be neutral and listen and weigh and then make decisions that are going to affect the town not only today but 10, 15 and 20 years down the road.