Page 11 - the NOISE August 2014

City CounCil CandidatE Eva Putzova’s PrEsCriPtion for a bEttEr
said. “I don’t think that people who don’t have relatively stable jobs think about it as a badge of honor, it’s a struggle. Every day it’s a strug- gle,” she said. “It’s not a badge of honor.”
Beyond her focus on the economy, any liv- able community must protect and conserve its water resources. Ms. Putzova feels very strong- ly about good water policy that is concerned with both conservation and quality. “We know we’re running out of water,” she said, and com- mended Tucson’s newly implemented water harvesting ordinance, which requires new development to collect rainwater and use at least 50% of this water for their landscaping. She further commented on the way the city treats water, not as a universal need but as a commodity. She went on to explain how this is one way to demonstrate what she regards as fundamental differences in ways of thinking among her and some of the other candidates. She added that such policy philosophies could disproportionally impact economically vulnerable citizens.
“The way it’s structured in the city is that it’s an enterprise. If, in 15 years, water becomes expensive, the current mindset says, ‘well just raise the rates,’ meaning that some people might not be able to afford water.” Instead Ms. Putzova would promote new ways to priori- tize water. “Using water for recreation is irre- sponsible,” she said. “We have to be thinking 25, 50, and maybe even more years down the road; decisions made today will impact the community 50 years from now, and its re- sponsible public policy to think about those generations,” she said.
The other issue is water quality, according to Ms. Putzova. “There is more and more science coming out about the dangers of compounds of emerging concern found in reclaimed waste- water, and we know there are negative impacts on the ecosystem, so there is good reason to be concerned about public health,” she said. Ms. Putzova believes in erring on the side of cau- tion when it comes to public health.
“Again, it seems the current prevailing ap- proach from the City is, ‘lets wait and see what the science tells us about these dangers. When it’s confirmed that there is a high probability of danger, we’ll react,” she said. “I think we should take the opposite approach and act first. The best-case scenario is that we were wrong, and the water is fine and we spent some money on the treatment. The worst-case scenario is that we’ve prevented a whole generation of suffer- ing from health problems that were completely preventable,” she said.
Ms. Putzova has disagreed with decisions made by the current council on many occa- sions. “A lot of little things,” she said, but com- mended the council on the passage of a civil rights ordinance. Still, she said it didn’t go far enough. “This ordinance is only for employers with 15 or more employees. So, as long as you employ less than 15 people, even under fed- eral or state law, you can discriminate left and right,” she said. “As a city,” she said, we have a social contract with businesses. We’re saying, ‘You can profit in this community, you can use our roads, customers can use the roads to come to your establishment and more.’ And for that privilege, we expect some basics from businesses, and one of those would be, don’t discriminate,” she said.
Regarding her candidacy, Ms Putzova said “When anyone wants to solve a problem, they need to start searching and talking and re- searching. I have ideas; I don’t know that they’re the best. I just hope as a council member, I can help set the agenda and search for solutions. evaforthepeople.com
| Kyle Boggs is chin-deep in council candidates. kyle@undertheconcrete.
flaGstaff: EnvironmEntal, EConomiC, and soCial JustiCE
story and photo by
kylE boGGs
Eva Putzova is running for a seat on Flag- staff’s city council. Ms. Putzova was born in Slovakia (former Czechoslovakia), where she
grew up, went to school, and earned a mas- ters degree in economics with an emphasis in commerce and marketing.
She came to Flagstaff in 2000 and became a US citizen in 2007. During this time, she worked as a marketing coordinator for the now-defunct Southwest Windpower where she developed an interest in renewable ener- gy. At the same time, she was a member of the Greater Flagstaff Economic Council, where she got a sense of the kind of economic strategies Flagstaff was then pursuing.
In her role as chair of the Business Reten- tion and Expansion Committee, she regards that time as crucial to her understanding of how the policy world works. Many people in Flagstaff will recognize her for the time she spent since 2008 on the board of Friends of Flagstaff’s Future, where she was board presi- dent for two of those years. Today she sits in an office near the president of Northern Arizona University, where she is director of strategic planning.
Notably, Ms. Putzova developed and imple- mented “CCC2NAU,” a university joint admis- sions program that transitions students from Coconino Community College to NAU as part of their individual academic plans. Among her other accomplishments include helping Flag- staff pass all five Mountain Line propositions that led to the public transit system receiving the 2013 Outstanding Public Transportation System Achievement Award.
When introducing herself to the public, Ms. Putzova is very frank about the kind of candi- date she is. “When I talk to people, when I’m interviewed, when I issue some statement in writing, whether it is on my website or on Facebook, I’m very clear, open, and direct in regard to where I stand on policy issues,” she said. “I’m a progressive candidate; I’m not hid- ing that. I actually want people to know that these are the kind of policy directions that I’d like to pursue on a voters behalf. So my cam- paign is authentic as it gets,” she said.
Specifically, Ms. Putzova is aligned with
issues that move Flagstaff toward environ- mental, economic, and social justice. “I think if there is an appetite for this political direc- tion, then the voters will respond and I’ll get elected,” she said.
These values are shared by Friends of Flag- staff ’s Future (F3), which emphasizes a “livable community” by focusing on those three foci: environmental sustainability, as well as social, and economic justice. “All of my work for F3 consisted of researching policies,” she contin- ued, “water policies, energy policies, open- space policies, and land use policies.”
Ms. Putzova has an intimate understanding of a life where such priorities would not be possible under the direction of a democrati- cally elected city council. “I was 12 years old in 1989 when the totalitarian regime fell,” she said. “Though I did not fully comprehend the political dynamics at work, I do remember the outcomes of the policies and how people lived,” she said. Her perspective is, therefore, informed by the time she spent in Slovakia, navigating her country’s transition from a to- talitarian regime to an aspiring democracy. “I remember the fact that we couldn’t travel, we couldn’t really express ourselves, and every- thing was quite controlled,” she said.
It was during this transition that Ms. Putzo- va witnessed a hunger for freedom that many folks in US likely take for granted. “People real- ly wanted a democracy,” she said. “They want- ed freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and freedom to pursue opportunities when they were presented.” It is, therefore, with much intention that Ms. Putzo- va strives toward a democracy that benefits all people, one that essentially lives up to the aspirations that Slovakia had during this tran- sition. “Slovakia followed in the footsteps of all other western democracies including the US that ultimately led to huge inequalities, con- centration of power, concentration of capital,” she said.
Part of what it means to believe in a thriving democracy is to believe in the people. “A clas- sic talking point we hear from our politicians, or people in economic development here in
Flagstaff, is that we don’t have an educated workforce,”shesaid.“Wehaveahighlyeducat- ed workforce. The fact is that Coconino County is in the top 3 percent of the most educated counties in the United States, with the concen- tration being in Flagstaff. The truth is, we don’t have an education problem in Flagstaff,” she said, “we have a wage problem in Flagstaff.”
This is why, in her campaign, Ms. Putzova is focusing on living wages as one of her pri- orities. “Many positions pay below market sal- aries,” she said. “It’s true for the university, for the city, and for the county. And we do this in a community that has a higher cost of living. It’s so easy to say, ‘oh, we have a high cost of living,’ but our rent-to-income ratio is very sim- ilar to that in New York City.”
Arizona State law, however, prevents com- munities from adopting living wage ordinanc- es, but citing the fact that “law is not some- thing that is permanent,” Ms. Putzova says, “there are still things we can do.” And there is no better place to start than at the local lev- el, according Ms. Putzova. “City councils and cities, they don’t just make decisions once ev- ery week on Tuesday about zoning variances or approving liquor licenses,” she said, “Cities coordinate their legislative agendas and influ- ence the political environment and legal en- vironment in which they operate. So it’s very possible that the cities [in Arizona] could work together to repeal the portion of the law that prevents communities from legislating min- imum wage that is different from the state wage,” she said. We are a very diverse state with a varied cost of living. The needs of com- munities differ and the environment differs so I think that’s something that’s possible. We can even start with the City employees,” she said.
Ms. Putzova resists what she refers to as the “badge of honor” that many Flagstaff citizens wear when it comes to the increasing disparity between wages and cost of living. “Sometimes we professionals, we’re so proud to say, ‘Oh, I could be paid twice as much as what I’m mak- ing here if I were living and working in Phoe- nix, but who wants to live in Phoenix? And we carry this around like it’s a badge of honor,” she
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