Page 10 - the NOISE September 2014

MARK WOODSON:
CIVIL ENGINEER & APPOINTED COUNCILMEMBER SEEKS FIRST ELECTED TERM WITH AN EAR FOR BALANCE
STORY AND PHOTO BY KENDALL PERKINSON
Mark Woodson has quite literally been shaping the city of Flagstaff and its close neighbors for decades. It was 28 years ago the city first offered him an engineering job, quick-
ly promoting him to the office of City Engineer. Mr. Woodson served Flagstaff for 7 years before leaving in 1993 to start his own company, Woodson Engineering, which is still a major provider of services to both the public and private sectors in the region.
In early 2012, Flagstaff City Council found themselves with a vacant seat. The council had 30 days to nominate a new member, and after some rigorous research and debate, finally appointed Mr. Woodson to the seat. He has thoroughly enjoyed those two years of service, and now hopes Flagstaff voters will find him as worthy of his seat as the City Council did when they appointed him.
While his role as a city councilmember has only consisted of the past two years, he is hardly a stranger to political deci- sion-making processes. Mr. Woodson has served on a nearly inexhaustible list of boards, councils and advisory commit- tees, including the Northern Arizona Council of Govern- ment, Arizona State Urban Land Planning Committee and the Coconino Plateau Water Advisory Council. He is a former president of the Greater Flagstaff Economic Coun- cil, and was recently declared the official nominee for 2015 president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
“I enjoy what I do. I think my experience with my business day-to-day brings a lot to the table about city infrastructure, public works, how things run.”
Mr. Woodson sees Flagstaff as a city poised to make some difficult decisions about its identity, especially in the manage- ment of land use as it relates to the city’s economy. He says the citizens of Flagstaff are often vocally passionate about preserv- ing open spaces and historic neighborhoods, visible in a recent history of issues surrounding the Buffalo Park Annex, Walnut Canyon, La Plaza Vieja and others. He says that many citizens lament the lack of affordable housing while remaining wary of development and rezoning in existing neighborhoods.
“The community has hard choices in front of it, if you con- sider that the community wants NAU here and wants NAU to grow at some pace. And if we want better jobs here, those better jobs are going to bring people here. And we want more affordable housing. All of those take trade offs. Afford- able housing, for instance, either needs more land to spread out, or more land willing to accept projects with higher den- sity. But which neighborhood wants high-density housing to become part of their neighborhood? If it doesn’t occur that way, it’s got to occur on lands that are not yet developed. So these are the kinds of balances we’ve got to talk about.”
With a lifelong dedication to engineering, it is not sur- prising that a major focus of Mr. Woodson’s campaign is the balance he feels must be struck in the management of the city’s physical spaces. He says there are parcels of un- used land in the city close to infrastructure and have good
topography for their proposed use. “If we set those aside for open spaces, at what cost do we then have to go to an- other parcel that may not be as suitable for development or have infrastructure, forcing us to expand the city sys- tem? We cherish our community the way it is, we like the open space around our community, we like the quality of our existing neighborhoods. It’s just not an easy choice.”
Mr. Woodson suggests neither a “preserve everything” nor a “build everywhere” mindset is going to improve Flagstaff. One of his highest priorities is working out an equitable long- term strategy that will accomplish improving the local econ- omy while at the same time providing affordable housing. He says that strategy will have two basic components: the Re- gional Plan and community input.
He notes that proposals for new developments happen piecemeal, over time, meaning the public only has opportuni- ty to give input on them individually, after they have already been planned and proposed. In contrast, the Regional Plan approved by voters this year lays out a 15-year vision, and is “probably one of the more important documents to talk about what the future is before specific developments are proposed.”
Mr. Woodson says public comment is equally important, and has been a big part of the development of the zoning code, regional land use plan, and standards for development. And yet, he feels there is still a balance to be struck in the lis- tening process as well.
“The people that come out to the public meetings, it’s very important they be there, because that’s what we’re listening to. But there are other voices we’re hearing, whether it’s through email or phone calls. So we get other comments that are not in that public meeting, and that’s what we have to balance.”
Another focus of Mr. Woodson’s candidacy will be gener- ating local revenue in place of dwindling federal and state funds. For instance, he says many cities became dependent on the Highway User Revenue Fund, a program that collects taxes on motor vehicle fuel and vehicle licensing and regis- tration, then distributes the money to cities as their primary financial source for highway construction and improvement.
“Those tax revenues are shrinking, so the federal govern- ment has less to give to the states and the states have less to give to the cities. So the city now has to raise our own revenues to help maintain and improve our streets. We also used to be able to get federal grants for water and wastewater improvements. Those no longer exist. Because the federal budget process is broken, we’re having to do more at the local level, and that’s what I see as one of our biggest challenges.”
It’s not just funding problems that Mr. Woodson is seeing move to a local level. He believes discussion of other national issues like immigration ought also to be addressed by cities like Flagstaff.
“The lack of immigration policy at the federal level is some- thing we have to deal with specifically. We still have commu-
nity members living in the shadows, and because we don’t have a federal policy that’s taking care of the issue, we con- tinue to have a portion of our community we need to help to survive through this, if you will.”
In October of last year, Mr. Woodson stood with the major- ity of council in a 6-1 vote to approve a resolution calling on federal representatives of the region to enact comprehen- sive immigration reform policies that reflected three primary principles: 1) Immigrant populations play an essential role as workers and taxpayers in the community; 2) Families need to work productively and contribute in safety in order to be part of a successful community; and 3) Immigrants who want to contribute to the nation’s wellbeing deserve a fair path to- ward legal status and citizenship.
Mr. Woodson generally votes with the majority in coun- cil sessions, and seems to rarely take polarizing stances. He was mostly outside looking in during the recent controversy surrounding the proposed student housing project at Arrow- head Village, due to Woodson Engineering’s early contracting with the developer. The financial conflict of interest left him unable to vote on the project, but he cites the uproar as a time when the voice of the public was unambiguous.
“That was a project where I thought overwhelmingly what I did hear was against that project, at that scale, at that place, at this time.”
Over just the past few months, he has voted with the major- ity to update the city building code to 2012 energy standards, ban texting while driving a vehicle that is in motion, equip Flagstaff police officers with video cameras and ban panhan- dling within 15 feet of an ATM, business entrance or bus stop. Mr. Woodson has also occasionally been on the losing side of community debates. While working with the city in the early ‘90s, he lost one political battle that still bothers him.
“I was trying to convince the business owners along south Milton Road of some ideas to help fix traffic problems down there. Frankly, I failed at my job of trying to convince peo- ple how to do something I thought would have made Milton Road better. As we all know, Milton Road still needs to be fixed, but it’s now been 25 years and we still haven’t been able to do that. That was a big disappointment to me.”
In the end, Mr. Woodson says the biggest challenge facing Flagstaff is figuring out how to embody the sentiment he has heard echoed by its citizens for nearly three decades: “We moved here because we loved it, but we want to change it to make it better.”
“That’s something that we all need to stay aware of, to see how we can do our best to help this community, while at the same time remaining the community we fell in love with.”
| Kendall Perkinson recently changed his voter registration. kromaticphoto@gmail.com
10 • SEPTEMBER 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us