HOLLAND, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) — The four people running for two Holland City Council seats met Monday evening at Holland City Hall to answer questions about their campaigns for public office. Each delivered thoughtful and civil answers, before a smattering of in-person attendees, with more watching online.
The League of Women Voters of the Holland Area hosted the event, with the group’s president, Paula M. Lewison, opening the evening. Marcia Bishop, a fellow LWV member and former Holland Public Schools’ superintendent moderated, asking a mix of questions submitted online by people or by members of the LWV of the Holland Area.
Quincy Byrd and Ken Freestone are campaigning for the at-large council seat that Byrd currently holds. Mike Mabie and Belinda Coronado are competing for the Third Ward seat being vacated by Raul Garcia, who is not running for re-election.
Housing issues, diversity and inclusion, waterfront redevelopment and community policing were among the topics covered.
Byrd openly spoke of earlier challenges in his life, from losing his home and struggling to care for his family to becoming a Habitat home owner and eventual board member at the housing ministry. He said housing concerns are “real lived experiences for me,” and noted the drive for more housing needs to be balanced with the ability to provide police and fire services to newly developed areas. The Saginaw native and U.S. Army veteran is married and the father of four. He said he supports the police, but also shared painful stories of his own experiences with police in other communities where he and his father were separately wrongly targeted as a criminal suspect. He emphasized his commitment to a life of service, saying he’s running for re-election to pay forward the help and support he and his family have gotten from the community.
Freestone, a Holland native and former city councilman, has experience in business, non-profits, working for the city and in environmental work. He said he’s worked on building green spaces in eight Michigan counties as well as on water quality and and recycling issues. He emphasized the need to make Holland’s 40-year Community Energy Plan better and the importance of making Holland a more-inclusive and vibrant city — which, he said, would require city officials’ intentional interaction with residents. He talked about the importance of having tough discussions about race and inclusion. Noting that, while he grew up in a household with a dad “who said every kind of racial slur there was,” his own life experience has caused him to explore U.S. history and racial disparities. He encouraged people present and watching online to explore the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project: https://pulitzercenter.org/lesson-plan-grouping/1619-project-curriculum
Coronado, a 30-year Holland resident, noted that she arrived in Holland as a single mom of three children, renting a home before buying one on 17th Street, where she’s lived for more than 20 years. She’s a military veteran with experience in Iraq and her work in Ottawa County has included jobs in corrections and in the Ottawa County Prosecutor’s office as a legal assistant. She has a degree in criminal justice. She believes in “complaining once,” then taking action. She volunteers with veterans and is attuned to both military PTSD as well as issued related to families in the “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE)” categories, which has implications for families’ well being. She said in Ward 3, a one-bedroom home can rent for as much as $1,300 a month. “If I sold my home now,” she said, “I couldn’t afford to buy a home here.”
Mike Mabie, who moved to Holland in 2004 with his wife and children, is also a military veteran with experience in Bosnia and Iraq as a pilot. He works as a civilian pilot now, and said one priority should be reducing household property taxes, which can make home ownership more difficult. He suggested that some people have problems getting or keeping a home because of issues that in some cases can be “traced to personal situations,” including living paycheck to paycheck. He suggested getting more community feedback on the waterfront development. He also expressed support for police and said people get distracted by national media and coverage of race-related demonstrations elsewhere. He said while the Holland area isn’t perfect, the problems here are not as bad as they are elsewhere. He said Holland should be a place that draws people from all over the country.
In talking about diversity issues, Byrd and Mabie put the emphasis on unity, each noting they’d been endorsed by public safety groups. Freestone and Coronado, who praised Holland public-safety officials, also each noted that police needed to be transparent and accountable after a negative incident.
Freestone corrected a question Bishop relayed from an area resident, who asked for each candidate’s take on a county moratorium on development. Freestone explained the moratorium was in Holland Township. Holland Township’s board of trustees last month voted to hold off on high-density residential development until August 2022, to help the planning commissioners catch up on ordinance updates.
Organizers indicated the full video of the forum will be posted “in a few days” at LWVHolland.org and on the group’s Facebook page.
The LWV of the Holland Area is a 501c3k organization devoted to getting people registered to vote and educating people on election and policy issues. The LWV does not endorse candidates and only takes positions on issues after doing studies on them. Organizers of Monday’s forum encouraged people to visit vote411.org to learn more about the Nov. 2, 2021, ballot. LWV volunteers are helping register people to vote today, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021.
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