Alderman forum draws limited turnout
Of the seven applicants, only two — Stacy Walters and Dian Hall — were available to field questions.
Farragut Alderman Joey Ruffalo, who organized the forum, said one applicant, Michael Bittel, withdrew his name from consideration Oct. 7; two were traveling during fall break; another was out of the country; and one did not respond.
The North Ward seat became vacant when Alderman Alex Cain was elected mayor in August.
Seven people applied for the position: Bittel, who later withdrew; Hall; Walters; Sharafat Khan; Trevor McQueen; Earle Lawrence Segrest; and Col Stiefel.
Among the questions Ruffalo asked was, “With rising costs and competing needs for roads, parks and other services, how would you decide what to fund now, what to scale back and what to delay?”
“I think the most important thing is to, one, always seek residents’ input,” Hall responded. “What are the citizens looking for? What are they interested in seeing?”
However, “You also have to look at the realities of the infrastructure and the needs of the Town at any given time,” she said, adding that board members need to look at high-priority issues requiring immediate attention.
As at home, “if you need a new water heater, you buy that before you decide what vacation you’re going to go on,” said Hall, who has lived in Farragut since 2012.
“It’s the same kind of process I would take with the Town is really trying to understand the key issues: what’s needed and what would be nice to have that we might address.”
“I think fiscal priorities for Farragut is to make sure is in line and is how the residents want it to be,” Walters said. “I would definitely seek residents’ input first, but my gut tells me … that we would prioritize resolving traffic.
“In Farragut, we are very blessed to have a lot of parks, and we should continue to focus on new parks in the future, but we have to fix the issues that we’re dealing with right now, and overwhelmingly, residents are saying that traffic is an issue.
“We have to look at the [traffic light] system that was installed and understand why it’s not performing the way we thought it would,” said Walters, who has lived in Farragut since 2014.
