Candidates Kerry Grass, Guy Titus and Tyler Rankin after Wednesday evening’s mayor debate. Wednesday, April 19, 2023.
GREENFIELD — It was a packed house at the Greenfield mayoral debate Wednesday, April 19, as the community gathered to hear from the three Republican candidates heading into the May 2 primary election.
Local real estate broker Hart Summeier moderated the debate, which was live-streamed from the Greenfield-Central Educational Services Center just south of the high school.
More than 100 people attended the event, hosted by the Greenfield Area Chamber of Commerce and the Daily Reporter.
The candidates — Kerry Grass, Tyler Rankins and Guy Titus — shared where they stand on a number of topics throughout the 90-minute debate.
In his opening remarks, Titus shared that “it was stated in the paper by one of the candidates that he’s the only qualified candidate to represent the city of Greenfield as mayor, but I strongly disagree with that. I feel I have a lot of experience. I have a lot of qualifications,” he said, citing his 44-year career with Greenfield Power & Light.
Grass also spoke of his life of local community service, having worked 32 years as a firefighter and paramedic and having served 16 years on Greenfield’s city council.
“I’m a lifelong Republican. My priorities are public safety, infrastructure, economic development and quality of life,” he said.
Rankins shared that he was born and raised in Greenfield, with two decades of experience working for the city.
“For the past nearly nine years, I’ve been blessed to be the Greenfield street commissioner … A lot of what I do affects (residents’) daily lives, and I take that job very seriously,” he said.
Challenges & solutions
Summeier started the debate by asking each candidate the greatest challenge or obstacle they had faced in their current roles serving the community, and how they had overcome it.
Titus pointed out the challenge of managing the city’s ongoing growth. “When I came to Greenfield Power & Light we had 3,600 meters. We currently have 13,000 meters, so I’ve lived the growth. I’ve seen it … so that’s probably our biggest challenge — dealing with all the growth how are we going to adapt to that — and I think it’s an opportunity that we need to take advantage of, taking that opportunity to grow it forward and do good things so that people want to come and live in Greenfield and raise their families here,” he said.
Grass said one of his biggest challenges as a city councilman has been budgeting. “The state sometimes cuts the budget for the city, and we have to make up for it elsewhere,” said Grass, who spoke of the importance of seeking grants to help offset costs.
“If it wasn’t for the Stellar (Communities) grant that we received, we wouldn’t have a lot of the amenities that we do here today,” Grass, who labeled himself a conservative Republican.
Rankins said his biggest challenge has been managing street repairs with inadequate funding.
“Our greatest challenge isn’t unique to Greenfield, it’s for every street department in the state. We don’t have enough money to fund all the street repairs we need to do,” said Rankins. “We’ve been able to offset some of those costs through ($4 million in) state grants,” he said.
Greenfield parks
Summeier then switched the discussion to Greenfield parks, asking each candidate their thoughts on the parks system and their vision going forward.
All three candidates agreed that the parks, like other city departments, are underfunded.
Infrastructure
Citing each of the candidates’ comments in a recent newspaper article regarding infrastructure, Summeier asked them to expand on their thoughts on ways to re-appropriate funds to address the city’s infrastructure issues.
Rankins said he feels the street department has come a long way in the last nine years under his leadership.
“We’re doing $3 million worth of work this year and that’s not really done, but after this year the streets are going to be in great condition,” he said.
Titus agreed that the roads are the city’s top issue, “but we have to have a plan. Money is going to be the thing,” said Titus, who voiced doubts over whether the city currently has enough money to manage all the necessary repairs.
He suggested the city look into contracting with a waste removal company to provide city-wide trash service, rather than having multiple companies handling the job directly through residents, as they do now.
“Trash trucks are very heavy, and you see four or five different companies coming through there with their trash trucks (each week), destroying our neighborhoods. What if the city contracted a trash company? Maybe we’d all get lower rates on our trash service, and that truck would only come through our neighborhood one time in a week, which is going to help preserve those roads.”
Titus said the plan could result in lower trash pickup costs for residents, who would pay the fee along with their electric, water and sewer bills.
Impact fees
Summeier then steered the conversation towards impact fees, asking each candidate their take on how the city should handle them.
Rankins said he’s encouraged that the city is looking at charging developers street impact fees to go towards capital projects such as roundabouts in the future. “That’s going to be great for the city,” he said.
Titus said he believes impact fees need to be raised. “We need to do a cost of service study for all Greenfield departments,” he said. “Working for Greenfield Power and Light, we increased our cost of service fees to a developer to $2,600 a lot. I do the books, and it’s currently costing us $3,100 per lot to put in the transformers, the wire and everything to serve that. I’m tired of seeing these developers come out of Indianapolis, get rich and say goodbye. They leave us with poor inadequate roads and they haven’t paid their fees up front. And then who subsidizes that? All of you people, when we have to raise your rates,” he said.
Grass said he opposes spending tax dollars on more studies, but that he agrees with the current state of impact fees in the city.
Downtown Greenfield
Summeier then turned the focus to downtown Greenfield, asking the candidates what they’d ideally like to see in regards to future growth and development.
Rankins said the downtown revitalization is a huge part of his vision for Greenfield.
“I think Depot Street Park has been amazing, but that’s just the beginning,” he said.
“You need to have more commercial down there,” said Rankins, who said his mother and grandmother used to own a catering company downtown, when the area was much less vibrant.
“Ten years later and look at it … I mean you can go down there and there’s people everywhere on the weekends. I love it,” he said.
Titus praised the city’s current administration for working hard to enhance the downtown area over nine years.
He applauded the creation of Depot Street Park and the addition of new restaurants and businesses downtown. “We want to (continue to) make it a destination,” said Titus, who said he’s been in talks with developers who have big ideas for the future.
“”I want to continue to work with them because when I look at Greenfield, south of (McKenzie Road) is the community I grew up in, and I love it and I want to keep that luster and beauty that it has,” he said.
Housing
Summeier then turned the conversation to housing, asking each of the candidates what their plan would be to attract more housing opportunities in Greenfield.
Rankins said that growing housing must be offset by growing commercial and industrial development as well, “or our taxes are going to be through the roof.”
Titus said he wants to focus on bringing in quality homes, and thinks it’s essential to keep an eye on developers swooping in to buy up large numbers of houses to lease as rentals.
“There’s got to be guidelines and stipulations to them. There needs to be guidelines for them because the price of housing is going to soar because of all these rentals,” he said.
Grass said he’d continue to work closely with the city council to keep a finger on the pulse of local communities, “What I do know is we’ve got executives in other communities who would come here to work and then drive back to Fishers, because nobody is selling (adequate housing), so we we need to have those type of homes available so they can live here and work here and raise a family here,” he said.
Fire & police protection
After some discussion on rental properties, Summeier then asked the candidates if they support increasing the general tax rate for the Greenfield fire protection territory, and what alternatives they would propose to maintain adequate service.
“As a physical conservative I think a tax increase should be a very last resort, but if that was the only option I would be for it, so we keep public services going,” said Rankins. “There are other ways you can raise your assessed value with large corporations and industry in town, so you don’t put the whole burden on the taxpayer, and that’s what I would aim to do.”
Grass said he supports a tax rate increase to support the local fire territory, which he said is the only way to enhance local services.
Summeier then turned the focus to the local police, asking each candidate their plans to attract and retain police officers in the city.
“First off I think we have a wonderful police department. They are a bit understaffed but they do a very good job for our community,” said Titus, citing the heroic job police officers do in an increasingly dangerous world.
Both Grass and Rankins pointed out the importance of making local officers feel supported by city officials.
“If you look to Marion County and IMPD, they’re not supported by by the prosecutor out there, and they’re starting to leave” the department, he said.
Rankins said local support is essential in assuring that local police officers can be recruited and retained to serve the community.
“There’s two ways to keep people in — you have to pay them and you have to respect them,” he said. “What they do is very dangerous … They have to know City Hall has their back.”
Tax abatements & TIF funds
Summeier then steered the conversion towards tax abatements and TIF funds, citing entities who fell short on their tax abatement agreements with the city last year by being either partially or fully delinquent in their filings. He asked the candidates what their plan would be to ensure compliance in regards to tax abatements in order to protect taxpayer funds.
Grass said he was in favor of tax abatements, while Titus said he wasn’t a big proponent of them unless they’re managed correctly.
“I mean you see (developers) come in and we give them the moon,” said Titus. “I think before we do that we need before we just offer them everything … there needs to be more of a contract rather than just a carte blanche abatement. They fulfill their end of the deal and bring to us what they say and and what they’re going to use in load of electricity and number of people they’re going to employ in our community.”
Summeier asked if the candidates if they felt the City of Greenfield was using TIF monies appropriately, and how they feel TIF monies can best be used.
Both Grass and Rankins said they feel the city has been a good steward of TIF funds.
“If it works right it creates new development and it pays for its own infrastructure. That way existing taxpayers are not paying for these roads and amenities,” said Grass.
“If we didn’t have the TIF funds we wouldn’t have been able to do a lot of projects that we’ve got done, one of them being the Depot Street Park, which has been such an asset,” he said.
Technical school
Summeier rounded out the discussion by asking the candidates their thoughts on the creation of a technical school in Hancock County.
All three said they were in favor of it.
Closing statements
Each candidate was given two minutes to share their closing statements to conclude the debate.
Grass summarized his top four areas of interest in leading the city — public safety, infrastructure economic development and quality of life — “but if you don’t have public safety you don’t have the other three, so that’s what we need to concentrate on,” he said.
“We don’t want Indianapolis or Marion County creeping closer, and it takes a strong police force, which we have. I will continue to strengthen that police force as public safety is near and dear to my heart,” he said.
Titus focused on the importance of making Greenfield a place where people want to make a home.
“What brings people to a community? They want good schools, they want good roads, they want good parks, they want fun things to do. We’re blessed to have what we have here,” said Titus, a lifelong Greenfield resident.
“I’ve worked here, I’ve married here, I’ve raised my kids here. (As mayor), I just want to continue to serve the friends and people and the community I love.”
Rankins thanked the audience for taking the time to attend the debate.
“This is an important election for the future of our city. Our future generations are counting on you to make the correct decision,” he said.
“I don’t plan on being there for one term or two terms, but I’ll be here for as long as the residents will have me … I have the energy and the passion to lead the city for many years.”
The debate may be viewed in its entirety on the Greenfield Area Chamber of Commerce Facebook page.
