With 11 candidates vying for four open seats in the Gilbert Town Council primary election, it appeared unlikely that a candidate would garner enough votes to win a seat outright and avoid a runoff.
However, Eddie Cook had 100 campaign volunteers, access to voters via his status as Republican leader in Legislative District 22 and name recognition from his helping lead a successful fight against the Proposition 406 sales-tax increase last year.
Those assets helped him appear on 8,286 ballots in last week's primary election, enough to reach the 50 percent plus one threshold to earn outright election. While six candidates move on to a May 17 runoff, Cook is readying to fill one of four open seats when the new council convenes on June 23.
"I was just wanting to make the top four," Cook said. "Coming out on top was a pleasant surprise."
Among the preparations for the 49-year-old Cook, a manager/sales and service for information technology company NetApp, have been talks with Mayor John Lewis and interim town manager Collin DeWitt. He said that he will be working with the executive search firm that is looking for a permanent town manager.
Cook said that his top priority is addressing a town budget deficit of $6 million for the upcoming fiscal year. That number is lower than town leaders had projected, but Cook said he feels that much of the red ink is due to a "culture of indulgence" among the council.
"There is a lot of stress that the prior leadership has done with overspending," Cook said. "As a result, going into the next four years, a lot of tough decisions will have to be made."
Continuing use of the town's reserve funds - $7 million in savings-fund transfers was utilized to balance the fiscal 2010-11 budget - is not sustainable, Cook said.
"We need to increase the revenue base as much as possible," Cook said. "That means growing Gilbert's current small businesses and helping them become more profitable and expand their business. If a business goes from five to seven employees, and we can do that 100 times, that will mean more jobs. And we need to attract new business to Gilbert.
"I feel that we're still in the dugout (in the process). We're not even up to bat, so we can get to first base, then second base and so forth."
Runoffs were not necessary in Gilbert from 1995 to 1999; each of the 10 open council seats in those three elections were filled in the primary. Since then, it has been more challenging for a candidate - especially a challenger - to earn outright election.
Six candidates in six Gilbert council elections since 2000 have claimed a seat in the primary, with only one, Linda Abbott in 2007, doing so as a challenger. And Abbott had prior council experience, from 1991 to 1995.
A resident of Gilbert since 1986, Cook considers his upcoming council term an extension of the community involvement that has included such endeavors as graduating from the town's citizens police academy, coaching baseball and serving on the board of a local Catholic school.
"I like to think I'm just a normal individual," Cook said. "I've done a lot in Gilbert, and that will not change. I'm just continuing my love to serve, which is what really drives me to do this."
gilbertwatchdog posted at 9:54 pm on Tue, Mar 15, 2011.
Now that Cook has made it, you have to ask yourself the question if you are better off today with the likes of Presmyk, Abbott and Crozier (the Union PAC) running the council's spend, spend, spend agenda, or if you feel we need some fiscal sanity returned to the council chambers.
If you believe (as I do) that Gilbert's budget needs some fiscal CPR, then vote (Cook, already in), Peterson, and Ray - the fiscal CPR team to get this mess cleaned up by finally cutting the spending on projects we simply don't need.
ivotetoo posted at 3:29 pm on Wed, Mar 16, 2011.
Gilbertwatchdog, things you think are unnecessary like safe streets, libraries, pools, parks are valued by many of us in this community. We moved to the Town because of the investments made to make this a quality community, not a cheap place to live, like in Apache Junction.
corruptionslayer posted at 12:01 am on Thu, Mar 17, 2011.
ivotethree. I value the libraries, pools and parks too. But it doesn't mean you have to OVERPAY by millions of dollars for them! Get a clue! The $50 million dollar Zinke dairy farm is riduclous. They won't even build that stupid equestrian park there for 17 years!
Abbott, Crozier and Presmyk need to be replaced by some sane people who know negotiate and not overpay for everything!
gilbertwatchdog posted at 2:39 am on Thu, Mar 17, 2011.
Ivotetoo,
You are missing the point. I'm not against parks, pools, or libraries in principal, but I am against over-priced parks, pools, or libraries in real life.
The basic difference between our viewpoints is that you (and Abbott, Crozier, and Presmyk) seem to think that the taxpayers have unlimited funds to pay for all of these "nice to have, but not necessary" projects.
In other words, you think "things" are what makes a community great, whereas I think it's primarily the people who live there that make a community great.
It's no secret that most politicians continue to promise one special interest group after another more funding in order to get their vote(s).
Want the soccer mom's vote? Easy, promise more expensive fields for their angels to play on.
Want the teacher's vote? Easy, promise them bigger, more expensive schools to teach in, tell them they're underpaid and you'd vote them raises if you're elected.
Want the police or fire vote? Easy, promise them newer, more expensive equipment, bigger, fancier stations to work in, tell them they too are underpaid and promise you'll support their union demands for more pay and benefits - if only you get elected.
The problem is that your promises are writing checks that the taxpayers can't afford, and those past promises (i.e., bills) are now due.
Sure, it's nice to have a $42 million ballpark in town (almost twice as much as a larger facility in Texas run by the same company), but with ALL of the profits going to the California developer for the first 7 years, plus the remaining years capped at 500K per year (if the ball park hits every projected sales number given to the town to originally justify the project), IT WILL STILL TAKE 91 YEARS FOR THOSE TAXPAYER FUNDS TO BREAK EVEN VS. THE EXPENSE! (And that's NOT counting any additional costs to maintain it).
You may say it's still worth it, but that's $42 million that could have gone elsewhere (or at least we could have saved $21 million and built a LARGER park like they did in Texas). Maybe the Texas town council was smarter, but lot's of folks think we got taken to the cleaners on that project.
Now if that was the only example of Gilbert's Town Council blowing the budget (and our taxpayer dollars), I might say live and let live, but sadly it isn't.
They (Abbott, Crozier, and Presmyk) have repeatedly voted for expensive project after project, with little to no regard to their actual town budget. The Zinke dairy financial disaster is but the latest example, but certainly not the only one.
Perhaps that's due to the individual backgrounds of the council members running for re-election (Abbott belongs to a teacher's union that strongly believes that more taxes will fix any school issue. Crozier and Presmyk both work for energy monopolies (APS and SRP) that simply ask for rate increases whenever their companies want more profits). Simply put, these folks work in environments where they have never been forced to do more with less.
Most working folks don't live in that world. If we want more money, we have to earn it, we don't get to ask the taxpayers for more of their money to balance our budgets. When we blow our budget(s), we have to live with the results. So should Abbott, Crozier, and Presmyk - by not being re-elected.
Their past history dictates that they would continue to foolishly mishandle the taxpayer's funds and continue to spend OUR money like Paris Hilton on a Las Vegas holiday vacation.