Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A lot of things to get to in Omaha, though,
and we are blessed to be joined by the current
mayor of Omaha and running for reelection in just so gosh,
five days the election day here in Omaha. Mayor Jean
stouther is in the studio with me today, Mayor Stothard,
thanks for coming in.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You bet.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah, the clock is ticking. It's right around the corner.
This time next week, it'll all be over. Hopefully, hopefully
we won't be counting hanging chads or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You told me when you came in like the week
before the primary.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
You love campaigning.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I do love it. How did the campaign kind of
change a little bit for you from you know when
we talked right before the primary to kind of the
sprint to the finish line right now?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, you know, these races, these independent city races are
so fast and furious because that with the November elections,
people are tired. Then you got December Christmas. Nobody wants
to hear about it. It starts in January, mid May.
It's done. Yeah, So it is fast and furious. It's
a sprint to the end. So we started working then
and have not let up. And so I said this
(01:00):
right after the primary. The day after the primary. That
day after was a regular day for us. We were
out campaigning, and you just got to work really really
hard after the primary you're in the top two to
gather all those other.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Votes and win it.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
And we've done it three times. I have always won
the primary. I won the primary this time, and so
obviously it's doable. I was in a five way primary
the first time. I ran with really good, tough opponents.
So we're working real hard to get the voter turnout
up because that's what concerned me. Voter turnout was twenty
five percent. That means obviously seventy five percent of the
(01:34):
voters in Omaha didn't vote, and we you know, and
the issue is out in West Omaha is City Council
District five and six. They don't have opponents, so really
the mayor was the only one on there. So we
are really working at voter turnout where we're really doing
a lot of door to door direct contact with people.
We've got a lot up on TV, and it's just really,
(01:55):
you know, a concerted effort with my team to get
out there and get people out to vote and guide
them in my direction.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Hopefully well, and that's vote for me.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And that's the thing with politics is every election is
a bit different than the last election. You had a
challenger from your party, Mike McDonald, who is a Republican
now and a new Republican right, and I think.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
He's showing the stripes. You know, the tiger never never
loses his stripes. But that was a very new Republican
of a lifelong Democrat, right.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
But as we talked about it, right, he was trying
to kind of it was interesting because we don't do parties, right,
So in theory, it could have been you number one
and him number two. But that's not how it shook
out here. I did some of the math like anybody does,
and I'm sure your team does too. Of Like, Okay,
so the people who voted in Omaha and their candidate
they voted for didn't advance past the primary. You mentioned
(02:50):
twenty five percent turnout. Where would those people likely vote,
would they vote? Will more people vote in the general
than voted in the primary. It's been kind of the
pattern that you've noticed in previous elections and what you
feel like you can expect here in on Tuesdays.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Sure, that's that's the name of the game, that's what
you do. But I will go back to my first
race in twenty twenty five, and I mentioned really good candidates.
I challenged the mayor, who was Jim Subtle at the time.
But Brad Ashford was in that race too. He was
a Democrat at that sign at that time. And then
Dave Naberde and Dan Welch were two Republicans. So you know,
you just assume that you can rally the Republican vote.
(03:28):
But at the same time, in that same primary, they
got a lot of votes. Some other Republicans voted for
them too, and then there were two Democrats. So I
mean it's always competitive. And when you said it is nonpartisan,
because that's the way it is. It's established by the
city charter, and there's not a lot that the mayor
of Omaha does that is partisan. You know, we plow snow,
(03:50):
we fix the streets, we pick up trash. You know,
these are nonpartisan issues. And I do get when you
break down who I get as voters, I get a
lot of Republicans, a lot of Democrats, and a lot
of independence. I always have, so you know, we just
kind of look at where my votes come from. My campaign,
we look at where I did really well, we look
at where I need to work more. And that's just
(04:12):
the strategy of the entire campaign. And so that's what
I did before I rallied those Republicans in the first
race that didn't vote for me. I rallied the Democrats
who voted for Brad Asterrod or Jim Suttle, and we
ended up winning. You know, the first race, it was
like fifty seven percent. I won. The second race against
Heath Mellow was much much closer, and then the last
(04:35):
one I won by about sixty seven percent against our Janeery.
So they're all different. They're just all different. And I
tell you I never take it for granted at all.
The first race, the number one issue going door to
door was the unfunded pension liability and the fire and
police spiking. We don't even we're hardly talking about that now.
And we started talking about it a few days ago
(04:57):
because my opponent, John Ewing came out and said that
he wanted to lower the amount of contributions that the
police pay into the fire and police pension. And I
think that alerted quite a few people. But that because
if he lowers it, that means the taxpayers will be
paying more out of their pockets because you've got to
have an equal amount, or the unfunded pension liability will
(05:20):
get greater. So that's kind of brought that to the limelight,
but I haven't heard much about it in this campaign.
Every campaign, the issues are really different, and this is
no different.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Speaking with Mayor Gene Stothard here from of course the
City of Omaha Mayor's race. The election is going to
be on Tuesday. You mentioned John Ewing, and I think
you know we were looking forward to what both candidates
would have to say in the four to five weeks
in between the primary and the general election here and
(05:50):
you mentioned one topic and we actually are going to
be speaking with someone from the Plat Institute a little
bit later in the show about that specific issue, but
also there are a lot of things that you know
are on your mind. I just full disclosure. We have
reached out to the un campaigns for him to be
on the show and haven't been able to nail down
a time between now and election day, so we're not sure,
but we have offered for him to be here. But
I know that you have had some things that you've
(06:13):
heard from his campaign that you are wanting to make
sure that the record is set straight on absolutely.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
And you know, I have been in multiple debates and
forums with John Ewing since this campaign, since the primary,
and you know he will continually say basically anything she
can do, I can do better, but no plans.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
So I'm going to do the streets better.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
I'm going to fill up the police department and be
fully staffed staffed. I'm going to build more affordable housing.
I'm going to be intentional in development, which I have
no idea what he means by that, so I want
to I would like to address those because on every
one of those it's just I will do better, but
no plans on how to do it, and more importantly,
no plan of how to fund it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
For example, with the streets.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And you know, he said that that we're not doing
well with the streets. The streets are in terrible condition.
He has promised the folks out in Elkhorn who live
on unimproved streets that they will get their streets done
without having to pay for it, which we already have
a plan to established approved by the city council about
how we are doing that. I'm just surprised at this
(07:15):
point in time. He doesn't know these things, you know.
I mean he's talking about I'm going to do the
streets better in Omaha. Well, I get the bond issue
of two hundred million dollars passed in May of twenty twenty.
It was just reauthorized in December of twenty four Now
I have four hundred million of extra dollars. If he
doesn't see the progress and the roads in Omaha, he
(07:37):
needs to get in the car and drive around. You know,
we've rehabilitated not just filled potholes, but rehabilitated a thousand
lane miles of road in Omaha since twenty twenty that
bond issue. That's a fifth of the lane miles of
the roads in Omaha, but it's a fifth that has
been done. I mean, that's the distance from Omaha to Atlanta.
And he's saying, well, I don't see where it is.
(07:58):
We'll drive around and look. And also, we have a
web page or that you can go to and it's
keep omham Moving dot com. You could see every road project,
you could see what the schedule is. We could I
have forty one new road projects coming on this year.
He's going to take time to see what is already
being done. You can't build Rome in a day, and
(08:20):
so we had decades and decades of neglect to our streets.
When I became mayor, I said, we have to have
a sustainable plan that will work and we could get
to those streets and fix them.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's going to take time.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
We had one thousand lane miles in five years, but
we're going to get it done. We have a plan
and we have a way to fund it. I've never
heard his plan in a way to fund it and
promising people that are on unimproved streets. Out of our
five thousand lane miles, we have about three hundred lane
miles that are unimproved. That means built to old standards,
no storm drains, gutters, sidewalks, curbs, and we have a
(08:53):
plan that community members developed in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
It was approved by the city council.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
It had always been in Omaha that if you lived
on one of these unimproved streets and you wanted it
rehabilitated or resurface, you paid for all of it. The
homeowners at a butt on that property would pay equal amounts.
I didn't think that was fair. I thought these are
city streets. I got a group of citizens together. They
gave me a plan of cost sharing that the city
would basically pay half and they would pay half. Since
(09:20):
that was passed by the council in twenty eighteen, we
had probably close to five hundred people that have already
taken part in it. All over Omaha, we probably did
twelve concrete streets and over twelve asphalt streets so far.
So if now my opponent is going to go out
there and resurface them all with no cost to the taxpayers,
that would cost three hundred million dollars. That would mean
(09:42):
the taxpayers would pay for it and their taxes would
go up. And that would mean what do I do
with all these almost five hundred people that have already
cost shared. Would he refund the money that they already paid.
So he's not taken time to figure these things out.
Roads are expensive. You got to do an average of
a million dollars a mile. So these are things that
I want to bring up because he doesn't understand. He
(10:05):
also brings up the police staffing. Well, the chief and
I have developed a new plan that we will always
be five percent higher than any law enforcement agency in
the entire state. We're going to do a lot different
in recruiting, a lot different in taking applications. It's approved
by the city council. It was approved a couple of
weeks ago on a Tuesday. We started recruiting on a Wednesday.
(10:27):
And he will bring up all the time, Well, when
I was a police officer, we were fully staffed. Okay,
that's twenty years.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Ago, a lot different.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
He also has said it one of the forums that
I'm making excuses because it had nothing to do with COVID,
nothing to do with George Floyd, nothing to do with
the defund disassemble. The police movement had everything to do
with that. It happened in every major city.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I mean I came from the morning the exact same thing,
the same timeline.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Was going on.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
I know it in the chief where and the chief
has already endorsed you. Yes, so that the police chief.
So if police staffing is an issue, the chief would
be feeling the brunt of that. But the chief has
absolutely already endorsed you for Mayor, So can we can
we can we pause for a second and then come
back in and do more. Absolutely, it's two eighteen. Mayor
Geen stoutht is of course in the studio. We will
(11:15):
have more with her in moments here on news Radio
eleven ten KFAB and.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Ray Songer on news Radio eleven ten KFAB.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
We are joined right here in the studio by Mayor
Jean Stoutht, who of course is running against John Ewing
for the general election for mayor of Omaha next Tuesday.
We have reached out to the un campaign to try
to get John Ewing on between now an election day
and haven't really been able to nail down at time,
so that offer is on the table for them. But
we have Mayor Stouthart here in the studio. And there
are some major topics as you were kind of alluding
(11:46):
to Mayor stouth about that as well. What would be
another topic that you think the information has just kind
of been skewed from that side of the campaign.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Well, one is about our homeless too, and I heard
him say just recently on KFA BE that he used
to the phrase we are last in the country with
the percentage of unsheltered, and that is just inaccurate, that's
misleading because that report that came out from hud it
was a three county area, it was sarpy, it was
Potawatamie and it was Douglas and the thing in Omaha,
(12:19):
and he said it's a twelve hundred percent increase in unsheltered.
That's that's three counties, So that's misleading. But the other
thing is in Omaha, the number of unsheltered was so
low in the beginning. It's gone up a little bit.
You know, it was like forty when I became mayor,
and now there's maybe two hundred and fifty that they
would consider unsheltered. The last mailing address of half of
(12:42):
those is Council Bluffs, So it's not indicative of what
is happening in the city of Omaha. And when you
talk about unsheltered, you have to talk or homeless. You
have to talk about unsheltered transitional housing and in shelter too.
We have less than one percent of our population that
are homeless right now. I never said that being homeless
is not a problem in Omaha. I never said that,
(13:03):
And that's on one of John Ewing's commercials that I
don't think homelessness is a problem.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
That's just false.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
So I want to put that statement to bed. The
other thing that he continues to say is about he's
going to do intentional economic development. I have no idea
what he means by that, because what can be more
intentional than what we're doing. You know, we are doing
suburban growth, we are doing urban infoll. We have an
urban Core master Plan now that came out from the
(13:29):
Urban Core Committee for downtown Midtown. We are redoing the
city's master plan. We are going to get thousands of
people to put an input with that. It was written
in about nineteen ninety eight, but we have updated it
and amended it and added elements to it many times
since then. But I want to just scrub scrub it
and start from the beginning because our original master plan
(13:53):
was based on massive suburban growth which was happening at
that time, to manage all that growth and make it coordinated. Now,
we're still doing suburban growth, but we're also looking at
urban infill, we're looking at building new and we're looking
at preserving historic and old neighborhoods too. So we really
want to take a new, fresh look at it. And
there's nothing more intentional than what we have been doing.
(14:15):
And the economic development in Omaha right now is absolutely unprecedented.
John Ewing has also said in his announcement that he
wanted to stop the use of TIFF tax increment financing
because it was putting the city in debt. There's no
debt to the city with TIFF. If you approve TIFF
for a developer, he goes to a bank and takes
(14:35):
that a loan. The risk is between the bank and
the developer, no risk to the city. I was just
at a groundbreaking this morning down on Levenworth of a
new big project down there that the developer said he
could not do it. Tom McClay said he could not
do it without the use of TIFF. We have very
few incentives for developers that are built that are built
(14:58):
in with state law, and so we have to use
what's there, and we do use it very very carefully.
So we are very careful at how we use TIFF.
But things wouldn't happen without it. I'm going to give
you an example of the Blackstone. The Blackstone was a
Rundown area. It started about twelve years ago with the
conversion of Farnham Street. Since then, almost five hundred million
(15:19):
have gone into the Blackstone. Couldn't do it without TIFF,
couldn't do it at all. Mutual of Omaha's Tower downtown
it's more expensive to build downtown. It's more expensive to
build when it's compact and there's old infrastructure. Mutual of
Omaha could have put a tower out in some cornfield
in western Nebraska and done it for less, but to
(15:39):
put it downtown where we wanted it, they couldn't do
it without the use of TIFF. So I think it
just really shows that my opponent doesn't understand how we're
using TIFF and he's running for mayor.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
So maryor Jean's author with us here in the studio
talking about these point to point, I just want to
go back and revisit the homelessness conversation that you mentioned
with you know, a couple of hundred people that would
be called unsheltered, and you mentioned that there are other,
you know, elements of the homelessness issue. What would be
some of the things that you would have on the
docket for your next term if re elected, to kind
(16:14):
of address maybe the growing number of unsheltered people that
may be here in the city of homes.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
You know, just continue exactly what we are doing and
when we during COVID, I when we got our COVID money,
I assembled a big group of people from the community,
business leaders, nonprofits, and I said, I want advice from
all of you on what we need to do working
together to make the get us through COVID and use
(16:40):
the COVID money we receive from the federal government. The
number one issue came up and they were concerned about
more people becoming homeless because a loss of income, loss
of jobs. So that's how I hired a homeless service coordinator.
That was their recommendation. That's what I did. First two
years she was paid for with COVID money. Now she's
out of our general fund. She is so busy. We
(17:00):
let her hire an assistant, Kurt, and they are out
there coordinating those services that are already in Omaha, the
Street Outreach, Together, Threshold, all of these services that provide
those things to get these people out of this homeless
situation or the unsheltered, if it's addiction problem, if it's
(17:21):
financial problem, if it's mental health problem. Since Tamara has
been working for me, Tamra Dwyer is their name, we
have moved about three hundred unsheltered and to shelter, are
getting them the services that they need because she's coordinating
what is going on in Omaha. Now that's what we
need to continue doing. So we have a plan and
(17:41):
that plan is working. When I did my State of
the City this year, I featured one man that was
homeless living on a corner down in South Omaha. Somebody
had beaten him. He was needed to go to the
hospital and now he is in one of the tiny
houses at the Santa Francis House the Cottages and he's
(18:02):
getting the help that he needs. Tamra takes him to
his medical appointments. I mean, we have a plan in
its working, and to say we don't it's just false.
It's saying I don't know what's going on in Omaha,
but I'll just do it better if I could. Affordable
housing goes along with that, because you know, we always
say if how do you get rid of homelessness, and
(18:24):
that would be our goal. We'll put him in homes,
you know. And so the affordable housing issue is something
that we have addressed. We have a plan and we
have a partner. Our biggest investment with our COVID money
we receive was into affordable housing. The city put twenty million,
I got twenty million, match from private forty million more
(18:45):
and a front porch Investments is our partner and Front
Porch has said recently that the investment the city has
made is unprecedented. Right now with building more affordable housing,
the key is we have to make building affordable housing
for the developers. So we have a new plan with
our Planning Department. It's called HAP. It's Housing Affordability Action Plan.
(19:08):
All sorts of things we're looking at, you know, city code,
zoning codes, trying to make it easier, less regulations, more dense,
that we could build more affordable housing. We just last
year Loan we built about thirty three hundred more units
in affordable housing than we did before. So we're really
ramping that up with our partners, the partnership with Front Porch,
(19:30):
and you know, we have a plan to do it
and it's underway and we have a lot more affordable
housing units downtown. You can't force a developer to say
you will only build affordable housing, but their goal now
is to do mixed. It's got to be mixed affordable
and market rate. A lot of people will say to me,
well it's not affordable to me, you know, I want
(19:51):
something cheaper. But how you determine what is affordable is
based on the average The average meeting income excuse me
of the area. So affordable in Omaha is different than
affordable in New York City obviously, but you know there's
a formula that they use. But we're trying. We are,
we have a plan, it is working, and we are
building more affordable housing. But it has to be all
(20:12):
over Omaha. It's not just in one section. It's not
just northeast Southeast. It's all over Omaha. And we're doing it,
and we have a plan, and we have a plan
how we're going to fund it. So when my opponent
says these things, he will say I will do it better,
but no plan and no way to fund it.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
It's interesting the way that we talk about this in detail,
and the voters will have their say on Tuesday next week.
Did for anyone who's you know, asking the question. We
have reached out to the John Ewan campaign have not
been able to nail down a time to speak with
the other candidate in this race, but if we can
figure out a time, we will have him on to
(20:49):
get his say as well. But Mayor Jean Stouthard, you've
always been very open with us. We always very much
appreciate all the information of what's going on in Omaha
and also during the campaign. Thank you so much and
you will be in chat. We will be able to
chat hopefully next week after the election. Good luck to
you and thank you so much for the information today,
you bet, thanks for having me on. All right, we
(21:10):
are at two thirty right now you have to hit
a break here on news Radio eleven ten Kfab and
Marie Songer
A lot of things to get to in Omaha, though,
and we are blessed to be joined by the current
mayor of Omaha and running for reelection in just so gosh,
five days the election day here in Omaha. Mayor Jean
stouther is in the studio with me today, Mayor Stothard,
thanks for coming in.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You bet.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah, the clock is ticking. It's right around the corner.
This time next week, it'll all be over. Hopefully, hopefully
we won't be counting hanging chads or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You told me when you came in like the week
before the primary.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
You love campaigning.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I do love it. How did the campaign kind of
change a little bit for you from you know when
we talked right before the primary to kind of the
sprint to the finish line right now?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, you know, these races, these independent city races are
so fast and furious because that with the November elections,
people are tired. Then you got December Christmas. Nobody wants
to hear about it. It starts in January, mid May.
It's done. Yeah, So it is fast and furious. It's
a sprint to the end. So we started working then
and have not let up. And so I said this
(01:00):
right after the primary. The day after the primary. That
day after was a regular day for us. We were
out campaigning, and you just got to work really really
hard after the primary you're in the top two to
gather all those other.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Votes and win it.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
And we've done it three times. I have always won
the primary. I won the primary this time, and so
obviously it's doable. I was in a five way primary
the first time. I ran with really good, tough opponents.
So we're working real hard to get the voter turnout
up because that's what concerned me. Voter turnout was twenty
five percent. That means obviously seventy five percent of the
(01:34):
voters in Omaha didn't vote, and we you know, and
the issue is out in West Omaha is City Council
District five and six. They don't have opponents, so really
the mayor was the only one on there. So we
are really working at voter turnout where we're really doing
a lot of door to door direct contact with people.
We've got a lot up on TV, and it's just really,
(01:55):
you know, a concerted effort with my team to get
out there and get people out to vote and guide
them in my direction.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Hopefully well, and that's vote for me.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And that's the thing with politics is every election is
a bit different than the last election. You had a
challenger from your party, Mike McDonald, who is a Republican
now and a new Republican right, and I think.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
He's showing the stripes. You know, the tiger never never
loses his stripes. But that was a very new Republican
of a lifelong Democrat, right.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
But as we talked about it, right, he was trying
to kind of it was interesting because we don't do parties, right,
So in theory, it could have been you number one
and him number two. But that's not how it shook
out here. I did some of the math like anybody does,
and I'm sure your team does too. Of Like, Okay,
so the people who voted in Omaha and their candidate
they voted for didn't advance past the primary. You mentioned
(02:50):
twenty five percent turnout. Where would those people likely vote,
would they vote? Will more people vote in the general
than voted in the primary. It's been kind of the
pattern that you've noticed in previous elections and what you
feel like you can expect here in on Tuesdays.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Sure, that's that's the name of the game, that's what
you do. But I will go back to my first
race in twenty twenty five, and I mentioned really good candidates.
I challenged the mayor, who was Jim Subtle at the time.
But Brad Ashford was in that race too. He was
a Democrat at that sign at that time. And then
Dave Naberde and Dan Welch were two Republicans. So you know,
you just assume that you can rally the Republican vote.
(03:28):
But at the same time, in that same primary, they
got a lot of votes. Some other Republicans voted for
them too, and then there were two Democrats. So I
mean it's always competitive. And when you said it is nonpartisan,
because that's the way it is. It's established by the
city charter, and there's not a lot that the mayor
of Omaha does that is partisan. You know, we plow snow,
(03:50):
we fix the streets, we pick up trash. You know,
these are nonpartisan issues. And I do get when you
break down who I get as voters, I get a
lot of Republicans, a lot of Democrats, and a lot
of independence. I always have, so you know, we just
kind of look at where my votes come from. My campaign,
we look at where I did really well, we look
at where I need to work more. And that's just
(04:12):
the strategy of the entire campaign. And so that's what
I did before I rallied those Republicans in the first
race that didn't vote for me. I rallied the Democrats
who voted for Brad Asterrod or Jim Suttle, and we
ended up winning. You know, the first race, it was
like fifty seven percent. I won. The second race against
Heath Mellow was much much closer, and then the last
(04:35):
one I won by about sixty seven percent against our Janeery.
So they're all different. They're just all different. And I
tell you I never take it for granted at all.
The first race, the number one issue going door to
door was the unfunded pension liability and the fire and
police spiking. We don't even we're hardly talking about that now.
And we started talking about it a few days ago
(04:57):
because my opponent, John Ewing came out and said that
he wanted to lower the amount of contributions that the
police pay into the fire and police pension. And I
think that alerted quite a few people. But that because
if he lowers it, that means the taxpayers will be
paying more out of their pockets because you've got to
have an equal amount, or the unfunded pension liability will
(05:20):
get greater. So that's kind of brought that to the limelight,
but I haven't heard much about it in this campaign.
Every campaign, the issues are really different, and this is
no different.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Speaking with Mayor Gene Stothard here from of course the
City of Omaha Mayor's race. The election is going to
be on Tuesday. You mentioned John Ewing, and I think
you know we were looking forward to what both candidates
would have to say in the four to five weeks
in between the primary and the general election here and
(05:50):
you mentioned one topic and we actually are going to
be speaking with someone from the Plat Institute a little
bit later in the show about that specific issue, but
also there are a lot of things that you know
are on your mind. I just full disclosure. We have
reached out to the un campaigns for him to be
on the show and haven't been able to nail down
a time between now and election day, so we're not sure,
but we have offered for him to be here. But
I know that you have had some things that you've
(06:13):
heard from his campaign that you are wanting to make
sure that the record is set straight on absolutely.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
And you know, I have been in multiple debates and
forums with John Ewing since this campaign, since the primary,
and you know he will continually say basically anything she
can do, I can do better, but no plans.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
So I'm going to do the streets better.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
I'm going to fill up the police department and be
fully staffed staffed. I'm going to build more affordable housing.
I'm going to be intentional in development, which I have
no idea what he means by that, so I want
to I would like to address those because on every
one of those it's just I will do better, but
no plans on how to do it, and more importantly,
no plan of how to fund it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
For example, with the streets.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And you know, he said that that we're not doing
well with the streets. The streets are in terrible condition.
He has promised the folks out in Elkhorn who live
on unimproved streets that they will get their streets done
without having to pay for it, which we already have
a plan to established approved by the city council about
how we are doing that. I'm just surprised at this
(07:15):
point in time. He doesn't know these things, you know.
I mean he's talking about I'm going to do the
streets better in Omaha. Well, I get the bond issue
of two hundred million dollars passed in May of twenty twenty.
It was just reauthorized in December of twenty four Now
I have four hundred million of extra dollars. If he
doesn't see the progress and the roads in Omaha, he
(07:37):
needs to get in the car and drive around. You know,
we've rehabilitated not just filled potholes, but rehabilitated a thousand
lane miles of road in Omaha since twenty twenty that
bond issue. That's a fifth of the lane miles of
the roads in Omaha, but it's a fifth that has
been done. I mean, that's the distance from Omaha to Atlanta.
And he's saying, well, I don't see where it is.
(07:58):
We'll drive around and look. And also, we have a
web page or that you can go to and it's
keep omham Moving dot com. You could see every road project,
you could see what the schedule is. We could I
have forty one new road projects coming on this year.
He's going to take time to see what is already
being done. You can't build Rome in a day, and
(08:20):
so we had decades and decades of neglect to our streets.
When I became mayor, I said, we have to have
a sustainable plan that will work and we could get
to those streets and fix them.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's going to take time.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
We had one thousand lane miles in five years, but
we're going to get it done. We have a plan
and we have a way to fund it. I've never
heard his plan in a way to fund it and
promising people that are on unimproved streets. Out of our
five thousand lane miles, we have about three hundred lane
miles that are unimproved. That means built to old standards,
no storm drains, gutters, sidewalks, curbs, and we have a
(08:53):
plan that community members developed in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
It was approved by the city council.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
It had always been in Omaha that if you lived
on one of these unimproved streets and you wanted it
rehabilitated or resurface, you paid for all of it. The
homeowners at a butt on that property would pay equal amounts.
I didn't think that was fair. I thought these are
city streets. I got a group of citizens together. They
gave me a plan of cost sharing that the city
would basically pay half and they would pay half. Since
(09:20):
that was passed by the council in twenty eighteen, we
had probably close to five hundred people that have already
taken part in it. All over Omaha, we probably did
twelve concrete streets and over twelve asphalt streets so far.
So if now my opponent is going to go out
there and resurface them all with no cost to the taxpayers,
that would cost three hundred million dollars. That would mean
(09:42):
the taxpayers would pay for it and their taxes would
go up. And that would mean what do I do
with all these almost five hundred people that have already
cost shared. Would he refund the money that they already paid.
So he's not taken time to figure these things out.
Roads are expensive. You got to do an average of
a million dollars a mile. So these are things that
I want to bring up because he doesn't understand. He
(10:05):
also brings up the police staffing. Well, the chief and
I have developed a new plan that we will always
be five percent higher than any law enforcement agency in
the entire state. We're going to do a lot different
in recruiting, a lot different in taking applications. It's approved
by the city council. It was approved a couple of
weeks ago on a Tuesday. We started recruiting on a Wednesday.
(10:27):
And he will bring up all the time, Well, when
I was a police officer, we were fully staffed. Okay,
that's twenty years.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Ago, a lot different.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
He also has said it one of the forums that
I'm making excuses because it had nothing to do with COVID,
nothing to do with George Floyd, nothing to do with
the defund disassemble. The police movement had everything to do
with that. It happened in every major city.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I mean I came from the morning the exact same thing,
the same timeline.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Was going on.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
I know it in the chief where and the chief
has already endorsed you. Yes, so that the police chief.
So if police staffing is an issue, the chief would
be feeling the brunt of that. But the chief has
absolutely already endorsed you for Mayor, So can we can
we can we pause for a second and then come
back in and do more. Absolutely, it's two eighteen. Mayor
Geen stoutht is of course in the studio. We will
(11:15):
have more with her in moments here on news Radio
eleven ten KFAB and.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Ray Songer on news Radio eleven ten KFAB.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
We are joined right here in the studio by Mayor
Jean Stoutht, who of course is running against John Ewing
for the general election for mayor of Omaha next Tuesday.
We have reached out to the un campaign to try
to get John Ewing on between now an election day
and haven't really been able to nail down at time,
so that offer is on the table for them. But
we have Mayor Stouthart here in the studio. And there
are some major topics as you were kind of alluding
(11:46):
to Mayor stouth about that as well. What would be
another topic that you think the information has just kind
of been skewed from that side of the campaign.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Well, one is about our homeless too, and I heard
him say just recently on KFA BE that he used
to the phrase we are last in the country with
the percentage of unsheltered, and that is just inaccurate, that's
misleading because that report that came out from hud it
was a three county area, it was sarpy, it was
Potawatamie and it was Douglas and the thing in Omaha,
(12:19):
and he said it's a twelve hundred percent increase in unsheltered.
That's that's three counties, So that's misleading. But the other
thing is in Omaha, the number of unsheltered was so
low in the beginning. It's gone up a little bit.
You know, it was like forty when I became mayor,
and now there's maybe two hundred and fifty that they
would consider unsheltered. The last mailing address of half of
(12:42):
those is Council Bluffs, So it's not indicative of what
is happening in the city of Omaha. And when you
talk about unsheltered, you have to talk or homeless. You
have to talk about unsheltered transitional housing and in shelter too.
We have less than one percent of our population that
are homeless right now. I never said that being homeless
is not a problem in Omaha. I never said that,
(13:03):
And that's on one of John Ewing's commercials that I
don't think homelessness is a problem.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
That's just false.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
So I want to put that statement to bed. The
other thing that he continues to say is about he's
going to do intentional economic development. I have no idea
what he means by that, because what can be more
intentional than what we're doing. You know, we are doing
suburban growth, we are doing urban infoll. We have an
urban Core master Plan now that came out from the
(13:29):
Urban Core Committee for downtown Midtown. We are redoing the
city's master plan. We are going to get thousands of
people to put an input with that. It was written
in about nineteen ninety eight, but we have updated it
and amended it and added elements to it many times
since then. But I want to just scrub scrub it
and start from the beginning because our original master plan
(13:53):
was based on massive suburban growth which was happening at
that time, to manage all that growth and make it coordinated. Now,
we're still doing suburban growth, but we're also looking at
urban infill, we're looking at building new and we're looking
at preserving historic and old neighborhoods too. So we really
want to take a new, fresh look at it. And
there's nothing more intentional than what we have been doing.
(14:15):
And the economic development in Omaha right now is absolutely unprecedented.
John Ewing has also said in his announcement that he
wanted to stop the use of TIFF tax increment financing
because it was putting the city in debt. There's no
debt to the city with TIFF. If you approve TIFF
for a developer, he goes to a bank and takes
(14:35):
that a loan. The risk is between the bank and
the developer, no risk to the city. I was just
at a groundbreaking this morning down on Levenworth of a
new big project down there that the developer said he
could not do it. Tom McClay said he could not
do it without the use of TIFF. We have very
few incentives for developers that are built that are built
(14:58):
in with state law, and so we have to use
what's there, and we do use it very very carefully.
So we are very careful at how we use TIFF.
But things wouldn't happen without it. I'm going to give
you an example of the Blackstone. The Blackstone was a
Rundown area. It started about twelve years ago with the
conversion of Farnham Street. Since then, almost five hundred million
(15:19):
have gone into the Blackstone. Couldn't do it without TIFF,
couldn't do it at all. Mutual of Omaha's Tower downtown
it's more expensive to build downtown. It's more expensive to
build when it's compact and there's old infrastructure. Mutual of
Omaha could have put a tower out in some cornfield
in western Nebraska and done it for less, but to
(15:39):
put it downtown where we wanted it, they couldn't do
it without the use of TIFF. So I think it
just really shows that my opponent doesn't understand how we're
using TIFF and he's running for mayor.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
So maryor Jean's author with us here in the studio
talking about these point to point, I just want to
go back and revisit the homelessness conversation that you mentioned
with you know, a couple of hundred people that would
be called unsheltered, and you mentioned that there are other,
you know, elements of the homelessness issue. What would be
some of the things that you would have on the
docket for your next term if re elected, to kind
(16:14):
of address maybe the growing number of unsheltered people that
may be here in the city of homes.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
You know, just continue exactly what we are doing and
when we during COVID, I when we got our COVID money,
I assembled a big group of people from the community,
business leaders, nonprofits, and I said, I want advice from
all of you on what we need to do working
together to make the get us through COVID and use
(16:40):
the COVID money we receive from the federal government. The
number one issue came up and they were concerned about
more people becoming homeless because a loss of income, loss
of jobs. So that's how I hired a homeless service coordinator.
That was their recommendation. That's what I did. First two
years she was paid for with COVID money. Now she's
out of our general fund. She is so busy. We
(17:00):
let her hire an assistant, Kurt, and they are out
there coordinating those services that are already in Omaha, the
Street Outreach, Together, Threshold, all of these services that provide
those things to get these people out of this homeless
situation or the unsheltered, if it's addiction problem, if it's
(17:21):
financial problem, if it's mental health problem. Since Tamara has
been working for me, Tamra Dwyer is their name, we
have moved about three hundred unsheltered and to shelter, are
getting them the services that they need because she's coordinating
what is going on in Omaha. Now that's what we
need to continue doing. So we have a plan and
(17:41):
that plan is working. When I did my State of
the City this year, I featured one man that was
homeless living on a corner down in South Omaha. Somebody
had beaten him. He was needed to go to the
hospital and now he is in one of the tiny
houses at the Santa Francis House the Cottages and he's
(18:02):
getting the help that he needs. Tamra takes him to
his medical appointments. I mean, we have a plan in
its working, and to say we don't it's just false.
It's saying I don't know what's going on in Omaha,
but I'll just do it better if I could. Affordable
housing goes along with that, because you know, we always
say if how do you get rid of homelessness, and
(18:24):
that would be our goal. We'll put him in homes,
you know. And so the affordable housing issue is something
that we have addressed. We have a plan and we
have a partner. Our biggest investment with our COVID money
we receive was into affordable housing. The city put twenty million,
I got twenty million, match from private forty million more
(18:45):
and a front porch Investments is our partner and Front
Porch has said recently that the investment the city has
made is unprecedented. Right now with building more affordable housing,
the key is we have to make building affordable housing
for the developers. So we have a new plan with
our Planning Department. It's called HAP. It's Housing Affordability Action Plan.
(19:08):
All sorts of things we're looking at, you know, city code,
zoning codes, trying to make it easier, less regulations, more dense,
that we could build more affordable housing. We just last
year Loan we built about thirty three hundred more units
in affordable housing than we did before. So we're really
ramping that up with our partners, the partnership with Front Porch,
(19:30):
and you know, we have a plan to do it
and it's underway and we have a lot more affordable
housing units downtown. You can't force a developer to say
you will only build affordable housing, but their goal now
is to do mixed. It's got to be mixed affordable
and market rate. A lot of people will say to me,
well it's not affordable to me, you know, I want
(19:51):
something cheaper. But how you determine what is affordable is
based on the average The average meeting income excuse me
of the area. So affordable in Omaha is different than
affordable in New York City obviously, but you know there's
a formula that they use. But we're trying. We are,
we have a plan, it is working, and we are
building more affordable housing. But it has to be all
(20:12):
over Omaha. It's not just in one section. It's not
just northeast Southeast. It's all over Omaha. And we're doing it,
and we have a plan, and we have a plan
how we're going to fund it. So when my opponent
says these things, he will say I will do it better,
but no plan and no way to fund it.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
It's interesting the way that we talk about this in detail,
and the voters will have their say on Tuesday next week.
Did for anyone who's you know, asking the question. We
have reached out to the John Ewan campaign have not
been able to nail down a time to speak with
the other candidate in this race, but if we can
figure out a time, we will have him on to
(20:49):
get his say as well. But Mayor Jean Stouthard, you've
always been very open with us. We always very much
appreciate all the information of what's going on in Omaha
and also during the campaign. Thank you so much and
you will be in chat. We will be able to
chat hopefully next week after the election. Good luck to
you and thank you so much for the information today,
you bet, thanks for having me on. All right, we
(21:10):
are at two thirty right now you have to hit
a break here on news Radio eleven ten Kfab and
Marie Songer
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.