DES MOINES, Iowa — The Northwest Neighbors Association hosted a forum for Des Moines mayoral candidates Thursday night.
Local 5 spoke with residents before the forum to better understand the issues most important to the city, and they included: affordable housing, education, infrastructure and public safety.
Before the forum, Local 5 caught up with the three candidates who did attend: Connie Boesen, Josh Mandelbaum and Chris Von Arx. Denver Foote did not attend due to an illness.
Boesen has spent over a decade on a school board and currently serves on the Des Moines City Council. Mandelbaum also works on the Des Moines City Council, and Von Arx said he currently works third shift as security guard.
Here's how the candidates responded to some questions.
Q: On day one in office, what are the first changes you'd make to the city of Des Moines?
"I really wanna look at the economic development, and how we can restructure first how we can support small businesses," Boesen said.
Boesen also said it's not really plausible to make any policy changes that soon, but she's change the way they facilitate their meetings, allowing residents to speak at the beginning.
"The mayor is responsible for facilitating the meetings. I want to change the meetings so we allow the public to speak longer, to speak at the front of the meeting," Mandelbaum said.
"I'm going to try and get everyone onboard with voting to lower taxes for everybody, and maybe cut some spending," Von Arx added.
Q: How would you improve public safety in Des Moines?
"I'm proposing is a downtown corridor police force from I say Methodist Hospital to Lutheran, all around the Grey station in East Village," Boesen said.
"Increase our capacity with mental health workers and social workers to respond to public safety calls," Mandelbaum added.
Mandelbaum and the city council have done previous policies like the Crisis Advocacy Response Effort (CARE) program, which improved public safety call response time in collaboration with Broadlawns Hospital.
"I would ask the police officers if there's things that they'd like me to do, because the police know all about exactly what they need," Von Arx said.
I also asked Des Moines mayoral candidates about how they would improve access to housing in the city.
Q: How would you improve access to housing in the city?
"Habitat, Home Inc., NFC, all of these different agencies together to help build more housing," Boesen told Local 5.
Boesen also said the housing she'd want to expand as mayor would include: 4-plexes, 6-plexes and rowhouses, while Mandelbaum said: "Implementing changes to our zoning, and allowing more types of housing to be built."
"See if we could rent out a patch of land somewhere, and uh, get all of the homeless people to get on busses to bring 'em down to this patch of land where there's a whole bunch of tents, and medical attention and psychiatry," Von Arx said.
Q: What would you change about current educational policies?
Boesen said she trusts the school board, and told Local 5 the office of mayor needs closer communications with them.
Mandelbaum said we need to continue to fund pre-schools, as the city council approved to add six full-time pre-schools in the past few years.
Von Arx said he wants to advocate for more parental choice and to allow parents more autonomy to choose what is taught in their children's classrooms.