Sustainability Videos & Lecture Series

Rob Melnick: Global Institute of Sustainability in Arizona State University is delighted to be here tonight and to be hosting in partnership with the Green Chamber this discussion and debate with these two candidates. The commercial for the Global Institute of Sustainability is right there, I can almost not say the word I’m so moved by the Institute.

We are in the business if you will of advancing education research, discovery and outreach around the issues of sustainability not just in ASU but in the community. Part of what we’re doing tonight is part of a series we have called the “Case Critical Series” and we reserve those outreach efforts, typically speeches and debates and discussions for things that are particularly timely as opposed to the ever green issues of sustainability that you all might think of.

Of course tonight we have a great opportunity to listen to and ask questions of two fine gentlemen. One of whom is going to be the next mayor of the city of Phoenix. Boy do I have a booming mike on now, wow.

I’m delighted to be here. You need to probably turn this mike down just a wee bit. What I want to do before I introduce the candidates is just talk a little bit about the rules so to speak and how we’re gonna do this tonight real quickly.

At the beginning I’m going to pose some questions to the candidates, ask them to have–invite them to have an opening statement about sustainability. Kind of a big picture question and then we’re gonna drill down into some specific areas.

The most important part of the evening though is really the questions that you get to ask. I will channel them for you to the candidates. We ask a couple of things, first of all Mindy and Lauren if you would stand up for a minute. There are cards at the very back in the entrance way and both Mindy and Lauren have cards and pens. If you would ask your questions by writing them down, that’s how we’re going to do them. We’re gonna kinda sort through them and collect them and try to put similar questions together.

I’ll call for those questions about 5:30, 5:45 or so. When you’ve got some questions, please give them to one of those folks, etcetera. Then we’ll carry on with the debate and discussion after that. The second rule if you will, will be for the candidates themselves and I want to ask each of them as I said before to try to keep your answers succinct and keep them to a couple of minutes please. Don’t go on and on because then I’ll have to butt in and that’ll cut off the flow. Then I’m gonna have to ask this sergeant in arms to come up here and do something terrible like tell you to be quiet or something and we don’t want to do that. We really want this to be a discussion, all kidding aside we want this to be a discussion and free flow of ideas.

Those are really the rules. I would ask when you put your questions together, and those are really the most important things tonight. Not the questions that I’m gonna ask frankly. When you put your questions together please try to be succinct with your questions and I’d really appreciate it if you would ask questions to both candidates.

I don’t want to have to be sorting through cards that are all for one candidate or all for another. It’s going to be very difficult to have a fair and reasonable evening.

With that let me introduce the two candidates this evening. They have been through a long campaign. I think this is the first time you’ve actually debated, if that’s the right word, sustainability. You may have–is it the second?

Male Voice: Green Chamber.

Melnick: Oh Green Chamber, I’m sorry that’s right, second time and this is going to give everyone I think here an opportunity to pose questions under this big wide umbrella called sustainability. With that let me introduce the two candidates. First Wes Gullett, Mr. Gullet is the founding partner in the firm FirstStrategic, Communications & Public Affairs and works primarily on strategic planning projects. He has directed communications planning efforts for companies and organizations in the fields of healthcare, energy, education, real estate, construction and professional sports. Wes has extensive experience in government. He served on the Phoenix Planning and Zoning Commission for four years, including one year as Chair. Was Chief of Staff for Arizona Governor Fife Symington from 1973 to April 1996. Wes has worked for Senator McCain for seven years serving in various roles including administrative assistant, community relations director, field director and campaign manager.

Greg Stanton is raised in West Phoenix. Greg attended Marquette University and earned a law degree from the University of Michigan. Greg returned to Phoenix where he practiced education law and in 2001 he left private practice to serve on the Phoenix City Council. He represented the Sixth District for nine years. Greg was the lead councilmen bring the Translational Genomics Research Institute, known to most of you as TGen, the downtown ASU campus and the University of Arizona medical school to the city. In 2009, Greg joined the state Attorney General’s office as Deputy Attorney General, where he helped lead the effort to stop funding of cartels who traffic people and drugs across our southern border. In his two years at the AG’s office he worked to protect consumers and homeowners by fighting the predatory payday lending practice and focused on eliminating mortgage fraud. He and his wife Nicole are raising two children in downtown Phoenix. I’d like to ask each of you to take two, three minutes with an opening question, opening remarks and then we’re gonna drill down to more specific categories. I work with and visit a lot of cities in the U.S. and throughout the world. I have yet to go to a city where the mayor doesn’t say something to the following affect. Fill in the blank here city is going to be the most sustainable, greenest city in the southwest, the U.S., Great Britain, Europe, Asia, wherever it is. I hear it all the time.

I actually don’t know what that means, I really don’t. Because it means so many different things to so many different people, in so many different contexts but there seems to be this almost universality about mayors and green and sustainable and cities. As an opening remark and let me ask Wes to start, could you give us a few words about what that might mean to you if you were mayor? What would it mean to be the most sustainable city or the most sustainable city in Arizona and just in a broad sense how would you go about it?

Wes Gullett: How are we going to be–what does sustainability mean and how we do be the most sustainable city in America or definitely in Arizona. We definitely need to reach that, Rob.

My view of it is we have to have a sustainable economy first. We have to have a diversified economy that is approaching, that is creating jobs that people can have for years and years to come. We have to make sure that we don’t go through boom, bust cycles like we have in the past. That’s going to require a concentration on diversity. In our business what we did was we focused on industry’s that were sustainable and/or had sustainable futures. Energy is clearly one of the industries that we need to be focused on and it is one of the industries that is going to be around for a long time, as is heath care and education. These are three core industries that we need to make sure that we’re focused on going forward.

We also have to make sure that we have a sustainable business model in the city so that we can be able to have a city government that we’re not worried about going bankrupt because of our ever increasing pension funds or things like that. We have to make sure that we have the fiscal controls in place so that we can have that sustainable service for our community that they’ve come to respect and know.

Then we have to have a sustainable community in terms of not wasting our vital resources. Making sure that we have–that we are not wasting water, that we have enough water into the future to propel the city and have it grow in a manageable and effective way.

There’s a variety of sustainability issues which we’ll talk about a lot tonight. It’s not just green energy; it’s not just making sure that we are reducing the heat island. All of which are important but sustainability goes across many segments.

Greg Stanton: I think I would challenge a little bit the question in that I don’t think it’s a race and as mayor of Phoenix I don’t think that sustainability is a zero sum gain. I want San Diego to be successful in their sustainability efforts. I want Chicago to be as successful as possible; I want New York City, the largest city in America, to do as much as they can.

If this is a race to the top on sustainability, that’s a good thing for the United States of America. We need to look inward to do all we can on the issue of sustainability. Sustainability can’t be something where you just have a series of programs and you kinda put together a nice flyer and say it. We need to have sustainability involved in every decision that’s made at the city. It’s a mindset. We have to change the way we think if we’re going to move forward sustainability. Sustainability economically, sustainability culturally and of course sustainability environmentally.

When we think about land use sustainability should be first top of mind. When we think about transportation and public transportation and walkability, bikeability it has to be top of mind. If other cities are doing the same thing, fine. There are unique challenges in the city of Phoenix compared to other cities. When the book, Bird on Fire comes out next week and you’re going to see the author on TV a lot nationally. We’re going to be challenged here about the unique desert and the sprawl growth that’s occurred and we’re going to be challenged to do better at moving forward in the future.

When we look at building code we have to think sustainability. Obviously on energy usage and the type of energy generated we have to think sustainability. I might politely challenge Shane. I don’t think we’re in competition with those other cities. We need to do our very best and change our mindset that we’re constantly thinking about how we can improve what we do from a sustainability perspective. I want those other cities to be successful. I want the United States to be ranked number one when it comes to sustainability and cities can lead the way across the country. Thank you.

Melnick: Okay, take note that one candidate just challenged the moderator.

Stanton: Lovingly and politely.

Melnick: We’re keeping score here. Let’s stick with city leadership for a minute. You mentioned a few cities, Chicago I think, New York, there are a lot of other cities that are branded very I think pretty intensely with sustainability, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and others to mention a few in the U.S.

There’s also things happening in Arizona including in Phoenix that I would submit are probably pretty smart programs or policies to improve the sustainable trajectory if you will in any of the areas you mentioned transportation or the economy, whatever. Could each of you give me an example of a program or a policy from anywhere, any of those cities or right here in the city of Phoenix that you think is a pretty good illustration of the kind of sustainability efforts that you might make as mayor.

I’m going to ask you to go first Greg and then Wes.

Stanton: All right then.

Melnick: A specific example if you will.

Stanton: Okay, well and of course I don’t want to beat up on our city because I think the city is making strides and we need to do better. We need to continue to push forward. Obviously in partnership with the very entity in which we’re partnering with at tonight’s debate, the Global Institute of Sustainability, you’ve helped the city of Phoenix think a lot about how we can do better in this regard. We always have to be pushing forward. I mean what can we do more? Obviously we need to do more with alternative energy, solar in particular. It’s the cliché of all politics, right? That Phoenix and Arizona should be the solar capital of the country or the world. Well put aside the cliché’s we need to do more and not just have as much solar opportunities, larger ray solar on people’s individual homes.

Also we want the whole shebang, we want corporations, we want the engineers, we want the professional green jobs that go along with it. Everyone in this room knows that when you do well by sustainability you increase the wages in your community because the average wages of green jobs are significantly above the average wages of the community.

In terms of being creative on solar, not just a city doing what we can on our properties and our land, encouraging our businesses to do it, encouraging our residents to do it and coming up with new tax opportunities. I’ve mentioned at the Green Chamber debate pre-tonight property assessed clean energy is a unique opportunity that we should be looking at as a city to help with creatively financing solar and really take it to the next level.

We should not just be marketing ourselves as a sustainable city but we need to have the substance to go along with it. People will figure out pretty quickly if you don’t have the substance to go along with it. If we get it right and we should get it right based upon our unique circumstances here in Phoenix, if we do get it right I think it will be a boon to us economically. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are gonna create the jobs of the future want to locate in a city–even if they’re not in sustainable business themselves or green business, but they want to locate in city that does it right. There’s some real economic development opportunities as well. Thank you.

Melnick: Okay, Wes, specific policy or program from Phoenix or another city?

Gullett: Yes, specifically I think one of the policies is working very well and we need to expand it is adaptive reuse. There’s nothing better than using old stuff and if we can use and recycle buildings like the building we’re sitting in tonight. If we can do that throughout our city, and make sure that instead of just tearing things down and rebuilding that we’re using the infrastructure that’s already been there and expand the adaptive reuse policies throughout our community.

That’s going to be very–I think it’ll be exciting but it’ll also help us with sustainability. That is a specific program that’s been very successful in downtown and we need to encourage it throughout our community.

Melnick: Okay, one more question on sort of the broad category of leadership and then we’ll get drilled down into some of the specifics you mentioned. Solar when you’re talking about that in just a moment. Phoenix is currently re-crafting its general plan, voters will get that in the near future. How do you see the participatory process in Phoenix working such that it will give people an opportunity to provide input for the kinds of things that they want to see happen to create a more sustainable future? In specific what changes might you suggest to the general plan that would lead to a more sustainable outcome for the city over the long haul? Wes?

Gullett: Well when they were rushing the general plan through I went down and testified that we should slow it down. It’s probably the one thing that I have not been harping on about having a sense of urgency about. Because the legislature gave us the ability to slow down the process so that we could actually get more people involved, so that we could do it right.

I thought that instead of rushing it through we needed to do it right. My goal will be to get as much public input as possible in the general plan process. We also need to make that general plan flexible enough so that it is an overriding guide to make our city reflect the community. That we’re not always having to amend the general plan to change the way we do things.

Sustainability is a perfect example of that. How we can encourage sustainable development without putting guidelines or forcing people into decisions but rather have incentives for green buildings, opportunities for sustainable energy use. Things like that within the general plan. I think that as we go through that process it’s going to be really important to partner with groups like the Global Institute on Sustainability here at ASU, to make sure that we’re doing it right and that we’re getting the input from the community that we need.

Stanton: One of the great irony’s about the planning process in the city of Phoenix if you get a hot zoning case you’ll fill up a room twice the size of this with people passionate about the outcome of that case. You do a public meeting on “the general plan” and you’re probably not going to get a huge number of people. It’s incredibly important that we get more public input into that process. Of course I wrote a letter as well saying we need to slow down the general plan process.

Terry Goddard when he was mayor, and Terry Goddard’s endorsing me in this race for mayor, did something called the Future Forum. If you’re a veteran of Phoenix, you remember that hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people providing their input into the future of the city and they knew that the mayor was listening.

That’s why so many people so actively participated and I think it’s time that we do something with the changing tides that we’re going through. That we do something very similar when I am elected mayor of the city of Phoenix. To really–so that people understand that the mayor is someone that is going to take your input very, very seriously and that input should go into the general plan. Specific policies, I think even need to be done more with the general plan. Phoenix needs to be a more bikeable city, a more walkable city. The way we grew up unfortunately we became such a car-centric city that we have to retrofit projects. I led the way on at 24th Street and Camelback, the under bridge which has been hugely popular to make it more walkable and bikeable.

We need projects that take leadership like that across the entire city. We need to think in a multi-modal way and unfortunately I don’t think there’s enough thinking in that regard currently in the general plan.

One other thing, we have to stay committed to buying the Sonoran Desert Preserve. Once it’s gone it’s gone forever. The voters have voted numerous times to support it. I was the lead council member on the last renewal of the Parks and Reserve Initiative. Now with the land prices being as low as they are now is the time to take advantage of that and buy as much of that beautiful Sonoran Preserve. Our kids and grandkids will be–will never forgive us if we lose out on those opportunities.

Just a couple of examples that we can do even more in the general plan process. Thank you.

Melnick: Okay.

[Applause]

Melnick: Before we switch gears I just want to remind people about the cards. Anyone need cards? Got a couple hands up maybe over here. Pass them back. Anyone else need a card for some questions? There’s a few over here Lauren, etcetera. There’s one in back there, Mindy on that side.

Okay, I’m gonna change here a little bit and focus on a couple of topic areas and start with energy and perhaps with jobs as well. Feel free here to respond after the other person has made their remarks or not as the case may be. I also want to tell you how impressed I am, how nicely you’re sharing the microphone. I think this is in the spirit of brotherly love and it’s just a good thing.

Renewable energy, Greg you mentioned solar energy as one of the things that is important to the city and its opportunities. Do you, and this question is for both of you of course, but do you think the city of Phoenix especially in these difficult economic times should offer certain incentives to renewable energy companies to encourage them to locate here? Encourage them to keep the price reasonable for people and businesses to use solar?

This is a difficult situation for the city and for the country economically, but you as a mayor would have investment opportunities. The opportunity to influence public policy in the economic arena. Would you support incentives?

Stanton: Yes, and if you were to go to my economic development plan right now on my website that’s been there since January, you would see exactly my incentive plan for the city of Phoenix which does include specifically if you were going to bring me jobs that pay 125 percent or median wages or higher. How can we afford not to work with you on possibility of an incentive. That’s a smart incentive.

Of course green jobs normally do that. If you’re bringing me a program or an opportunity that helps fulfill our green goals or sustainability goals. Then the city of Phoenix ought to be talking to you because I believe that getting this right, getting our green and sustainability policies.

I was the main author of the city’s renewable energy policy and climate action plan when I served as chair of the sustainability committee at the city, so this is not new for me. This is a commitment that I’ve been a leader on during my time serving on the council.

If you bring me quality downtown density, which is also a smart sustainable thing, we should be talking to you about a subsidy. If you’re bringing to me a parking garage for a north Phoenix shopping mall, and want a subsidy like they did in City North. Don’t talk to me, I voted against that. That’s not a smart subsidy.

I have a track record of using good judgment on subsidies. I think some people have taken the City North example and saying maybe we should do no more subsidies. Maybe the city shouldn’t pick entities that we really want to be supporting and I actually take the opposite approach which is instead why don’t you elect leaders that have consistently shown good judgment when it comes to subsidies as I have.

I know certain people nationally are going to look at what’s going on with Solyndra and the loan there and say no more. I say that we have to be smart about it, but we have to be a leader. We have to be a leader when it comes to supporting the solar industry, especially in Arizona and especially during these difficult economic times.

[Applause]

Gullett: I think Greg was talking about me because I believe that we ought to have.

Melnick: Can you hear–excuse me one sec. Can you hear in back, yes or no?

Gullett: Can you still hear me now?

Melnick: Okay, we still need to raise it a little bit. Maybe talk a little bit louder for now till they can help on the technology side.

Gullett: We–oh that’s better.

Melnick: There we go.

[Laughter]

Melnick: They’re hearing you across the street now.

Gullett: Now I can be like Ronald Regan and talk real softly. Here’s the deal. I believe that we ought to have a low cost environment across the board that we–to attract businesses and that we ought to avoid incentives as much as possible. But we do have a lot of assets that we can bring to bear to help business move forward.

Those assets that the city has is land, it has infrastructure, it has opportunities to encourage people to develop in certain areas that will be more affordable. That we need to take advantage of those items as opposed to having aggressive–one of the things that Greg has mentioned a lot in his website is that TIF and we would have to get that passed through the legislature first.

I just think that what we need to do is lower the cost overall. If we do that we will be able to attract business, all kinds of businesses and we won’t have to pick winners and losers.

Melnick: Okay.

[Applause]

Stanton: Well we picked a winner or loser when we chose Biotech and Bioscience research with TGEN. If there’s a perfect example of the city of Phoenix showing leadership, talk about a sustainable economic development project. It’s when the city of Phoenix and I obviously was a lead council member in the project decided that we were going to make investment in research and education.

You gotta understand, we provided the land right in the heart of the city. We provided the capital and we provided five years of essentially venture capital so that they’d keep their lights on. You talk about picking winners and losers we picked the winner in Bioscience research and that is gonna pay incredible long-term dividends for our kids and grandkids.

That’s the reason why we’re going to have the U of A Medical School in the heart of the city and I believe it’s the reason why ultimately Mayo Clinic is opening up a medical school in north Phoenix . It was because city showed leadership that we were going to make research and education, not a Cardinal’s football stadium, but research and education our highest priority.

I think that is a good example where the city did pick a winner and we picked the right winner and again it’s an area where I’ve consistently shown good judgment and will show good judgment as mayor of this city.

Thank you.

Melnick: Okay, did you want to respond to that Wes?

Gullett: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was talking about. That wasn’t a tax incentive deal that was land and bringing to bear the assets that we had in the community. I encourage that. That is exactly what I was talking about. The question was about tax policies so there was a difference.

Melnick: Let him finish.

[Laughter]

Stanton: I want to make sure it’s clear for everybody in this room what exactly it was. The city acquired the old Phoenix Union High School land and decided that the best use of that land at 7th Street and Van Buren, between 5th and 7th, north of Van Buren was research and education. We paid–the people of the city paid $45 million dollars for the capital for that and then provided a commitment of $5 million dollars per year for an investment.

The city of Phoenix is the investor in that project. Lots of other entities would of liked to had that same investment but we picked Bioscience research that is good judgment and it’s the same when you talk about a subsidy for highway jobs, a subsidy for quality downtown density, a subsidy for bringing green jobs and committing our solar. It’s the same kind of good judgment.

The city has to show leadership to get the job done and I don’t understand the distinction but maybe you can explain the distinction. My point at least is with my track record it’s a track record of showing good judgment with the use of city leadership.

Melnick: Okay, let me move on to another question if that’s okay. Most of you here I suspect knew something or know something about the Copenhagen climate summit that happened a few years ago. In which attempted to get countries to think through climate action plan for the planet, for their own countries. It was not by any stretch of the imagination a great success.

A few people know that at the same time as that something was going on with President Obama and other leaders the mayor of Copenhagen was convening a group as well. He was meeting with many, many hundreds of cities and the outcome of that meeting in Copenhagen with the cities not the countries was a report. The subtitle of the report is on climate countries talk while cities act. It is the case that depending on which research you look at, between 40 and possibly as much as 60 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from built structures, from buildings. Buildings are where? They’re in cities, all right. There’s a lot of mayors on the planet that believe that cities have to take action when it comes to climate regardless of what the country or even their state maybe doing.

Do you think that the city has a responsibility to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and to what degree does the current downturn in the economy maybe impact that?

Wes?

Gullett: Well I think we all have a responsibility to try and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. That cities need to take–the city of Phoenix can take a lead in doing that. I think that it is important to always look to–but the idea here is that there are a multitude of ways to do it.

Reducing your drive time, having a more gas efficient car is important. If you also have–if you’re living close to your office it’s a lot better than if you’re driving 70 miles in a slightly more fuel efficient car. If you have a car that actually lasts longer and doesn’t have to go into a landfill sooner that’s a reduction in your carbon footprint.

There are a myriad of ways to have this effect and we have to be cognizant of many, many different ideas. I don’t think that there is a solution–I get nervous about us putting down a solution, having requirements that are gonna effect the people who are actually suffering through this economic downturn right now.

Because we really need to focus on the economy and having a sustainable economy, as well as partnering that with a reduction in greenhouse gases. In business I have had the ability to be able to multi-task and I think while we’re focusing on reducing greenhouse gases we also have to focus on having a sustainable economy and how those two things balance out.

Stanton: You can’t accomplish what you can’t measure. It’s the reason why the city of Phoenix separate and apart from the mayor of Copenhagen passed a climate action plan. Please take the time on the city website to review it, it’s an aggressive plan. Take the time to review all renewable energy plan. Both plans say that we have to reduce our energy consumption and 15 percent of that energy must come from alternative sources. You’re not going to make the significant changes that need to be made to advance sustainability if you don’t have tough and measurable goals. It’s not gonna happen on its own. This is why the city of Phoenix needs to be aggressive on solar, it needs to be aggressive on landfill gas to energy and other alternative means of energy that we can produce.

We also need to work with the private sector as they come up with innovative alternative energy systems. Many of you are probably working on those very things. The city of Phoenix needs to be your customers so we can purchase clean energy alternative energy. If the point was is that Copenhagen had tough rules, well I think actually the city of Phoenix has looked in the mirror and during my time as the chair of the sustainability committee said we need to be strong on ourselves and hold ourselves accountable. I’m committed to fulfilling those goals as the mayor of the city of Phoenix.

Oh by the way, I refused to participate on account of the false choice that being good on sustainability means you’re bad for business. Because I think the people in this room know that ultimately, that ultimately doing the right thing on sustainability is good for your economy, is good for business and saves you a lot of money in the long run. It’s not only the right thing to do but it’s the economical thing to do as well.

[Applause]

Melnick: Okay, despite the fact that I have about four hours of questions here my very able associates have got some great questions from the audience. I’m going to go to them. As a transition I’ve got a question, one card here that I am compelled to ask even though it’s a little off message. It’ll give us a little bridge to the–you’ll see here in a minute. A bridge to the other more serious questions, please be very succinct here because it is not really a sustainability question per se.

It is from a high school student and so I think that’s really important that high school students come out to these kinds of things and we want to encourage them. So the two questions are what advice do you have for me to be successful in my career, and gotta love this one, what were your high school and college GPA’s?

[Laughter]

Melnick: I’m not gonna pass that up on a bet.

Gullett: I guarantee you, he was a Fulbright Scholar, I guarantee you he had better grades than I did but–

Melnick: First, quick advice to high school students on career and then we’ll talk about grade point averages and then we’ll get into SAT scores, Rorschach tests and stuff like that.

Stanton: To the high school student, first off thank you for taking the time to attend this important debate. It’s your future that we’re talking about. I wish more younger people would participate in the various campaigns.

My number one advice to all young people when I speak to them is no matter what career you want to go into, whether it be a career in law, business, be a minister, a scientist, a doctor, the number one thing you can do is learn to communicate well. Learn to be a good writer and learn to be a good speaker and get up in front of the public and don’t be afraid to speak.

If I were to give you any advice about extracurricular activities, it would be join the speech team or join the debate team. Learn to communicate well, that would be my advice.

In terms of my grade point average, my goodness I’ll have to go back and check my transcripts. I graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and was a Truman Scholar for people planning public service careers. But I'll tell you this, I went to a public high school in the west side and I struggled. I wasn’t a great student in high school, I was all right. I was a basketball player I thought I was gonna make the NBA someday or something.

I really had my stride–

Melnick: How’d that turn out for you, Greg?

Stanton: Yeah, there’s a strike this year, I might try out if there’s no–but I really hit my stride in college and learned to love learning at Marquette University, a good Jesuit school in downtown Milwaukie. That’s when I really buckled down and became a really good student.

Gullett: I got pretty good grades, not great, not terrible. I will tell ya that the idea to be able to understand and get a good liberal education is really important because it helps you understand the world in a different way. Studying the scholars and the philosophers helps you in an undergraduate situation.

Then you can choose what you want to do after that. Because today unlike when I came out of college. Today everybody–it’s a very aggressive education world. I would encourage you to get a good rounded liberal education and then as–and don’t let the world pass you buy and focus then after that on the specifics.

Melnick: Okay, now we’re going to return you to your regularly scheduled program. The question is–I’m going to read these verbatim or close to it. What’s your position on the sustainable food movement and what steps will you take to support it?

Wes?

Gullett: I think that’s really important and I’ve talked a lot about urban gardening. Our food supply is imported here in Phoenix. Much of it–there’s some statistics I’m not gonna say exactly because I always get my statistics wrong. I will–the amount of food that we have at any given time in Phoenix is very short span.

Urban gardening can be an important way to increase sustainability. I think that it’s an excellent opportunity to change the heat island effect that we see. Then we have to make it easier to have urban gardening. We have to make it so that–and we can have on property that maybe in the development phase in five years. We can have urban community gardens and tell people look this may go away, but we can still use it and not be afraid that if it goes–if we start a garden it’ll never go away.

But really take fallow land and turn it into productive land. I think that that is really important and I’m a gardener so I garden all the time. I grow my own vegetables, I grow my own fruit and I plant a tree every year to make sure that I’m participating in that whole thing. As you all know there’s nothing better than a locally grown tomato to make your breakfast better with a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Stanton: Well the issue of sustainability is incredibly important. That’s why we’re here tonight not just a stable economy, a sustainable people and culture, sustainable environmentally. The connection between sustainability and fighting poverty and equity issues in our society is incredibly important.

The issue about urban farms and gardening as a way to help lift people out or at least alleviate poverty issues is important and we should be doing more. Not just community gardens although the community gardens are important. Making sure that our code at the city, our building code is friendly to people who do home gardening.

I don’t know if my friend Greg Peterson from the Urban Farm is here but he was my constituent and taught me a lot about urban gardening. In fact we didn’t have a grey water code until Greg Peterson taught us in the city about a grey water code and we changed our city residential code to allow for grey water reuse of water.

The city needs to be as friendly as possible to home gardening, urban gardening and of course buying local, including buying local produce is sustainable. Not having to have as much trucks driving things from elsewhere. It works on a lot of levels and I think you’ll hear from both Mr. Gullett and I that we’ll be committed on the issue of urban gardening and farming.

Melnick: Okay, we’re going to go from some very small question, very pinpoint to a very big one. Okay, the smaller question, I don’t mean the small in terms of unimportant but I think it’s kind of an interesting pin point here. Is as follows, how do you incorporate environmental concerns into your campaigns?

Do you use recycled materials or soy based inks for your campaign signs and hand outs and what will you do with your campaign signs after the election is over?

[Laughter]

Melnick: I suspect that it depends if you win or lose I guess, but Greg, would you please answer that to begin with?

Stanton: As many of you in the audience have politely noted to me most of my campaign signs are missing. I don’t know what’s going to happen to many of my campaign signs but the ones that remain up, the bars that you use of course have to be recycled and get used on future campaigns.

I think the honest answer is I don’t know but I’ll get to the bottom of the question of the campaign signs. I was lucky enough during the course of my campaign to find a campaign office that many of you drive by all the time that is right at a light rail stop. I got a smokin’ deal on it and so my campaign team and I use light rail regularly to come to meetings throughout the city including downtown.

We have a unique opportunity there and of course we try to go paperless as much as possible. We actually don’t print a lot of materials. We drive people to our website, etcetera and try not to bring a lot of bulky seven point plans wherever, hand them out each meeting. We try to do most things via the web and we’ll always try to strive to do better.

Gullett: My seven point plan though is printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink. Not really, not really, I’m sorry it’s not. It was printed as cheaply as we could possibly do it. That was a tease.

What we do as well we have a virtual campaign office. We’re actually trying to do a lot of our campaign work on the web so that we don’t even have people driving down to our office. People don’t have to be in a central location. I think that’s a unique and interesting sustainable way to run a campaign.

One of the interesting–my wife was in the legislature and we drove by one time a house and there was a shed in the back. It was walled with old Deb Gullett signs and there was total reuse and that was good. We’re going to recycle all of our signs, save them for the next election and we’re going to store ‘em in a nice safe place and be able to recycle as many of those signs as we can.

We’re also going to–the interesting thing is when they were stealing signs at the end of the primary, they were stealing them for the bars, the rebar. That rebar was immediately going into some recycling outfit who was buying rebar. Everybody got whacked on their signs so that was unfortunate. I’m sure that the same thing will be quite a competition after this election.

Melnick: Okay, so from campaign signs to a slightly bigger issue. I’m just reading the cards. Do you believe in global warming? Do you think this planet’s climate has really changed?

Wes?

Gullett: Yeah, I believe that the climate has changed. I believe that it has warmed up. I don’t know exactly why. I am willing to be skeptical about the approach but there’s no question that we’re seeing the impacts of it with the reduction in the ice cap and the caving of glaciers and the impacts. The warming of the ocean temperatures which are things that we need to do.

We need to work on as a community together to make sure that we are lowering the greenhouse gases and we are committed to that. Until we can get a handle on China and the emissions of greenhouse gases that China is producing I don’t know we may be going one step forward and three steps back.

Stanton: Yes I believe in global warming and yes I believe the vast majority of the scientific community that mankind is in part responsible for global warming. I’m not running for the President of the United States, I’m running for mayor of the city of Phoenix. I’m going to do my part as the leader of this city to make sure that we are doing what we can and should be doing to show leadership to reduce our impact on this earth and leave this earth better for our kids and grandkids.

My definition of sustainability is probably shared by most people which is to ensure that our needs are taken care of but have minimal impact if not no impact on future generations. That’s not what we should be doing during our time here on earth.

Yes I do believe in it and I do believe that mankind is in part responsible and we need to do our part to fix it.

Melnick: Okay, thanks. Greg, city of Phoenix currently provides recycling pick-up service for single family homes but not for apartment buildings. Do you support extending recycling services to apartments?

Stanton: Of the six candidates for mayor when I put out my sustainability plan, I think I’m still the only candidate that has put out a detailed sustainability plan; I specifically included this very issue. Yes, there is some business reasons and there’s fights going on between various entities. At the end of the day we want to encourage people to live in a more indense environment. That’s part of what we’re going to be offering, particularly on the light rail line. We’re going to have a lot more people living in multi-housing setting.

We want to make sure that people that choose a multi-housing lifestyle, some people it’s not a choice it’s just a economic reality. For many people it’s going to be a choice that they make and we want to support that choice by offering recycling services.

In the city of Phoenix at one time was at the very cutting edge of recycling in terms of what we offered. Frankly we’re not at the cutting edge and we need to begin the process to review whether or not there are more items that we should be recycling and really work with the community to decide–I think it’s a high priority, I think it’s what people are going to choose to do.

I think on the issue with regard to multi-housing, yes the city of Phoenix needs to be working particularly with the larger multi-housing buildings in town offering recycling services. I think it’s a priority moving forward.

[Applause]

Gullett: I think we need to offer it too, I don’t think we should mandate it. I think we should offer it, I think we should work in public/private partnership with our apartment buildings and multi-family units to have that available and to encourage recycling at every corner that we turn. We’ve got to–but we’ve got to do it in a public/private partnership with the community overall.

Melnick: Okay, this question is about a specific geography in Phoenix with a footnote. How can sustainability help to develop south Phoenix in terms of jobs, businesses, transportation and quality of life? The writer notes lots of south Phoenix voters want to know. Greg? Greg. I’m sorry, Wes actually should go first now. You went first last time, pardon me.

Gullett: I've spent a lot of time in south Phoenix through this campaign and there is a lot of opportunity. Right now we’re in the process of looking at how to reuse a landfill in south Phoenix. That’s gonna be an important decision that the next mayor of Phoenix is going to be a big part of. We’ve got to look at how we can reuse different properties in south Phoenix. We also have to take advantage of the massive amounts of city owned property in south Phoenix and target sustainable good jobs for that area.

We’ve got to partner with–have public, private partnerships. One of my favorite examples is on Broadway Road where we’ve got a $30 million dollar investment by the Salvation Army in the Kroc Center. How can we partner with that facility to make sure that it is an anchor tenant for the redevelopment of Broadway Road and begin the planning process to have a specific plan on how Broadway Road can be reborn. I think that that is going to be really important. One of the things I think we all lament is the loss of the flower gardens along Baseline and how can we use city owned property in south Phoenix to bring back that vibrant history of our community with urban gardens.

Stanton: There was some great news that came out late last week, it didn’t get a lot of media but it should have. Congressman Ed Pastor, who’s supporting me in this race for mayor, was able to secure significant money from Washington to begin serious planning efforts for the light rail line down South Central.

I’ve been a vocal supporter of that. I’m going to personally serve on Valley Metro Rail when I am mayor to show that this is a high priority for the city. We gotta begin the active planning process to make sure not only do we have the right transportation decisions but the right economic development decisions. From my perspective it’s an issue of social justice and equity for the residents of South Mountain Village.

We also need to make sure that we get beyond the banks right, Salt River goes through south Phoenix. I grew up here in this town, the Salt River the way it’s been managed has been a scar in that community for such a long period of time. I think finally the community residents demanded and the city of Phoenix is just beginning to realize the opportunities that go along with having the Salt River in south Phoenix.

We’ve had some investment there recently, but we need to make sure that the land uses there are appropriate and over time we need to have the strength and fortitude to make the right land use decisions to make sure the Salt becomes beautified. We mentioned earlier about how sustainability and poverty–South Mountain Village is a wonderful diverse community.

The socio-economic ranges there range from the wealthiest folks to some of the folks living below the poverty line. We can use sustainability in the education techniques to talk about sustainability. Again help lift people out of poverty particularly on the issue of food and building a diverse economy, etcetera.

There’s a lot of things that we can be doing working in partnership with our friend from South Mountain Village to realize what an incredible asset South Mountain Village is for the future of our city.

Melnick: Okay.

[Applause]

Melnick: The subject is regional sustainability, what will the city do to promote and participate in regional sustainability efforts as opposed to those just in the city itself. You’re first here, Greg.

Stanton: All right, great. Well the mayor of the city of Phoenix his or her responsibility doesn’t stop at the four walls of city hall. It doesn’t stop at the edges of the city lines. Heck, I’m about to be mayor of the city of Phoenix, I don’t even know where the city lines end and the other cities begin. I know I’m in Scottsdale when I make a laggard left-hand turn instead of a leading left-hand main turn. Let’s be honest, I mean if you look at city of Phoenix on a map it’s kind of a funny looking city.

We are region and we’re going to sink or swim as a region. The role of the mayor you have to be a regional leader, a regional economic development leader. Not engage in crazy giveaways so that a project lands on your side of the border as opposed to the other side of the border. That’s what was crazy about City North is that we gave this massive subsidy so that a Nordstrom’s would land on the Phoenix side of the border instead of the Scottsdale side of our border. Let me very specific, there’s an article in The Business Journal just a couple days ago about a economic development project that landed in Peoria.

Congratulations to Peoria, we want them to be successful, but the city offered a massive subsidy so that employees would buy a home in Peoria instead of in the surrounding areas. You don’t need to do that. We want to bring high quality jobs here, let the people choose where to live. I would never do something like that as mayor of the city of Phoenix. You bring high quality, high wage jobs here it’s going to benefit the entire region and should benefit the entire region, same exact thing on regional leadership on the issue of sustainability. We’re going to lead the way by example, first and foremost, by the city of Phoenix but willing to speak out when others are not doing well.

When other cities are subsidizing suburban sprawl, which is one of the least sustainable things that you can do. They are giving away the store if you will and just to get–the mayor of the city of Phoenix needs to use the bully pulpit to speak about that. You shouldn’t be silent if other cities are doing what they’re doing.

First it’s going to be in partnership but you have to have the strength and fortitude to speak up on behalf of most people who don’t want that continued poor decision making that has too often plagued this community. We’ve got to be smarter moving forward.

[Applause]

Gullett: We’ve got to work on our regional transit system that works better and that regional transit system can instead of having a Byzantine bifurcated transit system, mass transit system, bus system. We need to work together and have one regional system. Understanding that city of Phoenix has put in money, and we need to maintain our strength on the boards.

The other cities recognize that. That we have put in more money. I’m pleased to have the endorsement of Mayor Hallman and Mayor Lane from Scottsdale and Tempe because they recognize that we can work together as–when I’m mayor of the city of Phoenix. That we can have a regional approach to the way we’re going to do business.

We have to, especially on the economy, look to a regional direction because what’s good for landing a big project in Mesa is good for Phoenix. The residual jobs that are affected, the accountants, the lawyers, a lot of the service people. All kinds of things, engineers, architects are actually right here in Phoenix. They’re helping build those projects in other places.

The people will live in Phoenix because we have–we’re the best city in the valley. Of course we’re going to attract people that come and have jobs in these other communities. We really have to work together, we have to be able to check our ego at the door and have a regional approach to economic development, transit and a multitude of things.

Melnick: Yeah, quick response.

Stanton: Yep. Of course of utmost importance is we need to make sure that the next mayor is a passionate advocate for light rail and the future of light rail. The system that’s in place is just a backbone of the system and it’s been successful. Obviously it had its record ridership in September of this year, knock on wood that’s going to continue. For the light rail to be fully maximized as a valuable entity for the city we need to continue to expand. That involves expansion into other regional cities.

The mayor of the city of Phoenix needs to be a vocal and passionate advocate for the continued success and growth of our light rail system. It’s not something that we can have done–the voters have voted twice on and sorta we drop. No, we need a passionate advocate to keep moving that forward and I would argue that that’s as important as any other regional sustainability project going on right now.

Melnick: Any other comment? Nope, okay, an act of kindness indeed. I’ve got time for about two more questions, please keep the answers very brief here so we can get to some closing remarks after these couple of questions. I’m going to truncate a somewhat longer one but basically the essence is that Maricopa County is a nonattainment area for particulates in ozone. Much of this is driven as a result of the number of cars that drive on our city streets and highways throughout the day and throughout the week.

What would you do as mayor to promote the development of alternative fuel and electric vehicles.

Wes, I think you’re first here.

Gullett: Well remember we did that once before, we had a really aggressive state program and that got a lot of people into a lot of trouble. [Laughter]

Gullett: I think we’ve got to be careful in how we do that. I think the cities have to lead and make sure that their vehicles have–as many as possible if not the entire fleet be alternative fuel vehicles so that we are lowering those emissions and doing everything we can. We’ve done that at the airport, we’ve done it throughout, we have to make sure that we’re leading by example for that.

I’ve been–when I was chief of staff to the governor back in the ‘90’s, we were dealing with a nonattainment area at that time. It is a constant challenge and it is something we’re going to be in trouble this year because of the haboobs. I mean it’s just a reality. We got the dirt blew up and the particulate matter tripped all of the warning signals. We’ve got problems so we’re going to have to deal with that.

The city needs to be a leader especially on city owned property in terms of particulate abatement so that we’re doing the best that we can to keep our economy able to grow and to prosper. We’ve got to have that in the forefront of our mind, but all of our lawyers, engineers and staff that we have at the city of Phoenix, I am sure talk to–hammer that on us every single day about the importance of having our infrastructure taken into consideration to clean the non-attainment area.

Stanton: Well Mr. Gullett is right; those of us who served in council and leadership positions had to be passionate advocates ensuring that our vehicle fleets were alternative fuel vehicles. You could imagine there’s a lot of pressure to do it on the cheap, to get away from that and it takes leadership to say no this is the right thing. It’s going to be a little more expensive but it’s the right thing for this community.

We need to stay the commitment that the city of Phoenix vehicle fleet stays alternative fuel vehicle. You could imagine in the near future with the makeup of the council there’s going to be a lot of push to buy less expensive vehicles. I think we need to have a leader who you trust is going to be committed to that too. You need to make sure that we have alternative filling stations on city property.

That’s one of the issues that folks that choose to buy alternative fuel vehicles is the lack of stations to fill up at. On city property, etcetera we should show–not just at the airport but at other locations give people an opportunity to make their lives easier, who choose to buy alternative fuel vehicles.

Then finally you need to make sure you select a mayor who is a passionate, transit advocate, multi-modal, bus rapid transit, the bus system. The light rail, neighborhood bus service, the more transit options we can give people the more people will make the choice to give up their cars. The more bikeable we can make this city the more people are gonna chose to use that form of transportation.

I think all the things that this group I think is probably passionate about is not only good for the environment but certainly good to our bottom line. Because if we don’t get it right we’re gonna lose out on significant federal dollars. We need to take it serious–don’t blame it on the haboobs. Take it as serious as air quality as a policy matter.

[Applause]

Melnick: Okay, before I get to my final question and then I’ll ask for just some closing remarks. I am for the first time at least in my career going to ask a question in a debate I don’t want you to answer, okay? This is again in other words too good to pass up, why didn’t you bring a reusable water bottle? Okay, we’re not going to go there. Okay, so–

Male Voice: It can be recycled though.

Melnick: Right, right, okay this is the final question. Being sustainable takes risks, you’re going to need to step on people’s feet to achieve sustainable outcomes. Look at Mayor Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor, look at dare I say, I’m reading the card, Michael Crow. What risks are you willing to take as mayor to create a more sustainable Phoenix? Greg?

Stanton: Well I served for nine years on the city council. I built up a track record. Those of you who had a chance to work with me probably know you may not like every decision I made but was I willing to stand up and do difficult things? There’s a reason why our friends the home builders are not supporting my candidacy.

It’s because I ensured, I always stood up for just like Mayor Rimsa, who is supporting me in this race. Mayor Rimsa always said that development needs to pay for itself and that means that our friends in the homebuilding industry who are building on the desert’s edge. There’s nothing wrong with that but that it shouldn’t be subsidized by those of us who choose to live in established neighborhoods or in downtown or local businesses.

Believe me I can tell you they have excellent lobbyists. That is not an easy thing to do to stand up to that community. When big projects were proposed that asked for density outside of downtown and the light rail line. Sometimes you gotta stand up and say no that’s not the right thing for the city of Phoenix.

Donald Trump will not be supporting me in this race because of some of the tough decisions that had to be made but they were not sustainable projects. They were away from light rail line, they were away from the infrastructure. I mean I would just say with me the answer is yes that I’m willing to do that and it’s born of experience. It’s born of a track record.

One of the questions that this audience is gonna have to ask themselves is on that very issue because you’re right there are gonna be a lot of pressure to go in a different direction. Who do you trust to make those tough decisions?

[Applause]

Gullett: I just keep thinking about Clyde Mattocks we used to debate all the time. We’ve debated many, many times and Clyde would always lean over to me and say I said the same exact thing that Greg did and everybody clapped for Greg.

[Laughter]

Gullett: It’s just the way he says it, I know it’s good stuff. Here’s the risk I’m going to be willing to take. I did it the last time we were together; I said we need to run light rail on renewable energy, 100 percent. We shouldn’t allow the sustainability person for the city of Phoenix to be quoted in the newspaper saying that we’re never going to reach 100 percent of our power needs with renewable energy.

Because Austin is, why can’t we? We should have big goals, we should have big aspirations, we should be willing to take risks. I think that that’s one of the things that’s incumbent on the mayor to do so that we can attract people and put down a marker and say–I mean President Crow has said we’re going to run ASU on renewable energy and they’re 25 percent there.

They’re doing it with public/private partnerships and it’s not costing extra money from infrastructure costs. He’s doing it and he’s being able to plan for his energy future with certainty because of the use of renewables.

Those are the things we need to follow that kind of example and be bold. That’s what I want to do as mayor of the city of Phoenix.

[Applause]

Melnick: Okay, we’ve got about five minutes left so here’s a couple minutes for each of you to make a closing remark on sustainability and appeal to the voters and people who showed up tonight.

Greg, I think you’re first here.

Stanton: All right, good. I’m gonna stand up just so the folks in the back who have been straining to see have the opportunity to see at least the closing statement. First off Rob, as always excellent job, love reading your work both at Morrison and now in your new capacity here with the Global Institute of Sustainability. Man am I glad that the city of Phoenix took the lead in the partnership with ASU and that you’re here and the leaders of ASU are going to be here partnering with the city moving forward.

Look I’