Incumbent Woods speaks out on issues

Current mayor of Hot Springs Randy Woods moved to Plains in 1971.  He was Fire Chief from 1992 to the present, and he was the county fire chief in the mid 1990s.  He has been mayor for over a year. Responses to the questions were given in a telephone interview. 

What specific ideas/proposals do you have to get the community to become more involved and to care again about our city/schools and businesses?

I have already enacted more of those programs and visited people and contacted people to volunteer time to help with parks and the street projects, so mainly by word of mouth and advertising the meetings and stuff and we are starting to get more and more people involved.  I have people coming forward and volunteering, but word of mouth seems to work the best.  For example, we were doing street patching and I mentioned to two guys at coffee one morning that we were behind and mentioned volunteers and got a whole line of people involved.

Why did you choose to run for Mayor of Hot Springs?

I haven’t completed all of my projects.  I want to finish the street projects, get them better and finish our sewer treatment plant projects.

What do you intend to do to increase revenue and/or tourism in Hot Springs? 

With revenue I have done a lot so far, half of the towns budget is water and sewer sales and since I’ve been mayor up to this time, I have hooked up about 14 new sewer connections with about ten more in the works probably for this year.  We are applying for grants through different programs such as the police department working on some grants and park and recreations grants, it’s small stuff but every few dollars help.  Through my contacts I have gotten out of my years of being fire chief and county fire warden, I can get deals for what the town needs with very little expense.  For example we just received a few vehicles from Missoula county which we only paid a dollar a piece for.

What can or will you do to cut down on crime, such as drug crime in Hot Springs?

We have one officer in training right now, and we have a second officer I brought in who is well versed in dealing with working in high crime communities on the reservation and has a good working background with tribal law and order and the Sanders County Sheriff’s Office and the reserve program which has been tried before.  I have experienced reserve officers from Ronan and Lake County who are coming over to assist and we are working on a grant right now to help pay for overtime for the officers.

How are you planning on presenting yourself as Mayor? 

I am always open to the public.  I have always been open to the public and to their concerns and help them where I can, sometimes the public thinks the mayor can do things that the mayor can’t but I’m at the office every morning for people to come in five days a week if anyone has complaints, or needs help.

With the ageing population of Sanders County, how do you plan to meet the needs of these people?  What would you propose to meet those needs? 

Hot Springs has a lot of problems with seniors and one is getting them out and to functions and keeping them involved in the town so they feel they have more community involvement.  Some of the things we could do is work with the Council on Aging and have the bus to bring them to city functions and work on making the town more elderly friendly.  Council on Aging has a senior bus but it’s only used for taking people out of town, and it would be nice if it could pick people up and bring them around in town to things like the Wednesday and Friday night dinners or other town functions like parades, but we should help get them to the functions so they can be a part of the community.

What are your main goals you wish to accomplish should you be elected mayor?

My long term goals are still to work on the infrastructure of the town, there is still a lot of work on our water system, sewer system and street system, which was my main platform when I ran for mayor a year ago and we are getting into it with ways to fix these problems inexpensively but there is still a ways to go.

Mail in ballots are due back by Nov. 3rd at the Clerk and Recorder  offices.