Cave City mayoral candidates see changes in different manners

RELATED: Check out this link to see the Cave City council candidates’ responses to our questionnaire.
Visit here to see all of Glasgow News 1’s election reports.

By Melinda J. Overstreet / Glasgow News 1
Earlier this month, Glasgow News 1 interviewed all three Cave City mayoral candidates separately on the same day, with their having no prior knowledge of the questions, and they were all asked the same ones, with only occasional follow-up queries for clarification. The conversations with and photos taken of current mayor Dwayne Hatcher, 74, and current city Councilwoman Leticia Cline, 44, were in person, and the one with J.R. Poynter, 66, was via telephone, and his photo was submitted.

Useful experiences
The candidates were asked to name two experiences – education, work, life, etc. — that were useful in preparing them for the role of mayor. The two already occupying city government seats were not allowed to use their current position as one of those experiences.

Dwayne Hatcher

Hatcher said the entirety of his work through the decades with youths and their parents, including helping with Little League sports and teaching middle school social studies and coaching or helping to coach multiple sports for the school system, created experiences that helped him be ready for this job.
“And during my experience in my education career, I was in some leadership roles,” he said, naming the site-based decision making council as one of those. “So I feel like that has prepared me. And even in site-based, you dealt a little with financials and that type of thing.”
He listed his prior position in government as the second of those experiences.
“Once I retired, I still felt like I wanted to be of some service to the community, so I decided to run for city council. I was there for two years and then decided I wanted to run for mayor.”

Cline said: “I was an accountant, so I can manage finances. I think that’s one of the most important things you can do as a council member and as a mayor, setting the budget and approving the budget.
We have $2.5 million budget. I worked for a property management company that had 40 properties and eight owners that was over $1 billion, so I can manage large budgets.”
She said she was also director of public relations and marketing for two Fortune 500 companies.
“I feel like that is actually what – if your government office runs efficiently, then your role as mayor in a small town/city is PR/marketing – your relations with your people that live in your community and the businesses that do business here, so having good relations with your people, marketing your city in the best way for economic development and growth, those are two areas I would shine in.”

Poynter said: “No. 1, we’ve been self-employed for almost 40 years. We had to figure the budget. We had to take and make our money

Leticia Cline

work,” he said of his wife and him. “I also belong to the Bear Wallow-Cave City Masonic Lodge, where I’ve held the secretary position for over 10 years, and it’s all to do with finance and budgeting and taking care of that organization, too.”
The organization is known for helping to raise money for Kosair Children’s Hospital and other causes.
“All of my life, I guess I’ve got close to 50 years in, dealing with the public and things of that nature,” Poynter said.

Contributions to Cave City’s people
Each candidate was asked to name just one thing of which they are most proud that they did or contributed effort toward to help Cave City’s residents
Poynter said he helped run the ballparks for the Little League programs around Cave City for about 13 years.
“We were very successful at it. I had a lot of help, you know. We had good people working with us. Our Little League program, at one time, was very strong at Caverna and a lot of other schools took examples from it and ran with it,” he said. “But the athletics, you know, keeping kids off the streets, and teaching them right and wrong, I think that’s one of the biggest things that I always pushed for.
I think it’s very important to have a parks and recreation and have something to do. If you keep them occupied, you’ll keep them out of trouble – not always, but it does a lot of the time.”
Cline said her response needed a little back story.
“I’ve done a lot in my life, and when I moved back home almost five years ago, I didn’t have a plan on staying, but when I was around for a while, there was a lot of things lacking, so I was like, ‘How do I build a city I want to live in?’ and so it started with a free community motorcycle garage,” she said. “That [community] connection is what made me decide to stay here. Since then, it’s just my investments that I’ve put back into the area, and that would be building up a block of buildings downtown to revitalize downtown, but it goes one step further into initiating the gazebo build fundraising, to the park.”
Ultimately, her answer was: “It’s basically the contributions (financially plus time and effort) that I’ve been allowed to make downtown and support from the community. … I’m a doer. I’m very proactive, and I don’t like to waste a lot of time because of the fact we’re so far behind. So I think that in a short amount of time, downtown has seen tremendous growth. I believe in all of the city, but downtown, as in any city, is the heart and sole of your community, and if your downtown thrives, it sprawls out into the rest of the community.”
Hatcher started talking about an emphasis on improving safety in general but was nudged to be more specific.
“One thing I pointed out to every department within the city … and stressed the fact – we are here for the citizens. I don’t know if that’s an initiative or what, but I constantly stress to them, the citizens are why we’re here. They are the folks that we are here to serve. … That is our No. 1 job.”
He said that they may make mistakes or may not always please everyone, but they do their best.
“If we’re not here for that reason, then we’re in the wrong place,” he said.

No. 1 thing Cave City has going for it
“What’s really good about Cave City? What’s the No. 1 thing it has going for it,” GN1 asked.
“I think a lot of people say tourism,” Cline responded, “but I would say that it would be definitely our location. Our location in between Louisville and Nashville with the rest, [U.S.] 31, [Ky.] 70 and [Ky.] 90, really puts us in a prime position. And if you look at any area that needs growth, one of the main factors in it is accessibility to the rest

J.R. Poynter

of the world. We’re really accessible to the rest of the world. You can jump on I-65 in a couple of minutes here. We have a train that comes through here. For industry, we’re prime. We have a lot of land. But also for young entrepreneurs and people that are looking for dwellings. Right here, you can be — at any of these new factories that are hiring 7,000 new jobs — there in 30 to 45 minutes.”
Hatcher said: “I think the No. 1 thing is just the camaraderie.”
“The citizens of Cave City are ready for some new experiences for growth, for success,” he said, so individuals and groups are working together to make things happen. “I think we all have the same goal: progress, a better life for our citizens.”
He said sometimes they have different ideas and opinions on how to make that happen, but he believes that in the past few years they’ve been able to come together and reach a consensus to create some of the positive changes that have happened.
Poynter’s answer was simple: “The people.”
He started naming people he knew when he was younger who have since passed on, but he said there are still a lot of good people in Cave City, and it was a good place to raise a family.
“It’s a safe place and everybody knows everybody, and that, for me, is the reason I stay in Cave City,” Poynter said.

Opportunity for improvement
On the flip side of the last question, the largest opportunity for improvement – what needs to be fixed — was the focus of the next question, but the thing named was supposed to be something within the power of city government to improve. The other part of the question was how they would do it as mayor.
Poynter responded: “Until you’re there, you don’t really know,” what he or the government body could actually do, he said, but he “can be friendly, outgoing and draw people to the area and make them feel like they want to be here.”
Every place has room for improvement, he said, but at first he couldn’t think of a specific one.
“I’d like to see it prosper. I’d like to see more businesses come to town and more access to being able to get more bang for their buck, he said. “You can’t wear another man’s shoes and think that they fit. You don’t really know, and I don’t want to lie about it.”
One of his opponents had a similar focus.
“I think definitely one thing that we would continue to do is working with our different organizations and groups,” Hatcher said, citing the Barren County Economic Authority as an example. “There are a lot of possibilities in our industrial park and just improvements, new businesses, which we’ve been very fortunate to obtain several small businesses, that type of thing. We’re always looking for ‘the big one,’ just for example, but it’s our small businesses and even our small industrials that I feel like is the backbone of our community, and we’re working daily with different aspects, whether it be industry, small business, or whatever. We also have to pay attention to our existing businesses. It’s our existing businesses that we must help out and work with. They are even more of a backbone of the community.”
Cline mentioned a local housing study done recently.
“Workforce development is really important, but I would say the biggest opportunity missed that government could take part in would be housing and diversity of housing,” she said. “We’re lacking in housing here. If you get the people to move here, they’re gonna — naturally, gentrification is one of the things that would help change the dynamics of the community, but if you’ve get the people to live here, you’re going to have to supply what they need to live here. So, if you’ve got the population, then you have more opportunity to apply for grants, for funding from the state, for more road aid money to improve your roads, and when you start doing that, then your census goes up. When you start doing that, then you have bigger companies that look to invest here, so maybe a larger chain for a grocery store, maybe a bigger chain for a restaurant. So I really think that if we upped our housing market here, we could really up the value of our city.”
She sees government’s role in this as possibly including the sale of surplus properties; buying additional property and selling it to a developer; applying for appropriate grants to help improve blighted areas; and creating new and/or enforcing existing rules with regard to run-down and abandoned properties.
“You take some empty buildings, and you get the right people at it, and you get mixed-used buildings here downtown, like you get apartment living and retail space below, and that also is going to help,” she said.

60 seconds
In conclusion, each candidate was provided with one minute to speak on any topic.
Cline, whose maiden name is Passmore, said she was born and raised in Cave City, and her family goes back many generations there.
“We helped develop part of this land and put it on the map. I believe in the people and the community. I believe that we’re finally in a great position to make it grow where it should be, and we have the funding and the help from the government that would help us get it there if we have the right leaders in place with vision and a drive, dedication and the knowledge and experience, then there’s no reason why we can’t grow exponentially in four years,” she said.
“We can be the next tourist destination but also a great bedroom community, because why would you expect people to come visit your town if you don’t expect them to also live in it. So we need to focus on all areas. We focused on tourism for too long, and we need to start focusing on people that actually live here.”
Poynter’s answer was: “I want to thank the people of Cave City to consider me as becoming elected as their mayor. I have no problem with anybody here. I love this community; I’ve always loved this community. I choose to raise my family and send my kids to school in this community. I’m very proud of the people who live here, and if elected I will do the best of my ability to be honest and to be compassionate to all people, and when I do something, I’ll try to do it in the interest of everybody, and not just a few. It’s hard to sit and think about what goes on. You don’t know unless you wear those shoes. There’s nothing wrong with the people that’s here. I love the community. I will respect them.”
Hatcher said: “I feel like in the past few years we’ve been able to make some major improvements to our community and I would like to continue that. Even currently, there are some pots stirring that I would like to see come to fruition, to continue serving the people. It has been an honor and also humbling experience to serve the people of Cave City for the past 10 years. I thank each and every citizen for your support and I wold like to continue that effort, working together with our Cave City community. There’s still a lot of work to do, and I’m ready to continue that, so I would just appreciate support and see us continue to thrive in the Cave City community.”