Ludlow City Council candidates discuss issues, goals at open forum

Candidates for the Ludlow City Council spoke about issues pertinent to the city this week at an open forum.

Moderated by John Hall of the Ludlow Historical Society at the Ludlow Community Center, the forum allowed the candidates to discuss their backgrounds and goals if elected. There are eight candidates running for six open spots on the council. All but one of the candidates, incumbent Lori Davenport, attended the forum.

Sarah Thompson and Paula Graszus are the two challenger candidates. The remaining candidates, besides Davenport, are incumbents: Stephen Chapman, Samantha Matthews Frank, Abigail Miller, Julia Navarre and David Ziegler.

Hall asked questions provided by both the Historical Society and Ludlow residents. The questions ran the gamut from basic questions about candidates’ backgrounds to more in-depth inquiries into specific policies. Throughout the night, some key themes and topics emerged: economic development, community engagement and taxes.

The candidates were virtually universal in their desire to bring more businesses to Ludlow, especially in the face of the number of empty store fronts in the city’s central district. They differed in the details, however.

“If we can get businesses down here in the downtown area, I think that we can continue to grow the city and offer more opportunities to bring in more tourist revenue, which is our struggle,” said Navarre, who’s running for her fourth term on council.

Chapman and Matthews Frank both recommended developing the west end of town, which is currently zoned for multi-use, meaning that both residential properties and businesses could be built there.

Matthews Frank even recommended “the city acquire some vacant properties and develop them with quadplexes or even a duplex, to get people into town that want to be here, that cannot afford a bigger home and that don’t need a bigger home.”

“I’d like to see the city purchase the empty storefronts, those buildings, and then lease them out to business owners so we can sort of maintain some modicum of diversity in our businesses here,” said Miller, who serves on the finance committee and who’s running for her second term.

Chapman, a former Ludlow Independent Public Schools Boardmember who also sits on the finance committee, emphasized the need to finish the Riverfront Commons project, a scenic multi-use path along the Ohio River that traverses several of the river cities.

“I think that’s going to attract business,” Chapman said.

Whatever businesses came to Ludlow, they had to be “sustainable,” said Ziegler, who’s running for a second term. If the businesses didn’t stick around, the benefit would be negligible. To remedy this, Ziegler recommended developing Ludlow’s identity more thoroughly and thoughtfully to more effectively market the city.

Graszus, a challenger and former proprietor of Papa Dinno’s Pizza, which closed after five years of operation, spoke directly to the challenges of running a business in Ludlow. Given the city’s proximity to KY-8, which leads into Boone County, the city needed “to figure out a way to to attract the Boone County people,” she said. Likely this would entail more development downtown.

Thompson, who’s running for her first term, spoke of a need to recruit a variety of different businesses to the city.

“I do think that we could do an eclectic feel: It’s just a hodgepodge of different things here that are interesting enough to bring people into Ludlow and to frequent these businesses,” Thompson said.

The candidates were virtually in agreement that the new open position of city administrator needed to be filled as soon as possible. Although the city currently lacked the funds for a dedicated economic development professional, a qualified city administrator could help coordinate the city’s economic expansion.

“We need to bring somebody in here that knows how to attract these businesses,” Ziegler said, “somebody that’s professional and has worked with people outside of the community and work with the stakeholders here in town to bring some development.”

In time the topic turned the topic of Cityview Station, a large Fischer Homes development in the hills above Highway Avenue, which has been the source of some controversy and disagreement.

Navarre and Chapman both voted to allow the development when it first came before council in 2021, arguing that it would serve as a good source of tax revenue. Ziegler, who was not on council in 2021, said he was critical of the development at first but has since come around to it, describing his current stance on it as “lukewarm.”

Navarre hoped the development would grow the population making the city eligible for grants it can’t currently access due to its size.

“Federal and state grants have a population limit on them, and right now Ludlow does not qualify for the majority of those because the bare minimum is 5,000 residents,” Navarre said. ” So, we are not there. So, hopefully with Cityview going up that will help raise our population, and we can start to qualify for some of those grants.”

Miller, on the other hand, described the whole situation as “hell on earth.”

“There have been plenty of us that have talked about a whole host of problems coming from this project,” Miller said, “and we felt largely ignored by the city.”

She listed off some of the problems that have stemmed from the construction.

“We have backyard flooding issues. We have basement leaking issues. We have retaining walls nearly collapsing,” Miller said.

In spite of Chapman’s support of the development, Miller commended his efforts to work with residents to help them solve problems arising from the development, such as property damage, by making himself available and serving as a go-between for the developers and the residents.

“I was always in favor of the project,” Chapman said. “However, I was never, never in favor of causing problems for homeowners.”

“It’s a matter of just holding Fischer accountable,” Thompson said. “At that point, I think what Steve [Chapman] is doing is the correct thing. He needs to be having those conversations. Or anyone; it doesn’t have to just be Steve. I think anyone on council should be doing that or going with Steve, as well.”

Graszus and Matthews Frank encouraged the residents to contact them if they had problems with the construction.

“If people don’t come and complain and tell people what is happening in their home or to their home, how’s the council supposed to know?” Graszus said.

As it related to transparency and engaging with the community broadly, many candidates encouraged residents to come to council meetings and be proactive in contacting the council. Several commended the city for putting information about its operations online.

Some candidates, however, pushed for more.

“As council members, we can beg and beg and beg and say, ‘Please, please, please come out,'” said Matthews Frank. “It’s not doing anything, unfortunately.”

Matthews Frank works as a general manager at Wooden Cask Brewing, and said that many working people, for instance, couldn’t make it out to council meetings due to scheduling conflicts.

“I frequent a Ludlow business, as other people up here do, seven days a week,” Matthews Frank said, so people would likely encounter her out in the community.

“I love seeing the festivals and events that we have,” Thompson said. “I would love to see more of that happen” because it would give more opportunities for people to see each other.

Finally, the candidates all pushed for solutions to keeping tax rates down. Most of the candidates reiterated that was dependent on building the city’s population and generating other forms of revenue, such as a payroll tax.

“We need to be creative with our funds without raising our taxes, which is going to be a challenge,” Graszus said.