Voter Guide: Alana Leonhardy

Website: https://alanaformayor.com/

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Interview Transcript:

Reporter: Why do you want to be mayor?

Leonhardy: I want to be mayor because I feel like I can do an excellent job at it, and I don't really feel comfortable voting for the other people in the running. And I care about the community. I think there are a lot of wonderful things about it and ways that we could do better by each other, and I want to be a part of doing that.

Reporter: As mayor, what would be your main goals for the city?

Leonhardy: Right now? I'd like to kind of look at reducing a little spending by 3% year over year. And spend money more wisely on the things that are going to have a positive impact on the people living here. I want to reduce my salary or the mayor's salary, I suppose, by to the median household income of Pocatello as sort of a really direct link of how well is the community doing. And that is that's what the mayor gets paid for.

Reporter: What do you think is great about Pocatello and what could be better?

Leonhardy: I love the farmers market. I love the river. I have not been so warmly welcomed in my adult life by a whole community before. So the people here are generally quite friendly and caring, and I love that. Doing better, I think just sort of the, the city institution and the way that that they've separated themselves, in my opinion, from serving the people, needs to change.

Reporter: What are your thoughts and feelings about the Victor Perez cas, the attorney general's investigation results and the city's handling of the incident? I know it's a long question.

Leonhardy: Yeah, there's there's a lot to say about it, though, so I. I don't know why. Someone at the city couldn't just say that that was wrong, that it. And, we have to decide if that's the kind of policing we want in our city. Even if the the state of Idaho has decided, not not to file charges and, it's just a moral shock, and I and I, I, I don't feel like that is what we need from our law enforcement around here. It's just wrong, and I don't I'm not super comfortable making a platform on his death because, and the pain of his family. But, you know, systemically, we got to change some stuff.

Reporter: Is there anything you feel would be important to add or anything you think I missed?

Leonhardy: Sure. So I have some just some little notes here. Let's say to talk about. And see where we go. But part of the, the reason why I don't really, that I'm not going to be voting for anybody else is because I don't think they've either been thought through or been realistic about what can be promised. Our income is hasn't really changed, but our expenditures have gone up. So, so our tax burden is a little heavier. So, Twin Falls has a median income of $69,000, and their budget is about $60 million less than ours. Our median income is somewhere around $57,000. So we've just stagnated a little bit more. The, critical thing that I want to do, it would be to consult an expert because we don't have a CFO right now, and the budget is pretty messy. Look, trying to look at the document. And what is an enterprise fund? What is the special revenue source? It's it's messy. So it'll cost money to hire an expert to clean it up and to follow the money. And I think that is a critical thing to do in the first six months to understand where we need to go. And there are some creative ways, you know, if we're trying to run solvent, there are some creative ways we can liquidate assets. We can sort of change technology there if we're paying high Adobe subscriptions, can we not use, the free software like Gimp? Can some of the old Windows 10 machines that are being, sort of sunset now that windows, Windows 10 support is going away, can they be turned to Linux machines? Can we decrease overhead in some ways and, and save some money there without sort of cutting into staffing, which is not, I think, a primary problem for us anyway.