This is part two of a two-part story covering the mayoral and City Council debate held in Page on June 23. This week focuses on responses by City Council candidates Theresa Lee, David Auge, Joelann “Jules” Costa and Mike Farrow, following last week’s coverage of mayoral candidates Bill Diak and Richard Yanke. The election, which will be held on Aug. 2, will be for mayor and three City Council seats.

The four candidates running for Page City Council – incumbents Theresa Lee and David Auge, and challengers Joelann “Jules” Costa and Mike Farrow – answered questions at a debate on June 23 sponsored by Chamber Page Lake Powell. Questions were posed by moderators Steve Law and Brian Henderson, and candidates were given three minutes each to answer. 

Theresa Lee has lived in Page for nearly seven years and has served on the City Council for the past four years.

“I try my best to represent all of Page, all the citizens of Page rather than just one or two sections,” Lee said during her introductory remarks, adding that she has an “understanding of how Page can grow rather than just with tourism.”

David Auge has lived in Page since 1976. He has run retail, served on the board of the John Wesley Powell Museum for several years and was an emergency medical technician and firefighter from 1976 to 1991. He has been on the City Council for the past two years. 

“City Council is not just showing up every other Wednesday night for council. It’s a matter of dedicating yourself to the community,” Auge said.

“You have to invest your time into learning what’s going on, if there’s a project going on in the city, just check in on it every now and then. I feel that I’ve done a good job.”

Joelann “Jules” Costa, who has lived in Page for four years, said she is running for City Council because she was “tired of hearing negativity” and felt that people shouldn’t complain about a problem “unless you have some form of solution or are somehow able to connect with people to help them with that solution.” 

Among the issues she is concerned about are fixing the city’s “inconsistent and dangerous” sidewalks, implementing bike paths in town, and opening a swimming pool.  

Candidate Mike Farrow has lived in page for seven years.

“I’m a former Boy Scout, former military, and I have this ideal that being prepared and being active is to serve the community, and the best way I can serve now is to join a team that’s working to lead the city,” he said. 

Farrow said his unique background has helped him develop “four pillars” to help out with the city: smart and balanced growth, community engagement and involvement, safety and security, and youth opportunities.

Lee and Farrow were asked by the debate moderators what steps they would take to address the beautification of Page, which is sometimes described on travel review websites as a “dull looking or even an ugly town.”  

Lee said the issue was being addressed through a city streetscape revitalization plan already in the works for the downtown area. She added that the city has offered incentives to local businesses to improve their façades, but so far only one business has taken advantage of it.

“Aside from leading by example and having the city improve their own image with their buildings, I’m not sure what else we can do, really, because you’re talking private businesses,” she said. “We need to lead by example. If we want the businesses to improve their façade, we need to improve ours. That’s one thing I have been pushing for.”

Farrow pointed out that the city has held several open meetings about the city streetscape revitalization plan, but few residents have attended them. 

“It was an opportunity, and it was advertised that people from the city can attend that and they can voice their opinions,” Farrow said. “We probably need to do a better job to get more people from the city to participate in that.” 

He said that as a council member, he would push for more “involvement and engagement” to get more residents to attend those meetings and influence business owners to be part of the revitalization effort.

Auge and Lee were asked whether they thought it might become necessary for Page residents or businesses to restrict water usage, and what they would do to encourage residents to slow their water usage. 

Auge said he thought the city was coming to a point where it would have to look at water restrictions for homes and businesses. Already, more residents were giving up growing grass lawns in favor of desert-type, low-water-usage plants on their properties, he said.

“You can’t force people unless it gets down to the dire straits,” Auge said. “It’s just a matter of volunteering unless it gets to the point where we don’t have the water. … It’s going to be a volunteer thing and a lot of education with people and maybe some incentives.”

Lee agreed that, at some point, water usage will have to be restricted, whether it’s next year or 20 years from now. She recalled living in California during extreme drought periods and being bombarded by ads and public service announcements aimed at educating people about the need to reduce water usage.

“Sadly, I can’t believe I’m saying this, to get the point across would have to be like how has been done with COVID, where it’s a constant every day,” Lee said about educating the public on water usage. She added that incentivizing reduced water usage would need to involve public-private partnerships.

When asked about her vision for Page’s future, or what she would like to see happening in Page 10 years from now, Costa said she would like to see a “true downtown” where people can walk around and where “First Friday” cultural and community events can be held. 

She said efforts to boost a non-tourism-related economy should include opening a self-contained recycling center and promoting a cottage industry of making products made from recycled materials.

“I think we need to kind of redirect our energy toward the green and get the money from the feds and the state” to support such efforts, Costa said.

On the same question about Page’s future, Farrow said, “I would like for my grandkids to be here with me and do what I did when I used to be able to come out here with my kids.”

He said Page needs to work with local businesses to encourage visitors to stay for more than one night, but the city also needs to offer more than just tourism, including balanced recreation activities structured for young people and “something else in terms of manufacturing.” 

The moderators also brought up the negative media reports claiming that Lake Powell is “dead or no longer worth visiting,” and asked candidates whether the city should play a role in getting word out that the lake is still open and still worth visiting.   

Auge said the chamber and city staff have already been searching for every opportunity to put out accurate information about the lake.

“Obviously, the water levels are down. We can’t hide it,” he said. “You just have to do your best to try to put out the correct information whenever available. I think the city and chamber have just been working their butts off trying to do that with any news operation that will listen.” 

Costa suggested developing a website and installing digital signs at hotels and elsewhere with constantly updated information, including what’s happening in town, the water level at the lake and current weather conditions.

“You would have a website to give the stats and the conditions and whether it’s extremely windy, what’s happening,” she said. “Everyone is using their smartphones to find out anything today through Google. I think that should be where we start. It would be coming directly from us.”

When asked by moderators about the best use of the city’s financial resources, Farrow said that deciding on priorities requires going through many steps to get them funded. 

“I want safe schools. I don’t want to have the Uvalde thing here. I want us to be stronger on that. We can’t simply fund that, where we get the money for resource officers for every school,” he said.

Farrow added that the city needs to start “looking at what can the community offer.”

“We need more people to get involved in the many different processes to step up. That means the different commissions, the different boards, the different pursuits,” he said.

Lee said she had many priorities – most of which had already been discussed at the debate – but for her, the best use of financial resources was infrastructure. 

“Everything that has been mentioned up here – a swimming pool, a splash pad, businesses, improvements – all lie on what’s underneath the ground. Water, sewer, electric, internet are infrastructure,” she said. “It's not a pretty priority, it's not glamorous, citizens don't see it, but they see the results of it. … This city can’t grow the way the citizens want this city to grow without it.” 

In her closing statement, Lee said she was seeking re-election “to help get this community where this community wants to go.”

“We have so many parcels of land that the city owns, that there is no infrastructure going to,” she said. “Builders don’t want to pay for the infrastructure to go 3 miles to where they’ve purchased a piece of land. And it’s not fair to us to say, well, because we messed up 30, 40, 50 years ago, you now have to pay to a builder. It’s up to the city, it’s up to the citizens if we want to grow.”

Auge said everyone who works for the city works for the citizens of Page.

“We’re not in it here for the money. … We chose the opportunity to serve everybody,” he said.

“The City of Page has a lot of challenges and opportunities. It takes everybody cooperating together to try with the same vision to build together.”

Auge cited the many projects completed around town by the Canyon Club in cooperation with the City of Page – including the recently opened Grandview Overlook – as examples of such cooperation.

“We have a lot of great things going for us in addition to the challenges that we’ve already talked about,” he said. “Us with the city, we need to be fiscally responsible, which I think we have, and we’ve built up a fund, we need to keep a reserve for the rainy day, but also we have funds, we can move ahead with projects that are critical to the City of Page, and also for our recreational opportunities.”

Costa, in her closing statement, said the city should offer tax credits to remove toilets and install bidets to reduce usage of water and toilet paper.

“We repurpose the toilets and make them into planters, make it like a minipark and let people decorate them in all kinds of ways, the way local people want to express. I think it would be really a great thing,” she said. 

Costa said she would also like to see more people of color involved in City Council.

“We need to get them more inclusive because I don’t see them, and I don’t know with regularity how much of that population does attend or get engaged with the City Council,” she said. 

Costa said that although she did not have much experience with the city government, she did have good ideas. 

“The feasibility, the approach, well, I gotta do my homework, I gotta ask questions and figure it out. That’s what I’m here for, to find out and see if I can,” she said.

Farrow said he was running for City Council because he has history of serving, which he learned in the Boy Scouts and the military. 

“I believe in working for the City Council as an act of service, representing the community, representing those that live here. That’s what I want to do, I want to serve,” he said. “Everybody, we have something that we can give back.”

Farrow reiterated his focus on smart and balanced growth for the city, involvement and engagement from more of the community, safety and security, and youth programs. 

 “I believe our future is our youth. We have the fentanyl issues, we have drug issues, we have substance abuse issues. We have an opportunity here for structured programs to divert them,” he said.  

“If we could reinvest in our youth – and it’s everything from their education through their focus on priorities and consequence of things that they do – we can go a long way in helping the youth.”