Miranda Pederson/Daily News Jerry Wells (from left), Elaine Walker and Brian Strow give opening statements Thursday at the mayoral candidate forum at State Street Baptist Church.

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Only about a dozen people turned up to watch a forum for the three mayoral candidates at State Street Baptist Church on Thursday night.

But incumbent Mayor Elaine Walker, Commissioner Brian Strow and former interim police Chief Jerry Wells still faced an hour and a half of questioning from panelists.

The forum sponsored by the Bowling Green Human Rights Commission and Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP is in anticipation of Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary which will cut the race to two.

Wells said he arrived in Bowling Green in 1968 to attend Western Kentucky University, stayed to serve 30 years as a police officer, and views his mayoral campaign as a natural continuation of his public service career.

Walker said she’s proud of the city’s accomplishments during her first term, which include re-instituting city commission work sessions so citizens can watch issues argued out long before they come up for a vote. Three months after she took office, the city’s chief financial officer was discovered to have been embezzling for 20 years, and officials responded to that by establishing internal audits to keep it from ever happening again, she said.

Bowling Green is still growing despite nationwide economic troubles, and the city can stay afloat without hiking taxes because she and others have worked hard to bring nearly 3,500 new jobs to the area, Walker said.

Strow, an associate professor of economics at Western and in his second term on the commission, said he wants to continue focusing on open government and cutting taxes while improving city services. He’s asked lots of questions about financial matters in the past few years, and believes all such decisions should be made in public, he said.

Strow compared working with commissioners to the 5-year-olds he coaches in soccer, saying he can “corral” them to act together.

Asked how they can make sure city schools are adequately funded, Walker said she supports increased education funding, but noted that city government doesn’t control the school system or set school tax rates. Wells also said he was fine with justifiable school tax rates, but that the city can’t control them.

One way the city can affect education funding is through its downtown redevelopment plan, which should increase the property tax base for schools. That was one of the factors in his decision to back the plan, he said.

Asked whether they generally prefer to cut taxes or expand government services, Walker said Bowling Green can “have it all” since the city is still growing. Revenue increases from property taxes are limited by state law, so the city usually has to cut that rate anyway, she said.

But government spending won’t necessarily solve problems, such as Bowling Green’s chronic traffic complaints; that has to be dealt with through changed behavior, which she encourages, Walker said.

Strow said he’s almost always for cutting taxes, but some services could be pared as well. He brought up the city’s annual $1.3 million subsidy to its three golf courses, a perennial talking point for him. That’s more than the city spends on repaving roads each year, and should be cut to change that priority, Strow said.

Wells said the city is often required by state law to cut its property tax rate, dubbing that a “voodoo tax decrease” and claiming that fact is “what they’re not telling you” - even though Walker had just mentioned it.

He blamed the defeat of commissioners who were turned out of office in 2004 on their decision to hike the occupational tax from 1.5 percent to 2 percent, saying current commissioners got credit for cutting that again to 1.85 percent but also benefited from the surplus run-up in the meantime.

“I think it was a mistake to have cut that rate at all,” Wells said.

On the question of how city officials can increase the local homeownership rate, Strow said he’s “fascinated” with the Housing Authority of Bowling Green’s policy of buying run-down rental houses, refurbishing and reselling them as single-family, owner-occupied houses.

Wells said the city should do all it can in similar efforts, citing President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” antipoverty programs as having helped him go to college and buy his first house.

“There are few subjects I’m more passionate about than housing,” Walker said.

The city’s homeownership rate is far below the national average, so Bowling Green officials have put $200,000 in federal entitlement money in each of last two years toward converting rental housing to owner-occupied, she said. But it also requires teaching financial literacy so people can keep those houses, which she’s also supported through the Mayor’s DollarWi$e campaign, Walker said.

Wells acknowledged that he wasn’t familiar with the city policy, passed earlier this year, of not funding most nonprofit agencies for more than two years in a row. Agencies which compete for city funding can reapply after sitting out a year.

Walker said choosing between nonprofit agencies is among commissioners’ toughest annual decisions, but they’d noticed that agencies which weren’t funded one year were very unlikely to be funded in subsequent years, no matter how hard those agencies tried.

“It’s a very difficult process, and there’s a lot of politics involved,” she said.

The change is meant to give those previously left-out agencies an even chance, Walker said.

Strow said making agencies survive for a year without city funding not only increases competition but gives the incentive to be self-sufficient, making them seek private backing from the community.

“That’s part of why we need to put them in that position, to show that they actually have public support,” he said.

Questioned on how each candidate would handle local allegations of racial profiling, Walker said she’s been talking with Human Rights Commission Executive Director Linda McCray, Housing Authority Executive Director Abraham Williams and former Police Chief Bill Waltrip about creating a diversity task force, looking at profiling among other things before such issues provoke any crisis.

Strow said there’s no room in Bowling Green for racial profiling; the city’s getting steadily more diverse, and he dislikes political posturing about closing American borders and kicking people out. As an economist, immigration in general looks good to him, he said.

“We need to embrace our diversity, embrace our immigrant population, thank them for coming here and helping us out,” Strow said.

Wells said profiling is wrong and illegal - in fact, he wrote the current policy on the subject for city police. Should such an allegation arise, citizens can accuse an officer in a hearing before the city commission, he said.

On a new study showing that the United States has a higher rate of putting people in jail than any other country in the world, Strow said education is key to keeping people out of jail. Again indirectly, the city can influence the unequal funding levels of various schools by working to improve the tax base in those troubled districts, he said.

Wells called for selective incarceration of career criminals over first-time offenders, as the best use of limited jail space.

Walker said money should be focused on prevention instead of incarceration, pointing to the housing authority’s programs for small children and teenagers as good examples.

Asked why the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act hasn’t been passed locally, Wells said it should be - it’s a simple contract adopted many places over the past few decades, and can be a plus for landlords who comply.

Walker referred to the condemnation of the lower floor of Bowling Green Estates apartments on Russellville Road, from which numerous families were evicted for health and safety reasons, as an example of what passing URLTA would prevent.

“The conditions in which they were living were absolutely criminal,” she said.

The vast majority of landlords would have no conflict with the act, and she’d like to see those “good landlords” join with community organizations to support it, and push commission candidates to endorse it, too.

Strow said the biggest hurdle is that the act must be adopted in its entirety. Most of it is good sense, but its standards can create hassles for the landlords who have just one or two apartments, often within their own houses, he said. Nevertheless, he’d like to see it openly discussed, Strow said.

The minor-league baseball team’s expected move here from Columbus, Ga., to play in a new 4,000-seat ballpark downtown has a dismal attendance record, so candidates were asked what the city can do if enthusiasm here is so low that it’s not worth keeping the team in five years.

Walker said team owner Art Solomon has legally committed to playing ball here for 20 years; minor-league ball is about family promotions and community involvement, at which Solomon excels, she said.

Even when the 20-year contract runs out, local investors will have first option to buy the team, Strow said. During an earlier drive to attract a team, there was already more interest here in season tickets than usually attend Columbus Catfish games, he said.

Wells said he’s for the project, but doubts that Solomon couldn’t get out of the contract if he really tried. That’s why he wishes the stadium had been designed as a multipurpose venue, he said.

Moderator Eugenia Scott asked whether the candidates could see the city funding a local African-American history museum. Walker cited that as an opportunity for the new agency funding policy to support something new.

“I think that’s one of the benefits of doing a rotation,” she said.

Strow said the project could get funding if there’s enough local support, as indicated by other fundraising interest.

Wells said the idea sounds great, but backers shouldn’t overlook the 20,000 charitable foundations nationwide when seeking funding.

“I think a lot of it is, we don’t get it because we don’t ask,” he said.

Scott raised the possibility of electing city commissioners from geographic precincts; right now, the mayor and all four commissioners are elected at-large.

Strow said that’s not a bad idea. Running at-large increases the cost of elections, and makes it harder to know constituents. The only problem would be if no one ran for office within a district.

Wells said he doesn’t know if state law allows cities like Bowling Green to do that, and he’d like to hear a groundswell of public support for the idea before considering it.

Walker said there are good arguments for it, but the decision may be up to the state. As mayor, she said, she does like representing the entire city rather than one district, so anyone who approaches her is a constituent.