GOSHEN — Goshen’s mayoral candidates want the city to thrive, but have opposing views on how to make that happen.

Democrat Allan Kauffman, the incumbent mayor, and Republican Don Riegsecker, a Goshen city council member, answered questions, explaining their thoughts on city projects, education and more, during a public forum in Goshen College’s Sauder Concert Hall Monday evening.

A majority of the questions separated the two candidates by their ideas of how to improve the city.

Riegsecker said in his answers to several questions that his top priorities as mayor would be to focus on making Goshen more business-friendly by eliminating barriers and to decrease the 11.6 unemployment rate, while Kauffman said his priority is to improve Goshen’s appearance to both residents and industries the city hopes to attract.

“We do not have a reputation as being business friendly,” Riegsecker said, and the city doesn’t act like it realizes that it is competing globally for every business.

As mayor, Riegsecker said, he would form a taskforce to aid any company interested in looking to move to Goshen.

Kauffman said that he had not talked with any companies moving to Elkhart or elsewhere because Goshen had too many barriers. If the people of Goshen like the city, though, he said, then others will want to move to Goshen, too, and companies will follow.

“People don’t move to communities that aren’t thriving both physically and socially, and businesses don’t come to where employees don’t want to live,” Kauffman said. “Build it and they will come is not idle talk.”

A question from the audience asking what each candidate prioritizes — the economy or quality of life — further separated the two.

Riegsecker said that the economy needs to come first.

“We need to get everybody back to work so we can continue this quality of life,” he said. Manufacturers are “not looking for that quality of life,” he continued, but for what a city can offer them as a company, such as tax abatements.

“I couldn’t disagree more,” Kauffman said. “I believe that quality of life is the foundation of everything.”

Another audience question asked the candidates their thoughts on using federal grants.

Riegsecker answered that he’s “in favor of getting federal grants, but I’m in favor of getting federal grants for projects that Goshen residents really want.”

He noted how as a city councilman he had not heard any plans about building a roundabout on College Avenue until after a friend called him who had read it in a newspaper when Riegsecker was out of state.

Kauffman said that the proposal for a roundabout at College Ave. and 15th St. was not handled well.

“I’ll be the first to say we screwed up on the roundabout,” he said, adding that it is not an issue that will come back until there is public interest in the future.

Kauffman then explained how he feels that since grant money will go elsewhere if not used here, Goshen should try for it.

“If they’re going to turn on the tap, I think it’s my job to put the cup under the tap and get as much as I can,” he said, listing several projects that grant money has helped fund in the city.

Kauffman and Riegsecker did have similar stances on the quality of Goshen Community Schools, both saying that the schools are much better than how test scores present them.

Both candidates said that the state needs to make the subgroups included in state standardized tests more available to the public. Those groups include how different ethnic groups or students who qualify for free or reduced lunch, for example, do on the tests.

Riegsecker also said that by attracting more well-paying jobs to the area, children of those workers can help enhance test scores, in turn attracting more families and jobs.

In response to a question about which city services or government functions are necessary or not, Riegsecker said he doesn’t have all the answers, but that part of being mayor would be learning more about aspects of the city.

“I’m not going to know everything there is to know when I go in on day one,” he said, but said that it seems that everything the city does is essential, though there may be questions about the number of people involved in some processes.

Kauffman responded that public safety is always the number one priority and that if re-elected he hopes to organize a committee to go through the details of Goshen’s services and recommend possible excesses, much like Goshen Community Schools did the past year.

The candidates also answered a question about where they stand on the 2009 proposal to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity to the city’s civil rights ordinance. Kauffman said that Riegsecker’s past statement that the ordinance was nearly “snuck through” the city council” was entirely false.

Riegsecker maintained that it was almost “snuck through” because at first only a group for the addition talked with the city council and the group from the Chamber of Commerce looking at the issue. Both sides should have been presented up front, he said.

In closing statements, Kauffman assured the crowd that if re-elected, he would continue leading as he has the last 14 years and that Goshen residents know what his leadership looks like.

In response to people who have commented that he has been mayor of Goshen long enough, he said that he has used the time to learn and grow into a better mayor than when he began.

“Why is it only in government that experience is a bad thing?” he asked.

Riegsecker said in his closing statements that his way of leading may be new, but is a unique skill set that can enhance the city.

“Engineering is less an occupation,” he said, “and more a way of thinking.” Engineers are trained to solve complex problems, he said in the forum, and work in teams, much as he said he would do as mayor.

The candidates will also debate on Tuesday, Oct. 11.

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