Meet Yuma City Council Candidate Chris Morris
The Yuma Sun is publishing question-andanswer profiles of each candidate running in the Yuma City Council primary. Yuma voters will head to the polls on Aug. 27 to fill two council open seats and one municipal judge seat in the primary election. Early voting begins July 31. NAME: Chris Morris AGE: 42 FAMILY: Wife Nora Morris, one daughter, two sons, one stepson, one granddaughter, and our dog named Toe.
EMPLOYMENT: My wife and I own and operate a residential construction design company (Calculated Designs LLC) and our residential construction company (Morris Construction and Company LLC).
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: None. This is my first time running for any political office. I am an outsider.
WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT IN YOUR PAST EXPERIENCES HELPS
QUALIFY YOU FOR THIS SEAT? I have been in the construction industry my entire adult life. Prior to owning our own business I worked as a Construction Material Estimator. Today I use those same skills and experiences in our construction company to budget projects. I will bring this knowledge with me to the city so that we can create a strong and balanced budget. I know how to be competitive and complete projects with the most efficiency. This is something that is needed at the city level.
WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS THE MOST IMPORTANT DUTY OF THIS OFFICE?
While there are many important duties of the council, I feel that the protection of our citizens is the highest. To me this means protection from higher taxation, over regulation and maintaining an ample amount of public safety. In order to accomplish all of these items we need to be creative. We need to find new ways of conducting business.
IF ELECTED, WHAT IS THE ONE ISSUE ON WHICH YOU WOULD FOCUS TO IMPROVE YUMA’S QUALITY OF LIFE?
HOW? The budget is the biggest issue. Going through the budget and finding places to decrease our expenditures and increase our revenues enables us to apply more money towards our men and women in uniform, more funding to fix our roads, more funding to improve our youth sports programs, and many other areas of quality of life in Yuma. Some of my ideas to improve our budget include privatizing the maintenance of our parks to local licensed landscape contractors through a bidding system and bringing in a private company to take over the Desert Hills Golf Course. It is costing us over $1 million in tax money this year. Let them run the golf course for a profit. We also need to find a way to bring in more money to our sports facilities to help pay for the Pacific Avenue Athletic Complex. These are all areas that need some attention.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACING YUMA RIGHT NOW?
We need some folks on the council that are more business-minded. It’s great to see Yuma grow and to see new projects underway. However, we need to have a plan in place in order to afford it. We cannot continue to start new projects without the proper business plan in place to fund them.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO, IF ELECTED, TO
HELP CHANGE THAT? In my line of work you need all of your projects to come in at or under budget. This is a requirement to survive. At the government level when there has been a failure in planning, they raise our taxes to fix their mistakes. I will not vote for any new project unless it has been shown to be able to support itself or bring in additional revenue to the budget.
WHAT DO YOU WANT VOTERS TO
KNOW ABOUT YOU? I am not running for City Council for a paycheck. I am running because I am a lifelong Yuman and want to do my part to help this city. I am refusing any city-provided health insurance if elected. In addition to that, my wife and I will donate all pay from the city for this position back into the city to help fund our local programs.