Incumbent Stacy Pascoe and candidate Lorin Croft competing for Shelley Mayor

SHELLEY — Incumbent Stacy Pascoe and candidate Lorin Croft are competing to become the mayor in Shelley.

To learn more about the candidate’s platform, EastIdahoNews.com sent the same eight questions to each one. Their responses, listed below, were required to be 250 words or less, and were only edited for minor punctuation and grammar.

Elections are on Tuesday, Nov. 2.

Tell us about yourself — include information about your family, career, education, volunteer work and any prior experience in public office.

Croft: Hello my name is Lorin Croft & I am running for Mayor for the city of Shelley. I am recently semi-retired and would like a chance to serve our great City. I am currently serving on the Bingham County P & Z board for the past 4 years. I have previously served on the Shelley City Council for 13 years. I have also had the unique privilege of serving under four different Mayors: Mayor Gene Christensen, Mayor Heber Hanson, Mayor Phil Worlton & Mayor “Swede” Christensen — all of whom encouraged me to run for Mayor some day, and so that’s what I am doing. My wife Connie and I have raised 8 wonderful kids in Shelley, and are very proud of each of them and their spouses. We also have 22 grandkids and four great-grandkids!! We also recently adopted a 7-year-old rescue Newfound named Nana! I also enjoy riding my Harley Davidson motorcycle. We both love the Shelley area very much and hope to enjoy our retirement years here. Shelley is a GREAT place to raise a family and we want to help with that, while helping Shelley grow, BUT maintaining the small community feel. And I also want to also help our business district grow and attract more businesses to encourage growth and maybe help find a replacement business for Basic American!! Please remember to Vote Lorin Croft for Mayor November 2nd 2021!!

Pascoe: I graduated from Shelley High School and then went into the sheet metal apprenticeship program and became a certified welder. I worked at the Idaho National Laboratory for six years and then became a general contractor building commercial buildings. I have four children. Two of them live in the area, one in Boise, and one in Alabama. I have nine grandchildren ranging in age from 16 to 7. I am a member of the Shelley Kiwanis and am part of a group that builds homes for needy families in other countries. I was on the Shelley City Council for two years and I have been the Mayor of Shelley for eight years.

What are your proudest accomplishments in your personal life or career?

Croft: My proudest accomplishments are actually my beautiful wife (I still after 35 years can’t believe she married me) and our eight kids and their great spouses and our 22 grandkids and four great-grandkids!! They make me so proud!

Pascoe: Being married to my wife for 38 amazing years and successfully raising good children. I am also very proud that I was able to become self-reliant and created enough residual income to allow me to donate more time to serve others.

What are the greatest challenges facing your community?

Croft: Growth. While growth of a city is important it also needs to be orderly. Many developers want to subdivide the land in and around the City of Shelley. This is putting stress on our current water and sewer infrastructure. Additionally, many of our roads are in need or repair and maintenance. We also will need to continually update our infrastructure.

Pascoe: The greatest challenge we are facing is the outdated infrastructure of the city like the sewer and water lines and the roads. We also have to maintain one of the most expensive sewer plants in the World to run, which was built before I was involved or I would have made sure we looked at other options for a plant.

How is your experience better suited to dealing with these unique challenges than your competitor?

Croft: The City of Shelley has always been growing and it is a great place to live, when I was in the council for 20 years before we dealt with growth HOW and put in a new WWTP to alleviate discharging non treated wastewater into the Snake River and getting fines from DEQ for our undersized and leaking lagoons. Additionally, I have been on the Bingham County planning and zoning for the last 5 years, so I am familiar with the developments that are wanting to come in around the City of Shelley and connect to the infrastructure. Being on the planning and zoning, I have developed a great working relationship with the County Commissioners

Pascoe: I have had several successful businesses that I have started and then sold so I have learned how to use money in the most economical way. This knowledge will help me keep a balanced budget for our city and be prepared for the future.

How will you best represent the views of your constituents – even those with differing political views?

Croft: It is important to be available on a daily basis to the voters of Shelley. Since I am semi-retired, my schedule is pretty open and I can make myself available for a meeting to address any concerns that arise. Being able to meet in person and talk through the issues is how we will sort through the differing political views. We might not always agree on everything but we can agree to disagree and still move the City forward.

Pascoe: I believe we all have the right to our own opinions and the opportunity to voice them. Sometimes I will attend a meeting thinking one way but I believe I have the ability to see things from other perspectives and then make the decisions that will benefit our community the most.

What are your views regarding the role of the media in covering your city? How can you best work with local reporters to ensure coverage of the issues?

Croft: The media is an excellent way to improve communication and it’s important to have a good relationship with news outlets! I would encourage the Media to attend City Council and to meet with me also in the Mayor’s office as needed.

Pascoe:I am always happy to address any questions the media might have about our city and since I became the Mayor we have implemented that we broadcast the City Council meetings live so that those that want to watch from home can still be informed on what is happening in the city.

What measures, if any, do you believe your city should implement amid continued COVID-19 concerns?

Croft: As Mayor I would strongly encourage everyone to get Vaccinated! I have lost 4 friends to Covid and it is very real to me. I actually had Covid last year and got pretty sick for a few days.

Pascoe: We remodeled the inside of the city office and added glass dividers to allow for social distancing and to help protect our employees. We stress that if anyone is feeling sick or has been exposed to follow proper procedures to limit the chance of spreading the disease.

If you received a multimillion-dollar grant to use for the city in any way you wanted, what would you do with it and why?

Croft: Make the needed improvements to the water and sewer infrastructure to allow the City to grow appropriately. Additionally, repair the roads so we can safely get to and from our destinations. Updates to the parks and extend the greenbelt so that it makes a loop. I would also have our engineers work on every available Grants for our city. So it might not be a long shot really there is a ton of Grants available right now.

Pascoe:I would enlarge the nature path so that it would span from one river bridge, through town, and out to the other river bridge so that more people could benefit from it. I would also love to be able to put in a spray park for the kids to be able to use in the summer. And finally I would look for ways to improve our infrastructure to help benefit the members of our community.