Mayoral candidate spotlight: Jim Bulkley

In preparation for the upcoming forum between Columbus mayoral candidates, incumbent Jim Bulkley and challenger Bill Greene, the candidates sat down with the Columbus Telegram to introduce themselves and their visions for Columbus.

What did you do prior to being mayor?

I've been involved in the city council, of course, since 2000. I was a 16-year council member when I made the decision that I would run for mayor and if I won I'd continue serving the public and if I didn't win, I enjoyed my tenure.

Most people probably would would recognize the fact that I've been involved in in the council and city government at some point or another. I am still employed. I work for a company based out of Fremont involved in animal agricultural equipment installation and I do a little traveling yet, which I always have done and enjoyed tremendously my whole life, have been involved in agriculture.

When I moved to Nebraska in 1976 it was with a job that transferred me out here from northern Illinois, and my wife and I came. This has become home. Had two children, one of them still resides in Columbus and works for the public school system, and I've got four grandchildren that are here. One is in college, but two are still here in Columbus. I've got another daughter in Lincoln, she's a surgical nurse and I've got two granddaughters in Lincoln, one at NU and one at Lincoln Pius. So this is, this is home. This is where we have put our roots and, you know, after 48 years, people say, 'Where are you from?' I tell them I'm from Columbus.

What leadership or elected positions have you held before this?

I ran for the city council in 1998 and then we moved and I moved out of the ward that I was running in, so I gave it up, I got out, and then the 2000 election came up. I ran and it was an unopposed seat so I was elected to the city council in 2000 and then was reelected four times and I had never had an opponent that ran against me in all those years. I'm a past board member of St. Isidore's Parish. I served on the board of Simon House for nine years. I'm active in St. Isidore's as an EME (Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist) and just try to stay active in the community as best I can with the time I have available.

What inspired you to run for mayor?

It probably was the fact I'd been involved in the council. I had been at that level of involvement for a number of years, and I think, as I said, early on it was just a decision that if I'm going to stay involved, I'll go to that next level and if it works and the voters approved, fine, and if they don't, fine.

At that time, I was a council member with Mayor (Mike) Moser, and the mayor had decided to run for reelection also, and I had made my decision to run at the same time, and it wasn't because it was an anti-Mayor Moser stance. It was just I was going to give it a try and give the voters a different opportunity, if that's what they decided.

I think so often everybody wants to think that there's that bright light that goes on in your head that says, 'This is what you got to do.' No, not really. I mean, I said that about when I got involved in the council, you know, sometimes people will go, 'Well, I'm going to run and I'm going to solve that problem' or 'This thing has really made me mad. I'm gonna take care of it.' That's not the case and that's not reality. You get involved to be part of a system, and you get involved to try to make change the way that it's set up to do.

People want to know, 'What's your agenda? What are you after?' Now, come on, some people, I think some people might, if that's your case and that's your deal, go for it but I don't think that works very well.

What does the mayor do?

I guess, more than anything, the mayor puts on the face of leadership for the community. I think the mayor is the person that the people see as their civic leader. Certainly, he's the one that's involved when people come to town and and want to have an event take place in our community, the mayor's usually involved. I see it as that. I see it as being a leader of what's going on in our community and trying to put the best foot forward for the people of Columbus and and the businesses and everybody that we represent.

What is your vision for the future of Columbus?

I think we've had a great past few years of building and growing and things coming together and that's really part of what I want to continue on. I've enjoyed it and I just see a whole lot of things that are happening and want to continue to be a part of them.

What I envision is that continued growth of our community, working to solve some of those problems, the problems being our workforce and developing that, along with housing, things that we know are issues in our community that need talked about and actually we are trying to do some things about them.

I think if we continue doing what we have been doing we will continue to grow. The fear will be that if we stop growing, if we become stagnant, we are in trouble. You know, Columbus has always had a great industrial base and our industrial base has fueled our growth and that means we have to continue to bring new workers into the workforce. And if we're bringing new workers into the workforce, we have to have housing, we have to have childcare, we have to have quality of life items that these people want and and pretty much demand, because that's what they believe are essential to wanting to live in a community.

I think we're trying to address those things and and, so far, have done a pretty good job of doing that. But we can't let our foot off the gas. You know, our sister cities are all trying to do the same thing. I've heard people say, 'Well, growth is great, but maybe we don't need to grow as much.' But I'll tell you, you want to stop growing? Then just let Norfolk take what we're not doing or let Fremont take what we're not doing, because that's going to happen. We've got to find the way and continue working together to grow and make things happen.

I would tell you, it's great to be able to work in a community like we have. People collaborate. I mean, we get together for a project and it's the city, it's the chamber, it's the industries all coming together to talk about, 'What do we need to do?' It's pretty neat when you take a view of what we've got and compare it to other places and I think that's why we're successful. It's not me trying to do something, it's us.

Take our educational system. It's not just Columbus High. It's Columbus High, Lakeview, Scotus and let's not forget Central Community College. I mean, we've got so much to offer. We just want to make sure we're representing it right. I guess that's probably what I'd tell you is the biggest thing is, we have to represent it right and and make the people feel that we are doing that. We have to be good stewards of their tax dollars, we have to do all that yet stay, stay consistent with our spending, so that the people recognize we're spending wisely.

A profile of challenger Bill Greene will be published on Oct. 2 ahead of the candidate forum on Oct. 3.