Morning Edition; Charles "Chuck" Coople

It's morning edition on KRPS. We are a week away from municipal elections taking place across Missouri. Locally, Joplin City Council elections were scheduled to take place on April 7th. But because of the pandemic, the election was shifted 60 days to Tuesday June 2nd. Last hour, we heard from four-year general seat candidate Shanaakerson. Up now, is the first of our three interviews focusing in on Zone 2. A four-year seat, they candidate this hour, Charles Coppel, who also goes by Chuck. Like all candidates, I first asked Chuck to introduce himself to voters. Hi there, good afternoon. My name is Charles Coppel. I'm a retired Joplin firefighter, so I did that for over 20 years. My candidacy has a lot to do with a, during my time serving as an employee with the city, there was quite a bit disconnect from sixth and main to the employees. And it never really felt like anybody had their back, or, you know, they trusted to be there. So I'm hoping that I can help fill part of that void for the employees that we have now, have somebody that they can look out for, besides looking out

for the citizens. I'm usually a very questioning and a very opinionated person, so I don't have any problems asking tough questions. And being around the council and doing things for the last few years, I see a lot of 9-0 votes. And statistically, that just shouldn't happen. There should be some deeper conversations about some things. There should be somebody that's willing to buck the system and say, no, I disagree with this. And, you know, I'm willing to be that person when it's, when it's warranted. I was wondering if you are elected. One of the some of the things that you'll get accomplished or pushed forward? Well, right now, I was the, one of the co-chair of the Proposition B Committee. It was an amazing group to work with. We got that passed by 77% incredible approval rating for attacks in this day and age. One of the things that was promised to our public safety employees was they would use that, if we got it passed, they would use that

to improve wages. And they would try to get everything done they could before the current council left, before the new one got, got seated, because there was a commitment by the council members that were there to push forward and go with that. Things have drug on and drug on. Now they're talking about September, possibly November, before, before they take action on improving wages. If we don't do something immediately, we're going to be back to what I consider a crisis that we had in 2017, 2018 of personnel leaving at an incredible rate. Getting our employees moved over to Loggers is a very important step, but it's not the end goal. That was just step one. The city tasked us and the employees to their number one problem that everybody cited time and time again was the old pension fund and the unfunded liability that came with that.

We said, okay, we accept your challenge and we got it done, we got it done in one vote. So now it's time for them to step up and come through with the promises that they had made and the assurances that they would give them, they were going to take action. Finally, I'm a Joplin voter. Give me your best pitch. Why should I vote for you? Yeah. Why you should vote for me? Okay. I have a lot of experience with the city. I know how the departments run. I know the infrastructure behind what's going on. I'm not opposed to asking questions. I'm not opposed to stepping on people's toes if that's what needs to happen. I am a very transparent person. I believe that I have quite a bit of integrity and I would, I've always been a hard worker as well. So I'm willing to work hard, put in the time and the effort to do what you think needs done for the city government and try to guide us in a good direction in a better direction. Okay, thank you for your time. Thank you, sir.

That was Chuck Coppel, who was one of three candidates running to fill a four-year zone two seed on the Joplin City Council. To learn more about his campaign, visit his Facebook page at Charles Chuck Coppel, Joplin City Council. You can also hear this interview again, along with the rest of the candidates running for Joplin City Council this year at our news blog, krpsnews.com.