Commitment 2026: Meet the candidates for Papillion’s mayoral election

For the first time in nearly 20 years, Mayor David Black’s name will not appear on ballot. Mayor Black has decided to not run for re-election, opening the door to six candidates.Two of them hope to make the leap from City Council — like Becky Hoch, who said her first concern is the city’s need to expand.”Papillion is going to continue to face growth. That is an inevitability,” Hoch said. “What we need is to manage that growth, to protect our neighborhoods, to ensure that we are being purposeful in our growth. Every time we grow there’s an impact, and we have to make sure that where our growth is, it’s supporting the maintenance of our services.”Hoch, who is also a teacher at Papillion La Vista High School, wants more people to move into Papillion. However, she said housing is stagnant. There are few option for senior living which keeps them in their homes and prevents residents from moving up the housing ladder.”If we can create some liquidity in there through careful zoning ordinances, just purposeful planning and increasing our diversity of housing,” Hoch said.Hoch acknowledged that expansion of neighborhoods leaves holes in both the people and the framework of the community.”The fear of growth that we hear about sometimes comes from that fear of losing our sense of community,” Hoch said. “That’s why I’m speaking proactively about maintaining our infrastructure, making sure our roads are well-maintained and expanded as our neighborhoods expand.”She also noted the importance of the tax levy and how that will play with other taxes throughout the city.”I intend to keep our tax levy as low as possible,” Hoch said. “We’re going to continue our work with state sales tax rebates and the legislature and a little more transparency with how much sales tax we’re going to be giving back.” Bob Stubbe, another sitting councilperson, shared Hoch’s tax levy sentiments.”We still have the lowest tax levy, property tax levy within Sarpy and Douglas Counties, and so, to me, it’s important for us to be fiscally conservative,” Stubbe said.However, he said his plan includes for taxes to be even lower.”Economic growth is very, very important for the city because it ends up allowing for spreading out those tax costs that we do have,” Stubbe said.After time on the planning commission, Stubbe became familiar with Papillion’s strengths and he wants to continue support for them.”Nine out of 10 citizens believe that Papillion is a safe place and that we provide good to exceptional service when it comes to that, so it’s important to me to continue to provide that,” Stubbe said. “I want them to know that they can still believe that Papillion feels like home.”In addition to his spot on Papillion City Council, Stubb works as the longest tenured Public Works Director in Omaha history, having served in the position for over 20 years. Every time a new mayor is elected, they have the option to appoint someone new to the office, yet Stubbe has been retained since former mayor Mike Fahey.”Because of the fact that I worked for four different mayors, that I can respond to individuals that are on either executive side or on the legislative side,” Stubbe said.The race includes new faces as well, like Planning Commission member Joe Hunter.”We get to have some interesting conversations for the first time in almost 20 years about what we want our legacy and our future to look like,” Hunter said.Hunter is a nonprofit leader who graduated from Papillion La Vista High School. He cited the city’s growth and expansion as his motivation.”Seeing that growth has made me realize that we need people who are going to be living here in the next 50 years to help start planning what the next 50 years are going to look like,” Hunter said. His platforms include community engagement and transparency which he has fulfilled throughout his campaign with coffee shop chats, door-knocking and town halls. It’s at these events he heard Papillion’s concerns.”It gets back to affordability,” Hunter said. “Not only with apartments coming and being rather expensive, the commercial spaces that are coming are also renting at higher than normal rates in the rest of the metro area.”Those issues fed back into his own campaign — like his push for economic development.”Being really intentional about building spaces and bringing businesses into town that not only support the community but our members of it, I think, is really important,” Hunter said.While Hunter has been meeting voters in-person, Chase Stenger instead used an online presence to connect. On his Facebook page, he posed questions to community and encouraged them to voice their answers in the comments.”In the main downtown area of the city, there’s a lot of parking issues and they are building some more parking down there. Other than that, it’s pretty much the taxes,” Stenger said.Stenger is a local business owner with a political interest in his first campaign for any public office.”It came up that the mayor wasn’t running, so I was like, well you know, that may be a good idea for me to get my foot in the door,” Stenger said.His platforms echo those of other candidates in this race — taxes and expansion.”The biggest thing I care about for the community of Papillion is just honestly keep it a nice place, trying to keep the taxes lower and then keep evolving and growing,” Stenger said.Despite only living in Papillion for a year, Stenger said his drive for office came from the people of Papillion.”It’s not just about the political side, it’s more about building the community and friendships,” Stenger said.Bradley Kustka and Kenneth Stopak are also running for mayor. KETV reached out to them for interviews, but haven’t heard back. 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