Candidates respond to questions

The Morgan Hill Times gave each mayoral candidate a slate of 12
questions. Here are Art College’s answers.
The Morgan Hill Times gave each mayoral candidate a slate of 12 questions. Here are Art College’s answers.

1. What leadership qualities can you bring to the dais if elected?

My leadership qualities include my common sense approach to issues, my desire to perpetuate a governmental environment wherein we feel proud to be serving all the community, team-building skills, 20 years of working in local government, knowledge and experience in how governmental agencies interface, former service as a RDA Executive Director, MBA in accounting and finance, honesty, integrity, accountability, and a willingness to work with businesses and residents for the betterment of our community.

1. What are your top priorities

My number one priority is to maintain and strengthen public safety in our community. The Police Department must be strengthened and additional officers must be added. Morgan Hill must be a safe community for people to live, work, raise a family and to enjoy life. Our P. D. is short- staffed and this requires additional overtime and working longer shifts. Through savings in other areas, I believe we can begin to strengthen both Fire and Police services. They must be maintained at acceptable levels of service.

My next priority will be getting our finances under control. Last year, the City Budget projected that the City Council would overspend the entire F.Y. City Budget by a total of ($57,822, 730) and this year’s F.Y. 2010-2011 Budget projects that the budget will be over spent by ($ 49,310,509). This is not fiscal responsibility on the part of the Mayor and council members, it is fiscal insanity. We must learn to live within our means and adopt only balanced budgets. If we don’t change direction, and soon, we will have depleted the majority of our reserves, especially in the General Fund, which provides the revenue for our public safety area. Yes, our revenues are suppressed, due to the bad economy. However our main problem is that our spending, as authorized by the entire City Council, is out of control. Help me to bring some common sense to this area of our local government.

Flooding is another priority. Every year, when we have heavy rain fall the city floods. This has been going on for 20 years. We have found money to do all kinds of other projects all over this community, yet the flooding problem has been completely ignored. Homeowners and businesses pay an additional premium on their building insurance because of this flooding. If we can find millions of dollars to do all these other activities, we can find the money to permanently eliminate the flooding. Over the years, I believe there has been a breakdown of the relationship and trust of City Hall by the community. It appears to be a struggle between the resident/taxpayers of our community and City Hall. Businesses outside the downtown believe that they are treated like step-children. Businesses in the downtown are afraid to speak out on many issues for fear of retaliation from City Hall. This is not how government, of the people, by the people, for the people is supposed to work. The existing council has lost its focus! They have led us down the same road to disaster that the federal, state, and county governments have followed. They have not been leaders, they have been followers. No one on the existing council has tried to lead in a new and positive direction and this must be done for the betterment of the entire community.

1. What programs and/or services would you cut or save to balance the budget and how would you pay for them?

I would recommend a hiring freeze and not fill vacant positions. In addition, I would look at areas of service to the community that are not as active since the economy took a nose dive. These areas of government should be reduced based on the percentage they are down in activity. For example, if building activity is down 30%, then the city staff in that area should be reduced accordingly. When the economy improves, then we can begin to hire these positions back. In the best interest of the community, we must learn to live within our means.

1. Explain your approach to negotiating with employee unions?

My approach in union negotiations all would be to remember that I represent the residents and taxpayers first in all negotiations. In these trying times, the unions are going to have to give concessions if our community is going to survive and be able to provide acceptable levels of services to the community. City governments can no longer afford to fund lavish retirements and benefit programs. Local governments should be more flexible in their ability to contract out additional city services to the private sector or other organizations to reduce the costs of services. Other local governments have begun an aggressive agenda to reopen, modify, or renegotiate more reasonable labor contracts with their unions. Our council needs to be just as aggressive in seeking a workable solution to out of control salaries, benefits, retirement and retirement insurance benefits.

1. Do you support a two-tier retirement system?

Yes, I would support a two-tire retirement system and/or other additional options that would help reduce the costs to the taxpayers for outlandish retirement benefits. The burden on the taxpayers cannot continue to increase in this depressed economy. A way needs to be developed that shifts the burden away from the taxpayer to be on the hook for extremely high future retirement and future medical benefits for former city employees. Local government salaries and benefits have far outpaced the private sector and need to be brought back to reality in this economic turndown.

1. How do you feel about RDA-financed downtown development plans, including the fate of the vacant Granada Theatre building.

I believe that City Hall is moving too fast on their development plans, especially in light of our suppressed economy. Many people in this community do not understand what is taking place downtown and why it is happening. Reducing the lanes from 4 to 2 is a big topic of concern with citizens. City Hall plans to spend over $40 million dollars. This includes developing buildings that have commercial or retail businesses on the ground floor and living quarters on the second floor, like you see in the Santana Row development in San Jose. This was tried in Gilroy and because of the suppressed economy and housing market, they are having trouble selling the units at the market rate. If they become subsidized housing, that will significantly impact the police department and defeat the ability to attract people to the specialty shops downtown.

The demolition of three blocks of the downtown and construction going on for a year will force a number of the existing business to close. We would be better off to invest RDA monies in the existing business downtown. We are not San Jose and Santana Row! We are not Saratoga! Nor are we Los Gatos. We must develop our own identity and I don’t believe this has been done. I believe the existing plan is the plan of the Mayor and/or council, not the plan of the community.

I believe that the Granada Theatre could be the cornerstone of developing the downtown and that all avenues need to be explored to maintain the structure. One private and local organization “Save the Granada” offered a plan to privatize the operation of the theatre and I don’t believe this proposal, by a local group, was give adequate time and consideration by our existing Mayor and City Council. All avenues need to be thoroughly explored to make this happen and it has been primarily ignored by the existing City Council.

There is a great deal of money riding on all this and if it goes sour, it will be a significant additional burden on taxpayers. We need to slow this rush down and develop it more slowly.

1. How should the city address planning and developing in other parts of the city, such as the Southeast Quad?

I believe that we are trying to do too much, too fast. The council is acting in the capacity of developers and that is not the role of the Council or RDA Board. If we are intending to develop the downtown, then that is where the focus should be. We are spreading our resources too thin and that can often be a guarantee that things will go wrong. The Southeast Quadrant should be a major undertaking that, receives a great deal of focus. I believe this could be a major project when the economy begins to turn around but not until then. Again, we need to slow things down and not rush these things through. The Council/RDA Board needs to get out of the development business. Perhaps this is why our Capital Projects Fund shows that we will overspend the budget by $37,438,368 this year and we overspent it last year by $50,897,620. This is not a good business practice nor is it good for the pocketbooks and wallets of the community. “We must learn to live within our means”.

1. What is the city’s role, if any, in working with the school district?

There are areas of government wherein the city and school district must work jointly together to accomplish goals and objectives. There are other areas in which the city can assist the school district in accomplishing it goals and objectives. I believe that the City Council should use these opportunities to help develop the Morgan Hill Unified School District into the Pride of Santa Clara County.

1. In light of the Cinco de Mayo incident at LOHS, what steps would you take, if any, to improve race relationships?

As administrators, we sometimes have a tendency to overreact to certain situations. Instead of acting, we react and I believe that is what happened in this situation. If we all could control how we react individually some of this types of situations could be reduced. We all have individual rights and as individuals, we need to respect that.

We are reaping the results of an all-too-complacent community, city government, and school board, in regards to the divisiveness that is the effect of such causes as promoting a wrong multi-culturalism verses a respect for family heritage, and teaching history classes that find more fault with America than promoting its freedoms and outstanding qualities. As Mayor, I would be very interested in the steps that the Morgan Hill Unified School District takes to follow-up on the Cinco de Mayo incident, and the changes proposed.

1. What are your plans, if any, to attract new businesses to Morgan Hill?

To attract new businesses to the community, I believe that a new relationship has to be developed by the City Council and implemented by city staff. There are far too many burdensome rules and regulations in existence to be able to attract additional quality businesses to the community. We are friendly to a business until they start the process and then the red tape and delays discourage and often deal a fatal blow to an enterprise. In Gilroy, developers can approach the city to start the process and within 6 months be complete. In Morgan Hill, that same process takes about two years. As I mentioned above, a new relationship needs to be established with the existing businesses in the community and a new approach to reach out to new quality businesses also needs to be established. These businesses are the bread and butter of our community and enable us to truly keep the tax dollars within our community.

1. What prompted you to run?

Having lived in Morgan Hill for 23 years, I have become concerned about the direction and the decisions emanating from city hall, especially the current councils approach to dealing with the budget, services, the downtown and their concern for the citizen/taxpayers. The City Council has not kept it eyes on the ball in many instances. I vision a safer, healthier and more viable community in which individuals and families can live, work, raise their children and enjoy life.

I believe that I have the skills, background, education and desire to help bring these things about and I am asking the voters to support me as the next Mayor and give me the opportunity to work with other council members to make this happen. Remember the term “public servant” I pledge to be that for you.

1. Do you think changes are needed to the city’s speaker policy and council meetings, and if so what changes would you make?

I don’t believe that the current Mayor and council members have ever read the Brown Act and don’t truly know how they are to conduct meetings and provide information under its direction. Even the City Attorney needs to come up to speed on its content. Changes to the speaker cards are not their only issue. I have read and understand the content and the intent of the Brown Act. The intent states, “In acting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards, and councils and the other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly. The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.” As the next Mayor of Morgan Hill, I will work with the City Attorney and Council members to adhere to the “intent” there in. If we err regarding the Brown Act it will be where we exceed the minimum requirements of the Act in reporting to the citizens and taxpayers.