Candidate for Mayor of San Luis Obispo City, Donald E. Hedrick age 64

By Donald E. "Don" Hedrick

I oppose the take over of our city by outside big money special interests that are changing the character of our city and festering corruption in our governments.

I wish to give better support to the small business community that are treated like cash cows to be milked. If you look in the milking barn lately, there are a lot less cash cows with all the vacincys in our commercial buildings in these worstening ecconomic times. Our governing bodies keep bringing in bigger buckets to fill with less cash cows to be milked and they are feeling over milked and under fed.

As an artisan I have contributed to the tourism industry of our county for the last thirty five years by my creating the whale sculptur that had resided in front of the Whale's Tail Restaurant in Morro Bay. That work of art has been the most photographed thing in Morro Bay for all these years drawing people to our county as a world famous destination. I have heard reports of photographs of people's relatives posed at that whale sculpture all over the world. We value tourism so much because it brings money into our county and San Luis Obispo is the gateway to Morro Bay so a good part of the tourist dollars attracted to the Whale's Tail sculpture has stuck here in our City of San Luis Obispo. I continue to wish to support our tourism. We should be encouraging more tourism drawing business.

I am a very green life styled person who drives most of my getting around electrictly for decades. I believe we should be encouraging more alternative fueled transportation and have some projects in the design mode that could help. I would support the conversion away from the oil dominated energy systems that are threatening our global peace and prosperity. Big oil enslaves us in a system that tends to concentrate wealth more and more with a minority of the over wealthy. Alternative energies will spread the energy production amoung more of our citizens enabling more people to participate in success.

I wish to open the government to more participation by its citizens and make it more transparent. We need to take more responsibility for governing ourselves and restore more local control of our lives.

For years I have been involved in making my community a better place, serving as neighborhood watch and inspiring better care of the community with pick stick in hand. I have been on the front lines in the war against crime in my neighborhood as a custodian of my community. To take that concept from the neighborhood to city wide is my goal.