League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Sonoma County, CA November 2, 2010 Election
	Susan Gorin Answers Questions Candidate for Council Member; City of Santa Rosa

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of Sonoma County and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. How should public transit in Santa Rosa evolve during your term on the Council? Include in your answer comments on the effects of SMART and the new Sutter Hospital site.

A sustainable future for Santa Rosa depends on an effective public transit system (and other forms of alternative transportation) linking homes to our future SMART train stations, employment centers and services.

The challenges of improving public transit in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County include:
1. Separate transit systems for Santa Rosa, Sonoma County and Bay Area, with inadequate linkages between them.
2. Lack of frequency of buses, so that it takes too long to navigate the city and county.
3. Service that ends at 8:00 p.m. in Santa Rosa, making it impossible to depend on transit for evening activities.
4. Low-density development in the City and County, so that it is expensive and inefficient to provide transit service.
5. Inadequate funding for transit, since all transit depends on subsidies.

A good first step is your approval of Measure W, which authorizes a local vehicle registration fee. This small fee will provide desperately needed transit funding, helping to compensate for the $millions taken from local transit by the State for the past few years.

Secondly, transit planning needs to begin now to ensure connections to our SMART trains. Our stations will not have adequate parking for cars; therefore, we have to make it easy for our community to access the train by buses, bicycles and pedestrian activity.

Our Station Area Plans have begun the process, and when economic activity recovers, infill development will help to provide homes, services and jobs close to the trains, encouraging us to to walk, bicycle or take transit to the trains.

Long term, our transit agencies need to consider consolidating to provide effective, efficient service and use those economies to provide easier linkages and increase frequency and duration of service.

2. What roles should cuts in services and tax increases have in balancing the Santa Rosa general fund budget? What cuts and/or tax increases do you recommend?

As Mayor of Santa Rosa and Chair of the Budget Subcommittee, I have led the Council to approve balanced budgets, cut costs to save essential services, reduce employment costs and take steps to increase the City's revenues.

During this unprecendented national recession, Santa Rosa has experienced 15 quarters of declining sales taxes and property taxes, our major sources of revenue. To respond, we have cut our general fund permanently by 18% and eliminated 180 employee positions (20%).

Our budget projections (and all of our economists) suggest that it will be several years before our economy recovers from this national recession. And government revenues lag recovery by 12-18 months. This means we will have to continue budget cutting for the next few years.

To allow time to recover, our City Council unanimously agreed to place Measure P on your November ballot. This temporary, 8-year 1/4-cent sales tax will generate up to $6 million a year, and help us to forestall even more severe services cut in our community. Please consider supporting Measure P.

Even with the passage of Measure P, we will continue to improve efficiencies, restructure our City government, and negotiate concessions with our employees. Over the past three years, we have negotiated employee concessions with our 18 bargaining units, resulting in pension reform for all non-public safety employees.

But it is essential to take a hard look at our public safety compensation and pension benefits (comprising 60% of our general fund) when those contracts expire in 2012.

Even before the recession, Santa Rosa, like many cities, identified a structural deficit - the cost of providing services is more expensive than the revenues generated. Generally, we have protected public safety and other essential services, while cutting other departments for a number of years.

The recession greatly exacerbated this, so that some departments have been cut as much as 1/4-1/3, while public safety suffered fewer cuts. For example, Park maintenance staff has been cut from 70 to 12 to maintain all of our parks and medians. And I've led the efforts to raise funds to help keep open our pools and senior center, and increase volunteerism in our community to maintain our parks.

Our residents will have an opportunity to review our City Charter next year. In 1996, Santa Rosa voters approved binding arbitration provisions for public safety employees in our Charter, including language requiring comparable salary surveys. To comply with those provisions, past Councils have spent down reserves and transferred funds into our general fund to negotiate multi-year contracts with police and fire employees. As part of those contracts, our city not only agreed to pay for the city's share, but also the employees' share of PERS (Public Employees Retirement System). The next Council will appoint a Citizens' Committee to review our Charter and make recommendations to ask the voters to approve. What do you think of those provisions of the Charter?

Our current pension liabilities is unsustainable for our future. I will be representing our community interests in those negotiations and asking the tough questions to bring stability in our city budgets. I have 8 years of experience negotiating public employees cointracts. I need your support to bring my experience to work on those issues.

Cutting employee costs may be necessary in the short term, but it is essential to increase revenues through economic development and other sources. Please review the comments on Job Growth below. But this Council has also negotiated additional revenues through a franchise extension with North Bay Corporation.

And the Council successfully negotiated a Business Improvement Assessment on visitors with our Chamber of Commerce and hoteliers to generate additional revenue to be used to promote our area for visitors and sponsor special events, such as the Amgen Tour of California, which generates millions of dollars in sales tax and TOT revenue (Transient Occupancy Tax).

Despite the campaign rhetoric, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jonathan Coe agreed that this BIA agreement was "fair" for both the City and the Chamber. I'm eager for visitors to enjoy our beautiful City and County and help to contribute to the economic health of our region.

3. What should the City do to foster job growth?

Campaign rhetoric suggests that this Council and City has been lax in fostering job growth in our City. This rhetoric is just that - don't be fooled by the negative mailers and phone calls!

Our City continues to support local businesses by:
-Monthly visits to existing businesses.
-Promotions in our media for our businesses.
-Downtown Subcommittee and Economic Development Subcommittee monthly meetings with local businesses and business and community groups, working together on strategies and communication to support businesses.
-Website services for new businesses and promotion of existing businesses.
-Troubleshooting help to identify roadblocks to permit processing and tenant improvements.
-Over the counter permit processing 85% of the time.

If strengthening our economy, attracting businesses and creating jobs were easy, it would already have been accomplished by the mutual efforts of business, government and community this past year. Our national ecoinomic meltdown caused a collapse of investment and banking, affecting private investment and construction industries nationwide.

Added to this is the overbuilding of retail, commercial and industrial space throughout the Bay Area. Dr. Robert Eyler, Assistant Professor of Economics at SSU, sugggested that it will take decades to reoccupy the millions of sq. ft. of commercial space constructed in the last decade because of the economic recession and changing demands of businesses and employees.

Last year I directed our staff to develop aggressive strategies for re-tenanting vacant space in Santa Rosa. In collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce, and other business and community groups, the City Council unanimously approved 21 different strategies to increase flexibility in zoning and streamline permit processing. Already owners of several retail centers are moving tentnat improvement proposals through the City, and the owners are negotiating with proposed tenants.

Campaign rhetoric suggests that this Council has rejected important revenue-generating projects in the City. Again, ignore the rhetoric and review the record. This Council has approved a number of important projects over the past 2-4 years - Comstock Mid-Rise Project, Museum on the Square (conversion of the AT&T building), several mid-rise mixed-use residential/commercial projects and a number of small and large subdivisions and affordable housing projects.

Sadly, the economy has stalled many of these projects and the City is working aggressively to keep two important catalytic projects moving forward - Museum on the Square, and the SMART multi-use project proposed for the site across the tracks from the Railroad Square SMART station. A number of affordable housing projects are moving forward as well, with the assistance of subsidies from our City.

A tour of our downtown shows evidence of innovative projects setting the tone for a renaissance. Just take a look at the recent Santa Rosa Magazine at the amazing array choices of housing, offices, restaurants and retail opportunities in our downtown.

Creating jobs is difficult in this economy, but it doesn't mean we should wring our hands and moan "woe is me." Regionally, we can prepare for, and perhaps, hasten economic recovery. It is essential to continue to work collaboratively with our business, labor and education parters on all opportunities to attract, retain and grow our own businesses that hire locally in sectors important to our area.

The real job growth is happening in startup companies. The iHub and business incubator at the Sonoma Mountain Village business cluster is attempting to attract and grow these businesses. Santa Rosa should be able to find homes for these companies as they grow and need to expand. And the innovation partnership developed by the City of Santa Rosa and the Chamber oif Commerce, matching investment dollars with emerging entrepreneurs, is a strategy to growing our companies.

Doug Clark, of Metier, chose Santa Rosa to relocate his growing software company (out of many options he explored across the nation) because he recognized the quality of life here in our County and shares the vision of a revitalized downtown. He plans to move Metier to the new Museum on the Square building across from Courthouse Square. These are the kind of businesses we should target and attract to Santa Rosa.

Sonoma County, and Santa Rosa in particular, should emphasize our regional strength and reputation to encourage the development of green industries, green collar jobs, and identified business clusters to our area. Not only is this important environmentally, but it just makes good business sense. For example, we can invest in energy and water conservation retrofits.

Investment in energy retrofits can create jobs - more jobs than in coal, nuclear, solar or wind energy combined. We have the ability to do that here, now, without government investment. Excellent examples of this already exist; look at Pinnacle Homes creating a market demand for energy retrofits that they have difficulty keeping up with.

Job training opportunities exist now - apprenticeship programs, high school pathways and an amazing array of training programs offered by the North Coast Builders Exchange. Is our unemployed workforce taking advantage of these training programs to prepare themselves for this future?

As a member of our Economic Development and Downtown Subcommittees, I am eager to continue the work of fostering job growth and promoting responsible development that benefits our community. Please review my website to learn more about the number of business leaders endorsing my re-election including John Stewart of New Railroad Square, Brad Baker of Codding Enterprises, Dick Dowd of Pinnacle Homes, Ken Pedersen of Pedersen's Furniture, and Hugh Futrell, among others.

Santa Rosa and the City Council can continue to act as catalytic agents to promote this collaboration with our business, labor and education partners, but private investment by businesses and residents is far ahead of government in this area. We need to make sure that we are prepared for the economic recovery when it happens.

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Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' responses are not edited or corrected by the League. Candidates may not refer to any other candidates in their answers.

Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: October 23, 2010 18:55
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