Candidate for
Council Member; City of San Luis Obispo

I came to San Luis Obispo in 1964 to go to Cal Poly and fell in love with the town that you could see the wonderful surrounding mountains and a few of the volcanic sisters that are its neighbors. While at Poly I was chairman of the College Union Public Relations Committee and also president of the Penguins Motorcycle Club. I graduated in '69 and went a couple more quarters. After college I participated in the Free University of SLO that was happening in the early seventies. By the mid seventies I was on Grassroots II's board of directors and while recovering from too many broken bones but was able to keep busy in 1975 bu serving as the Treasurer of The Economic Opportunity Commission and representing Grassroots Board in that position. I was able to put my stamp on each check that passed my review. We have come a long way since then but my observation is that the Brown Act and Roberts Rule of Order were respected a lot better then.

Then concentrating on my skilled hands doing a one man welder fixer problem solver vocation, I operated my small creative shops in the same block for over 35 years achieving icon status in the town.

Thirty Six yeara ago I made the Whale's Tail sculpture that was in front of that restaurant in Morro Bay. It became the most photographed thing in Morro Bay. There must have been a million people that had their photograph taken next to or on that whale sculpture. It had been a tourist destination and San Luis Obispo is the gateway to Morro Bay. I imagine that I had quite some impact on the economies of our county and town for being the creator of that whale.

Over a decade and a half ago I sensed a need to mellow out my business neighborhood that is shared by the Graduate, a restaurant and night club with the largest dance floor for three counties around. That was at times quite a discomfort to the neighbors. At first I did a voluntary patrol in the parking influenced areas. It involved to a employed position as the Perimeter Patrol for the Grad. By keeping in circulation and keeping busy with a pick stick and talking to all who would. I was able to physically clean up the neighborhood but at the same time modify the behavior of the night club participants. When you clean up your neighborhood it is respected better by visitors. Associated with the earlier taming of the neighborhood was the special project of the Southside Mayor, the saving of the parking place for the burrito wagon that would come on Latin Night to sell food to the kids coming out of the night club at closing time. That has gone on for the last eight years. It is during this time that I became known as the Southside Mayor.

Some years ago I saw the need to organize that oldest commercial zone in our town that I have been in for so long and stand up in the city meetings. That was about ten years ago when known as I was as representing that commercial zone in the Planning Commission when the largest remaining parcel in my block was being developed. As the senior of the area I stood up in the my first Planning Commission meeting to give citizen input. Back then it was published five minutes for each person. When I stood up the chairman would only give me three and he knew that I was representing that zone. When I complained in a letter about the unequal treatment that I had received, they cut every one to three minutes, but I was the first. In that complaint I said that I would run for mayor if they did not stop violating my Constitutional Rights and State Meeting Law. The following spring they would not publish my written citizen input into the commissioner's packets. Even when that project came before the City Council they still would not let the public see my Legal Study of the points of law being violated on that first Mixed-Use Project to come before the Council. So the next opportunity I ran for mayor. That is what inspired me to being a community activist.