Candidate for
Council Member; City of Watsonville; Council District 1

The first major issue facing my constituency is the need for both affordable housing for the working class and workforce housing for our teachers, and public safety workers.

My plan to address this issue after my election is that I will continue to advocate and support the city's plan to annex the Atkinson area. I will work with the other council members and the SC County Supervisors toward a negotiated agreement with both the city and county officials, the residents of the area, the residents who desire affordable and workforce housing, including the Farm Bureau, COPA, CCA to build the needed housing in the Atkinson area.

I assist the council toward facing the attacks by the parties who live in the Atkinson area who are advocating against building affordable and farm worker housing in the neighborhood and I will attempt to work with the council to negotiate with them to reach an agreement that all parties can accept.

I will also work toward leading the council to prepare to annex and develop the Buena Vista area and negotiate with the Watsonville Pilots Association, the Friends of Buena Vista and the Sierra Club. I will work with the city council and the SC County Supervisors to reach a negotiated agreement with the residents of the Buena Vista area, the pilots and the other stakeholders to develop the needed housing, parks and schools in the area.

The second major issue is the need for economic development within the City of Watsonville. We need to bring more jobs to the City. We need to attract more businesses to the City. We need to improve the local schools and improve academic achievement for our immigrant children so that more businesses will feel that we have the educated workers that they need to relocate in Watsonville. The city needs to do everythinbg possible to create a more favorable business climate in Watsonville.

The third major issue facing my constituency is water crisis that we are facing in the Pajaro Valley. As a city councilman, I will continue to support the plans to build a water recycling facility to produce water that can be transported through the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency pipe system to battle salt water intrusion. I will support the efforts of the PVWMA to survive the present attacks against it and the efforts of many people to dismantle the PVWMA. As a council member, I will advocate lobbying the federal and state governments to grant the City of Watsonville and Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, monies to begin the rebuilding of the Pajaro River Levees to provide protection against 500 year old floods. My plans include the advocating the need for a series of water summit meetings to bring all the important stakeholders together to plan a long term strategy of reducing and stopping salt water intrusion, new creative methods of `smart' water use and conservation and water flood protection. As a councilmember, I will continue to vote to support the city staff as they travel to Washington DC to lobby our Congressional representatives for more federal monies to rebuild the river levees.