Candidate for
Director; Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District; Division 8

Bio and Issues Statement

Linda Budge has resided in the Sacramento area for 33 years, the last 29 of which have been in the same neighborhood. Her two sons are graduates of Cordova High and took degrees at CSUS and UC Davis. She and her husband, Lee Garrison, share five children and eight grandchildren.

She is well known as an active community participant, beginning with volunteer work and a program at KVIE in the early 70's.

She has held elective and appointed office, including three terms on the Cordova Recreation and Park District Board; five years on CORPAC, where she chaired for three of those years; and since 1985, has chaired the Sacramento County Subdivision Review Committee, which hears all the parcel maps and subdivision maps in the County. During her years on CORPAC, she lead the advisory council through the preparation of the first Community Plan for Rancho Cordova and is now serving as the chair of the Steering Committee for the Rancho Cordova Community Plan Update, pulling together various committees, citizens groups, and local organizations to design a vision to guide community development for the next decade.

As a member of the Board of Directors of the Rancho Cordova Chamber of Commerce, she has been chairing the Cordova Commercial Revitalization Project (CCRP). She was Chamber President in 1998 and selected to be the Volunteer of the Year in 1999.

Ms. Budge is also a small business owner, with a full service planning and permit processing firm. As a consultant, she handles rezones and use permits, and processes commercial building permits all over the United States. Earlier this year, she passed her AICP exam, earning national planning certification from the American Planning Association.

It was this combination of government, organizational, and small business experience that led the Directors of the Sacramento County Fire Protection District to appoint her to fill the remainder of the term of a Board Member who resigned his elected position.

These past two years on the Sac County Board have been almost completely occupied with the discussion of merging the District with the American River Fire District Board. On the first of December, the Sacramento County Fire Protection District ( the result of previous mergers that included Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights, and Fair Oaks Fire Districts) will cease to exist, and a successor agency known as the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District will emerge.

She comments: "I have always worked for responsive, responsible, representative government, and I am hoping that after the first of December, we will begin to work on clarifying the unanswered budget questions, creating some of the economies that were supposed to be the result of this merger, and continuing our work toward maintaining the level of service that the District residents have enjoyed. In addition to those challenges, we need to work to extend the same level of emergency medical service to all parts of the new district. At Sac County, those medical services represent 72% of the call volume, and our residents expect that to continue." "We also have stations that are not only unsightly, but are neither constructed to current codes, nor are they as habitable as our fire men and women deserve in places where they spend a lot of time. We will be developing strategic plans to remodel, rehab, and relocate those facilities, while planning for service to the new growth areas."

With the merger, the new Division 8 is a combination of part of the Division which Ms. Budge has been representing, and the Division covering Rancho Cordova and Gold River where the current Director, as an employee of the new agency, is not eligible to run. Having worked for almost 25 years to keep the Cordova Community a high quality place in which to live, Linda Budge is supported in this election by community leaders, long time residents, friends, and local firefighters. She is endorsed by Assemblymembers Anthony Pescetti and Dave Cox, County Supervisors Don Nottoli and Roger Niello, Congressman Richard Pombo, Citrus Heights Mayor Tim Raney, Elk Grove City Council Member Sophia Scherman, AFSCME, the union which represents the clerical staff at Sac County FPD, and dozens of voters in the division whose names are listed in the endorsement section. She would appreciate your vote on November 7th!