Candidate for
Council Member; City of Escondido

On growth: I am against further building of houses. The big fallacy is that we need to build those to maintain a healthy tax base. In reality when you factor the costs of water, trash disposal, sewer, police and fire services, that tax base is insufficient to pay for the infrastructure. In any case, Proposition S which was passed by the voters limits the growth to plus or minus 20% of 150,000. That means that we have to have other strategies for maintain a healthy tax base and put money into the city coffers. Re-development is often what can bring wealth to a city in contrast to growth. Re-development is good for many reasons. It enables a city to maintain a sense of community. It also allows dollars to be earned here and kept in Escondido. Growth brings traffic, pollution, strains the infrastructure and ultimately leads to Proposition P. If the city council wanted growth it should have planned carefully to collect the appropriate impact fees and designed a plan to allow for capital improvements. They didn't plan and now this council wants to shift the costs to us, the taxpayers. I'm a fiscal conservative. I do not believe in being careless with taxpayer money. This city council has given away millions of dollars in waived fees to out of town developers and fortune 500 businesses. Their argument is that they were bringing in tax dollars and jobs. The facts are that the average salary in Escondido is $45,000 - less than the San Diego average. The businesses interests took their money out of Escondido and into their banks in other states or towns. We need sustainable jobs and collaborations with the colleges in North County, the business community and re-development strategies to keep dollars HERE. The giveaways by this city council would have probably funded one fire station.

Inner city development: Any community re-development is good and very needed. Again the key is to have sustainable community development for higher paying jobs.

Low Income Housing: I do not agree that we should build low-income housing. The kiss of death in a city is the "project type of housing" that takes one area of town and dumps every low-income person in it. I believe in partnerships with business, banking and developers to remodel existing houses, townhouses and apartments in a variety of areas in a variety of income brackets and allow higher density and vertical design plans. Having said this, State law currently requires the city to set aside 20% of the gross tax increment revenues of development for affordable housing but Escondido failed from 1985 to 1997 to set aside enough money for the Low and Moderate Income Housing Fund. In 1997, Escondido got sued for their failure and the courts ruled that Escondido owed several million dollars for this purpose. We have to be very careful to follow the law and make these requirements work for us instead of against us. The bottom line is that we need to have people that know what they are doing in the city council so that the taxpayer doesn't end up paying for costly legal battles that have no merit.

The Center for the Arts:

My husband is a drama teacher and I have had a lifelong love for the arts. Having said that, the art center must be run more like a business and the people running it, need to be accountable for their budgets and keeping within those budgets. I support the arts but I do not support spending one more taxpayer cent that is absolutely necessary. We can do better and maybe not be in black but certainly we must stop the hemorrhage of tax dollars.

Traffic: Ten years ago the mantra for North County was "not another LA". Unfortunately, we have surrendered those dreams and now have choking traffic on both interstate 5 and 15. And we are still building roads and building homes and building, building, building. We can't continue building. LA has built a dozen freeways and each of them is awful. We have to stop building, and instead redeveloping! We have to stop building to maintain the quality of our lives and the quality of our environment.