Specific positions on issues.

By Fred L. Strong

A statement on taxes, fees, planning for the future, infrastructure, utilities and GIS, followed by the reasons Strong can do what he says he will do.

All taxes and fees must be equitable.

Taxes should give no special favors to one group over another.

Fees must NEVER charge more for a service than its cost!

All emergency services should be free of charge. Life and property protection are the concern of the entire community and must be paid for out of the general revenues of the city.

New development must pay its own way as required by the General Plan.

Planning and Building fees must reflect actual costs as close as they can reasonably be determined.

Sports and recreation are a health benefit to the community and should be heavily subsidized from the General Fund, especially for children and senior citizens. No one should be denied participation for economic reasons.

Services and infrastructure requirements must have an identified revenue stream prior to implementation.

Planning For The Future:

Planning must be done on the basis of the foreseeable real world rather than an unrealistic wish list.

Open spaces for parks, recreation, agriculture and fragile, natural habitat must be protected and preserved where possible with the cooperation and consent of the property owner within the city and its surrounding area.

Community designs for future living must include all demographic segments of the community, a variety of habitat styles and opportunities to reduce traffic congestion, health hazards and wasteful energy use.

Various horizon lines for planning purposes [10, 25, 50 or 100 years+] must have reasonable estimates of the needs at that time based on the best available data.

Cooperation with our neighboring communities and with the County are essential to successful long range planning efforts.

Long range planning must include multi-modal traffic and transit facilities with the flexibility to react to innovations in methods and designs which may reasonably appear in the foreseeable future.

Infrastructure:

Standards for the construction of our roads must be sufficient to keep maintenance and replacement costs within our anticipated revenues for that purpose. Better roads and travelways save all of us money.

Plans for anticipated future bridges and major travelways must be accelerated so that Paso Robles can get into the State and Federal revenue streams as soon as possible. The State and Federal timelines for funding are so long now (9 - 12 years) that we MUST do this to avoid permanent traffic congestion.

City Hall is currently in the building designed and intended to be our Library. It is not big enough for both. Funding was provided for it as a Library, not a City Hall. This year we began renting private sector commercial space to meet our space needs. We need to plan, fund and build a new and adequate City Hall as soon as possible to stem this drain on our future infrastructure funding capabilities.

We must implement a ten year capital improvements analysis, design and implementation plan in the next two years for all needed public facilities and expansions.

Utilities and GIS:

Our water, stormwater, wastewater and garbage facilities are rapidly approaching capacity. The State has been increasing stringent, environmental requirements to reduce or eliminate pollution from our rivers, streams and aquifers. We have been planning for these contingencies for many years and the time has come to implement those plans.

The present Council has already implemented the planning phase and land acquisition to move forward. Now we must fund and build the facilities needed in these critically important areas.

We have begun a Geographic Information System (GIS) for our City that can, and will, interface with those of other jurisdictions. This system must be fully implemented as soon as possible to increase the reliability of our utility systems, reduce costs of maintenance and repair and give us the tools for accurate and timely expansion and replacement of our systems. It will also improve all of the City's other services including public safety capabilities and service, recreation services, advanced and current planning, budget and finance. The future is here and we must seize its opportunities.

Water in California will be scarcer than oil in only a few years. We must guarantee an adequate and safe supply now and provide the storage and delivery systems when necessary to guarantee the future health and safety of this community. Our economy, our health and our lives depend on it, as do those of our children and grand children.

Can Fred Strong do all of this?

Not by himself. Any and all policies of the City of Paso Robles require at least three members of the City Council to agree. Strong has been a consensus builder on the Council to date. He constantly strives to bring people together for the best interests of the community.

He has a background that gives him the tools to provide the leadership in all of these areas. He first came to Paso Robles in 1969 and moved to the County in 1973. He moved to Paso Robles in 1981.

He was active politically since his teen years serving as aide to three United States Senators and one President. He has written the drafts for multiple pieces of legislation at the local, state and Federal level over a span of five decades dealing with farm policy, civil rights, school response to development and facility needs, land use planning and zoning as well as community development infrastructure and environmental concerns.

He served as the president of a 5,000 member homeowners' association, a registered California lobbyist for homeowners, the executive director of two large organizations advocating economic and environmental balance at the Federal, state and local levels, a founding member of the California Association of Realtors' Local Government Relations Committee, Northern California Coordinator for the Healthy SHARE food distribution program and twice president and former Lt. Governor of the Optimist Club.

Professionally, he has a background in academic, communications and personnel operations and management. Over thirty years of his life has been spent involved in private and public sector land use planning and government processing of environmental and building projects.

We respectfully ask for your vote for Councilman Fred Strong as Mayor of Paso Robles on November 7, 2006.