| Riverside County, CA | November 4, 2008 Election |
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See http://www.donthompson.org for complete informationBy Don ThompsonCandidate for Council Member; City of Cathedral City |
This information is provided by the candidate | |
Citizens are asking for change and new blood on the council.Cathedral City is in a precarious financial condition nowadays and I am running for City Council to make a serious effort to change things. I applaud the North Cathedral City initiative, however, I think attention should be paid right now to the problems in our downtown in addition to planning for 20 years in the future, miles away. There are acres of undeveloped land east of Cathedral Canyon Drive. This land has been empty for years and it's well overdue for commercial and residential development. The area east of the Mary Pickford theatre is also to be developed and that must be expedited. The new shopping/restaurant development anchored by Trilusa Restaurant is a relative failure at the moment. Businesses were originally enticed into moving into that development by the promise of foot traffic from new hotels. But neither promised hotel has yet materialized and many stores closed and good people were made bankrupt. The long promised Sheraton is only now beginning to show signs of progress (problems with the Desert Water Agency) and the Boutique hotel promised for the space next to the IMAX seems to have sunk without trace. The Santoro development north of 30th and just east of the expensive new soccer field is in serious need of attention. The models are overgrown with weeds, the sales trailer is gone and most of the homes are partially built and deserted. Many of the garage doors appear to have been rammed and houses broken into. The weeds in the street and on the lawns are dreadful. Are the banks who own the properties being cited for neglect? Sam's Club, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Albertson's at Ramon and Date Palm have all closed. Smart and Final is closing and Albertson's at Gerald Ford may have a dubious future. Why are all these vital businesses moving away? What are Palm Springs and Palm Desert doing to tempt businesses that Cathedral City is not? I mean to attempt to stop this hemorrhaging. The absence of sales taxes from those businesses and the absence of occupancy taxes from the hotels is a principal cause of the city going $5 million into the red this coming year. Some inventive steps need to be taken to obtain funding. Months ago I said that new taxes might have to be imposed if the city is to pay its way and fund police and fire services. That is already now on the ballot for November in the form of a Utility Tax. A new Stater Bros is open at Vista Chino but that and the one at Ramon are a long way from the thousands who live in the Cove and Date Palm Country Club, meanwhile if anything happens to the sole Albertsons, downtown would be without a major market. A new bridge is eventually to be constructed over the wash on Cathedral Canyon. In the meantime, when that wash is flooded and impassable, people in the gated communities just north of the wash are in great jeopardy because the response time is seriously increased. The City needs an additional emergency station, however small, just north of the wash right now for such eventualities. Although technically non-partisan, the City Council has three conservatives and two progressives. One of the reasons for the City's stagnation is the constant outvoting of the progressive positions by the majority. There seems to be a real possibility for abuse now the votes needed to censure a Council member has been reduced from four to three. I urge you to vote for a complete change and humbly request your vote for my candidacy. |
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