Candidate for
County Supervisor; San Joaquin County; Supervisorial District 5

My name is Tom Benigno. I am running for the 5th district Supervisor of San Joaquin County. As a lifelong Californian and a resident of Tracy Ca,and a business owner I felt compelled to run for office. I am the youngest of 6 children born in California and have been in the San Joaquin Valley for over 60 years as a farmer and grocery business owner. I have three children and six grandchildren and my wife and I live in Tracy. I have a honorable discharge from the United States Air Force.

Most of my personal hobbies and interests have been my family, music, sports, writing and my political ambition. I have always tried to create a business climate for myself and my customers being that I come from a business climate family background. This helped me achieve my goals.I created hundreds of jobs for people over the years, right here in Tracy, Stockton and other locations around the valley. Not until 1997 did I realize how important it was to be involved in politics just to stay in business. I always voted but it didn't seem to solve the problems for me as a business person.

The district I am running in covers Mountain House, Tracy and most of Manteca. When elected, my duties will be to help balance the billion dollar budget that helps support social services, police, fire, school districts and also other agencies in our county. I also want to focus on creating hundreds of new jobs for those who want to work.

I feel that the people of our district deserve choices and that is one reason I am running. As an example, I would work to see that we use the Port of Stockton for shipping access for farm commodities grown here in the valley. In doing this, it would ease some of the traffic on freeways and also conserve fuel and pollution. Another challenge is our Delta water and its levees that need to be built up to prevent flooding. Other unfinished business for me has been the freeways and medical facilities, just to name a few, and many others we have not mentioned.

As a farmer, I want to ease the regulations on chipping, burning and the use of chemicals that are so essential in lowering the cost of food grown in our valley. As we know, farming is the backbone of the valley, although we don't want to stop and say that's all the valley is good for. We have the colleges and the students that graduate will need jobs, such as hi tech jobs which are needed in our county.

It is my vision that I bring these agendas to the other four supervisors of our valley as they will also bring ideas for our district. The complex county system works in many ways. What I would like to do is to simplify the system so that work can get done for district 5 and help other districts as well.

I would appreciate your vote.