Where candidates for Arroyo Grande mayor and City Council stand on the issues
The relationship between citizens and their elected officials, sales taxes and Ding Dongs highlighted a recent forum for candidates seeking office in Arroyo Grande.
Candidates for mayor and City Council participated in an election forum hosted by the South County Chambers of Commerce on Sept. 22 at the South County Regional Center, with each pool of candidates answering five questions from Chambers of Commerce CEO Kathy McCorry.
The forum started with questions directed to the three Arroyo Grande mayoral candidates: incumbent Mayor Caren Ray Russom, Dale T. Hanson and Gaea Powell, who gave two-minute answers to questions on their reasons for running, qualifications and city management.
Russom said she’s running for another term to see the city through its coming General Plan update, which she called “unsexy” work.
“(The General Plan) says where we’ve been, where we want to go, and who we want to be, and you need to elect a mayor who knows who we are, where we’ve been, where we want to go and who we want to be,” Russom said.
Russom also said she wants to shore up the infrastructure budget to fix some of the city’s pavement issues.
Hanson, a Vietnam veteran, said he’s dissatisfied with the city’s current leadership and its handling of Arroyo Grande’s water shortage.
Hanson also emphasized his ability to understand people and their needs, telling a story from his time as an instructor at the Command General Staff College about having his students pull the cream filling out of Ding Dongs to teach them how different ingredients must work together to form a whole unit.
“When you do the command decision going into battle, you do not want to leave anything off the ingredients,” Hanson said. “You want to make sure you cover everything.”
Powell, the former chief of staff for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial campaign, said she “never in a million years thought (she’d) be running for office, but said she was frustrated and angry with the city’s direction, agreeing with Hanson’s concern over the water shortage.
Powell called herself a “constitutional sanctuary city candidate,” which she defined as holding people and government accountable to the U.S. Constitution, while criticizing the way COVID-19 has been handled nationally and locally, along with local and national media.
“My highest priority is to hold people accountable to the Constitution, and our leaders took oaths to that Constitution, and not to their special interest, not to the majority,” Powell said.
The mayoral candidates all took different positions on how best to maintain the most important aspects of Arroyo Grande as a community.
Russom said one of the most important parts of Arroyo Grande’s government is its relatively small size compared to other nearby municipalities. She said that the small staff allows for a unified approach to working with the residents of the city.
“What I’ve always said is if you’re going to come do this job, then you read your staff reports, you ask questions, you go to to the meetings, you listen to the public, and then you make your decision in that order. And that’s what this group does,” Russom said.
Hanson said improving financial stability and putting forward a more positive marketing image for the city were important to the city’s outlook.
Meanwhile, Powell reiterated her stance that the city should “honor its citizens’ rights that are protected by our Constitution” and maintain its access to water, while expanding tourism.
“I believe that the village and the historical society need to have more investment so we can get people off the freeway to visit us,” Powell said. “We’re the gateway to miles and miles of wineries, and we’re just minutes from the beach, and I think that that’s a missed opportunity.”
City Council candidates discuss sales taxes, priorities for Arroyo Grande
Following the Q&A with the mayoral candidates, three candidates for City Council took the stage to explain their vision for Arroyo Grande.
Kathleen Secrest, the unopposed candidate for the District 1 seat, and District 4 candidates James Robert Guthrie and Ben Franco, were asked more economically oriented questions than their mayoral counterparts, discussing the potential looming recession and local sales taxes.
Guthrie, who served on the City Council from 2004 to 2016 and as the city’s planning commissioner from 2021 to present, said he supports sales taxes like Measure D-22, which would raise local sales taxes by 1%.
“I am in favor of the sales tax, because the only way we’re going to be able to do any of the street repairs that we really need to do in this city now is going to be with additional funds,” Guthrie said.
Franco, the former owner of an exterior maintenance business, disagreed and said he does not support any new sales taxes.
“I believe we have funds that are just being allocated differently, and we need to adjust how we spend our money,” Franco said.
Secrest, a former deputy district attorney for San Luis Obispo County, said while she does not come from a business background she supports Measure 22 because of its potential contributions to infrastructure projects.
“I know just from going to the (City Council) meetings that local businesses, especially in the village ... have said that they want more street services,” Secrest said. “They want a cleaner atmosphere, whether it’s trash or street cleaning, and so I’m hoping that if we get more (money) in with the sales tax, that can go for so many things like that.”
The candidates also faced questions on why they decided to run for office.
For Guthrie, that decision to run again came because of what he called “some really critical decisions about the city” that will need to be made within the next three to four years on staff retention, financial policy and road repair, which he called “near and dear to (his) heart.”
A self-described “wonky person” who enjoys policy, Guthrie said he wants to be on the council during the passage and implementation of the city’s General Plan.
Secrest said she’s running to ensure “every resident everywhere deserves to be treated with civility and fairness and respect,” and to be a part of the city’s next General Plan process.
Franco said he was running because “every citizen deserves a voice,” and because he opposes lockdown measures like those seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I believe in making sure that all of our citizens have the right to work, when to work, (and) that no one has a right to shut us down for any reason,” Franco said. “That should be our decision to do.”
To watch the full forum, go to slo-span.org/meeting/ef_20220922/.
This story was originally published October 3, 2022 at 1:49 PM.
