Doug Emerson, Mayor of Hollister - KCOY Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo - News

Doug Emerson, Mayor of Hollister

Party/Affiliation: Republican
Current Job: Retired Educator

Top 3 Priorities if Elected:

NO REDUCTION IN SERVICE TO COMMUNITY WHILE KEEPING A BALANCED BUDGET 

If Measure E, the sales tax extension, passes all of those funds must be used to maintain the current levels of service to the community. If any portion of Measure E revenue is used for other purposes, we would need to reduce service to the community – including eliminating police and firefighter positions. Additional employee concessions, especially in the areas of health care and retirement costs will need to be made. Reducing those costs will allow the reserve to grow as it must.

CREATE LOCAL JOBS 

Hollister is fortunate to have an airport with an abundance of open land surrounding it. Additionally, the long runway at our airport is longer than Burbank's and longer than John Wayne's. There are businesses that have a desire to locate at our airport if we had appropriate taxiways for them to taxi their planes from their business to the runway. Plans do exist for an airpark business center that, at build out, would provide 4.000 new jobs. The taxiways would be built on airport property and will cost 3 – 3.5 million dollars. I am an experienced grant writer having successfully obtained over 1 million dollars in the non-profit world. If elected, I will make the taxiway project a priority. I have numerous discussions with Congressman Farr regarding the project and it appears that there are a number of grant possibilities as well as, possibly, some public private partnership.

BRING UNITY TO THE COMMUNITY 

In the Bay area, there is an organization called joint Venture Silicon Valley. Join Venture consists of business people, government people, education people and community people who are all committed to building a better community. In this forum, there is no blame and there is no finger pointing. Rather all commit to dealing with problems, exploring possible outcomes and building consensus. If elected, I will start the process to establish a similar forum for our community.