Raul C. Rodriguez, Greenfield City Council - KCOY Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo - News

Raul C. Rodriguez, Greenfield City Council

Party/Affiliation: Democrat
Current Job: Bakery Manager

Top 3 Priorities if Elected:

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 

We need to focus our economic development on the new Yanks Air Museum.  Our city must create a reason for retailers to come to Greenfield and the air museum will give us new opportunities. We need to go after these new opportunities aggressively and build our economic base.  The air museum will help diversify our economy.  So our job is to attract those new, larger businesses that will want to be located near the air museum.  I think we under-estimate the impact the air museum will have on our town.  It will be huge and with some luck and aggressive recruiting, we will have national business chains  wanting to come to Greenfield.  Soledad has shown that the larger business chains do want to come to towns like Greenfield but we have to encourage them with some incentives within our reach. 

FINANCIAL SECURITY 

The city's financial stability will come through wise decision making on the part of the city manager and the council. We cannot spend more than we bring in and we must plan for difficult years.  Understanding our limits will prevent us from facing difficult financial crisis that we have had in the past.  You have to be conservative in your financial planning.  The tax increase we passed will not remedy our financial needs.  The increase will help but not solve our finances.  We will have to communicate to our residents that the new tax is only a temporary help while we build and diversify our economic base.  The bottom line is about numbers: can our city bring in enough revenue to provide the right services to our residents so that we can have a well run, beautiful, safe city.  

IMPROVED CITY SERVICES 

Improved city services will come through innovation and collaboration.  From safety to code enforcement, the city must find new ways of doing things that save us money and make us more efficient and effective.  WE can achieve better police services by collaborating with the other South county departments because our local crime has now become somewhat regional. The crimes that happen in our city are not only committed by Greenfield residents but form people from the other towns.  So you have to share the intelligence and get that assistance from other departments.