Joe Bologna will make listening to the people of Escondido his most important concern as leader of the city council.

If the city continues with the current budget plans, we will be essentially out of reserve funds within the next decade, and that is assuming that the economic recovery stays on track.  This is a gamble with the city's future that Joe Bologna will never make.  By spending and spending when times were good, and failing to anticipate a potential end to the good times, the Escondido City Council has left us in an incredibly precarious fiscal position, and everyone can see the results.  As mayor, Bologna will support smart spending on services necessary for the quality of life that Escondido residents have come to expect from our city, those same services that the city council has imperiled through the budget crisis that has resulted from their own irresponsible spending.

The irresponsible spending of the city council has not ended with the onset of the current budget crisis.  The Escondido City Council has voted to expend 10.7 million dollars on a downtown luxury hotel that they want to build between City Hall and the Arts Center.  Now, Joe has no problem at all with the idea of a downtown hotel, in fact, there is great potential for a hotel to help boost the struggling downtown.  However, the city council should NOT be subsidizing a project when we can barely afford services for Escondido residents.  And if the developer needs government subsidies for over a fourth of the actual project, there should be some red flags raised about the viability of the development.

In these troubled economic times, the City of Escondido should do everything in its power to make things easier for local businesses.  Even as businesspeople face astounding obstacles due to national and global issues, here in Escondido fees for businesses have substantially increased and City Hall has stood in the way of creative ideas that have the potential to bring happiness and wealth to our city.  For example, the old theater on Grand Avenue has been bought and intended to be turned into an historic dinner-theater unlike anything Escondido has today.  But the owner of the theater cannot move forward because of a mess of city agencies that impose various and contradictory regulations, grinding the project to a halt.  This is ridiculous and unacceptable, and Joe Bologna will fix it if Escondido elects him mayor.

Escondido has great potential to attract new businesses and boost existing businesses.  But our infrastructure is aging and we need to address this.  For example, the public utilities yard is located at a prime location right off the intersection between Interstate 15 and State Route 78.  If we transfer the yard elsewhere, businesses can move in and thrive.  This will not only transform the blighted area into a valuable element of Escondido, but downtown will also benefit due to its proximity.  Other ideas include transforming the flood channel that runs through central Escondido into an aesthetically-pleasing recreation and transit corridor that will revitalize blighted areas in central Escondido, boost struggling businesses in the area, and bring in new businesses.  Both of these plans will cost money (which the city doesn't seem to be planning for), and we need to budget wisely to be able to afford these projects.  As Mayor, Joe Bologna will also explore creative methods for community financing and citizen involvement.

We need police protection.  We need sufficient fire safety protection; it is unacceptable that Escondido has two fire stations that are currently offline.  The city council has put us in a position where they have cut the police budget and they have failed to adequately fund our necessary fire stations.  We need wise spending policies, and we need our priorities to be put in the right place.  Police and fire protection should be higher on our list than luxury hotels.

The California Center for the Arts, Escondido has never lived up to its full potential.  Its been running deficits for the last 20 years.  But the Arts Center has so much potential.  The conference rooms were originally intended to be classrooms.  Imagine if the Arts Center held classes for children and adults in art, music, and drama.  Not only would our community benefit from having arts classes open to us, but there would be a built in base of people (the students, their parents, their friends) who are tapped into events going on at the Center for the Arts.  The Arts Center can be successful, and we should not give up on it now.

The Center City Pkwy car wash scheme, pushed through by the city council, is just one example of how the property rights of citizens' affected by projects are routinely ignored by a city council that finds such violations acceptable.  Joe Bologna understands that zoning is about property rights.  If a person buys a home at a time when there is a certain zoning of the surrounding lots, that is part of what the homeowner buys when he or she buys the house.  If the city council decides to change the zoning of an area (hopefully for good reasons), the homeowners affected by the re-zoning should be compensated and okay with the new situation.  When this is not done, as it has not been done by the current city council, and instead projects are forced through with no concern for the Escondido residents affected, Joe Bologna understands that this is wrong and, as Mayor, would seek to lead a city government that works for the citizens of Escondido.