On the Threshold

We stand at a critical moment in the life of Lake County.  

Economic activity and population growth are promising a brighter future, yet simultaneously threatening to destroy what we treasure the most.    We must recognize that the choices we make and actions we take today will determine the quality of our lives, the health of our people and the vitality of our communities in the years to come. At this time, it is important that our leaders be proactive, attentive and competent, and that our government operate using sound management principles.

I offer the following vision statement and specific goals to declare my belief in our collective responsibility to one another and to the future generations of Lake County.

Vision Statement

Lake County, Our Home

Lake County, our home, is alive with a unique beauty and natural ecology that has sustained humans for over 10,000 years. Lake County has many special features, but three stand out with particular clarity:

•  Natural beauty and the abundance of nearly pristine wild land;

•  Charming small towns: living communities with their unhurried atmosphere and old-fashioned friendliness;

•  An agricultural base typified by small farms producing high value crops.

All these characteristics have become rare in the modern world, and rarities to be cherished.

Ultimately, our health, our economic well-being and local community vitality requires that we preserve a healthy watershed with its complex natural systems intact, a rich variety of plants and animals, fertile soils, pure waters and clean air. The protection and preservation of this vitality is a sacred trust.

I believe that we have what we need here in Lake County, both the means and the abilities, to create abundance for our people while maintaining the magnificence of the living systems that sustain us.

Competent, Responsible, Proactive Leadership

•  Encourage sound, fiscally responsible, efficient county management practices

•  Plan and budget for crticial services and the maintenance of existing infrastructure: with flood control systems, water systems, public safety and roads as the highest priority

•  Preserve our commons: public parks, open space, the lake and its views

•  Focus on improving water quality as well as local control and ownership of the resources and delivery systems

•  Support programs and actions critical to our seniors, our kids and the most vulnerable among us

•  Create a positve and hopeful path to local food, water, transportation security in an era of expensive energy.

 

Local Vitality

•  Encourage & create sustainable local economies,specifically supporting locally owned business and public ownership of critical resources

•  Assess local capacity for water, food and infrastucture

•  Elected officials and public processes be efficient, effective and fully accountable to the people

•  Work for long-term local agricultural well-being

•  Address historical disconnections that impede meaningful community

Health

All living systems must grow and change, and so it is true here in Lake County.   When facing growth, however, we must ask ourselves the question "What is it that we want to grow?"  

We must endeavor to grow long-term health, sustenance and vitality of our local people and communities over narrower short-term or outside interests. To assume that all growth is beneficial to our future quality of life is perilous indeed.

In order to make the distinction between good growth and destructive growth, we must start by devising measurable standards for our local economic and community well-being, our health, clean water, and ecological integrity.   We must work for regulatory systems that support those standards, and insist that new developments work within them. The bottomline: we must be satisfied that our citizens will be better off based upon the known wishes of the community as reflected in our plans, and the process of arriving at these decisions must be transparent and open.

Next: Goals and Objectives