David Dilworth for Pacific Grove Council

Proposals

Honor in Public Affairs

My father was an admired graduate of West Point, America's oldest military academy which was established when George Washington strongly recommended it to Congress.

West Point has an Honor Code (a person shall not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do) that my father lived fully his entire life and he lived longer in Pacific Grove, some 40 years, than anywhere else.

He raised us, his children, here in Pacific Grove as though living that Honor Code was simply normal in every American home.

While I am not as accomplished as my father, I have tried to live up to those values of honor that he and my mother gave us.

If a person fails to meet the standards of honor in their private life, that hopefully only affects their own family and friends.

But when a public official fails to use standards of honor in their conduct of public affairs, it can harm thousands or millions of real people's lives.

We cannot legislate honor, but we can insist on honorable behavior. There is no substitute for elected officials conducting their public affairs in an honorable manner.

I pledge to honor my father and serve my fellow citizens by living up to these standards in public office.

Calm and Heal Political Disputes with Mediation

Pacific Grove has no history or culture of calming or healing political disputes. When two or more reasonable public interests collide, instead of listening to each other – the conflict escalates and polarizes our community. The Library expansion proposal is a good example. One group wants to expand the Library, and another group wants to protect Jewell Park and keep Grand Avenue open. Both are reasonable positions, but instead of talking, each side is determined to get its way. 

In my experience Mediation is close to magic in our world of human relations. I have seen bitterly battling people calm down and genuinely admit each other has a point. I have literally had the hair stand up on my neck at how dramatically it has helped quarrelsome people calm down and genuinely begin hearing each other – and helping solve their common problem.

We can make Pacific Grove a place where each of our genuine concerns are embraced – rather than rejected. It can help make us better neighbors and a better community. 

We can easily set up a City process where Mediation is a normal part of our ways for helping solve difficult problems. It is not expensive, and only requires having both sides sit down at a table together. 

• Med-i-ation should not be confused with "Meeting Moderation", MediTation, MediCation, or Negotiation. Neither is it Legal Arbitration.
• Mediation is a simple process where disputing parties sit down and are simply asked to voice the other side’s concerns – until the other side is satisfied they have said it so that it is understood. That’s the major part of it, but it works like magic. 

Severing Money from Politics - Part 1

Money, particularly campaign contributions, should have no influence on political decisions, yet we as a community still have not adopted sufficient laws to prevent it. 

Our current City Council has made a big step forward to sever money from politics by approving Monterey County's first Campaign Finance Reform law. This addresses the first step - stopping the undue influence and I helped write it.

Clean Money - Voter Owned Elections - Part 2

If the public is unable to finance campaigns, corporations and businesses that get financial city benefits are more than eager to fund our elections through campaign contributions. The second step is having clean money voter owned elections, sometimes called Public Financing. 

The places that have adopted voter owned elections, report dramatic improvements in the decisions made by elected officials, and most notably some elected officials who fought against "Clean Money" elections now admit it is a huge improvement. Pacific Grove just endured two highly controversial multi-million dollar city projects - the Civic Center ($3.1 million) and the Golf Course Clubhouse (another $3.1 million). The city can appoint a committee to see what it might cost to provide voter owned elections to Pacific Grove citizens. My estimate is it would cost less than $50,000 per year. You can read a report on the areas by the Center for Governmental Studies.

(Note: Currently Public Financing of local elections can only occur in Chartered Cities or Counties. Pacific Grove is a Charter City.)

Honest Elections - Standing For Voters

Sunshine Law I – Public Records 

The state Public Records law only sets bare minimums for public access to governmental records. Pacific Grove staff and Council has a history of hostility to public requests for records. One infamous event was when the Council voted 6-1 to prevent a Councilwoman from reviewing detailed records of bills from the city’s own attorney. Another is the memo from the same City attorney (now resigned) on how to administer the Public Records Act - that was kept as a deeply guarded secret.

 Insuring adequate public and media access to obviously public records can be done with a Sunshine law like San Francisco has. I’ve prepared a model ordinance with a menu of options for improving public access to public records.  It was used as the basis for Pacific Grove's Public Records Guidelines created in 2006. They are considered among the best in our state.

You can review it here: www.1hope.org/PRAMODEL.RTF

Sunshine Law II – Open Meetings

The state Open Meeting law only sets bare minimums for public participation. Recent Pacific Grove Councils have tried to censor public comment by moving them to the end of meetings. It took a lot of effort to stop them. 

Worse, many significant, and some huge, projects such as Forest Hill Manor’s expansion have been approved without the public knowing about it until after approval !

 Insuring adequate public notice of important meetings and insuring public comment can be done with a Sunshine law like San Francisco and other cities have adopted. I’ve prepared a comprehensive menu of dozens of options for improving public participation in government meetings.

You can review it here: 

www.1hope.org/MODLMEET.PDF

Many Pacific Grove residents cannot attend Council meetings due to disabilities. Currently residents have to wait four days, until Sunday afternoon, to see or hear what happened. Yet, we can easily broadcast Pacific Grove City Council meetings Live on Cable TV and Radio. It should cost less than $250 per meeting.

When we begin broadcasting Council meetings LIVE, we can allow disabled Pacific Grove Residents who are unable to attend meetings to provide their comments by phone - just like a radio talk show does. To verify residence in Pacific Grove, a staff person can call them back.

According to disability experts the City of Pacific Grove has systematically avoided complying with the minimums required by state and federal laws for the city's own projects and avoided enforcing disability access laws for businesses that should have made improvements.

1. Businesses need to be educated that providing access to disabled people can increase business.

2. The city owns the Bath House and is hesitating to make ADA improvements because they expect to pay half a million dollars just to put in an elevator. I have made them aware of a simple pneumatic elevator now available that can be installed at the Bath House for less than $100,000.

3. Vince Tuminello raised another excellent idea that can make the City's Bath House immediately useable as a restaurant - for no cost. The Bath House has a ground floor room with a spectacular view that can be used for those who cannot climb stairs.

During my 20 plus years as a sustainable community advocate, I have seen thousands of promises of environmental protection evaporate after a development project is approved. Trees are never planted, landmark trees and even whole forests are destroyed without approval, construction pollution runs off into streams and into our bay, harmful roads are not removed or roads are built where never approved, Mansions end up somehow dramatically bigger than approved, and historical buildings are bulldozed or made unrecognizable. 

There is rarely any follow up by governmental staff and even when there is a token effort, the environmental damage is rarely remedied because "there is no money" or no staff time, or the developer has left town. 

Contractors and developers already pay for construction insurance and their work is bonded. We can easily require a Bond for environmental protection promises. Quotes for the insurance would be required during the environmental review process. Developers with a better track record would pay less for insurance than developers with a bad track record. Some developers or promises may not be insurable at all.

A huge benefit is that when damage occurs after a development is started, there is real money ready to pay for the remedy. The other big benefit is that we all get to find out - before a project is approved - if any insurance company would even insure a developer's promises.

Dark Skies Protection

As a sustainable community educator and a fiscal conservative, I will work to create a Dark Skies law. San Diego, Tucson, Calgary and Los Angeles save many millions of dollars every year on city electricity bills, because they have adopted Dark Skies laws that dramatically reduce light pollution and glare, reduce city electric bills, and reduce nuisance while increasing safety.

Their new street lights only shine where intended – not up in the sky – or into other's homes. This allows smaller, lower wattage light bulbs which dramatically reduces energy consumption and electricity costs by at least 30 percent. Pacific Grove spends about $250,000 a year on electricity - for many things including city buildings and streetlights. So we should be able to save about $75,000 a year in electric bills.

(Stay tuned - for more environmental and historic proposals ...)

Financial Impact Analysis law 

As a fiscal conservative, I will work to pass a city Financial Impact Analysis law. 

The previous Council's cronyism and mismanagement has left our town financially debilitated. Those of us, including Dan Miller and Pat Heregoth, who constantly asked for better financial information for city budgets, the controversial Golf Course Clubhouse and the Civic Center and other projects were persistently and systematically ignored. Vital information was hidden and obscured. The new Council is trying to clean up the mess left behind by getting more information out in public. This is a good first step. 

  But, instead of allowing future Councils to make consciously ill-informed financial decisions as is still legal today, a Financial Impact Analysis Report (modeled after environmental impact reports) would allow the public and the Council to be dramatically better informed. Council financial decisions can be seriously improved by requiring analysis and clear reports on a project's short and long term impacts on our city finances. 

Increase Affordable Rental Housing

We have an affordable housing crisis and many Pacific Grove neighborhoods are filled with vacant houses. 

In some neighborhoods as much as a quarter of the homes are empty all year long. Vacant houses crowd renters out of living here and lower the number of people who participate in our community. Healthy neighborhoods do not have blocks filled with vacant houses. 

We have some 8,000 houses in Pacific Grove. When our General Plan was last updated in 1994 slightly more than seven (7%) percent of Pacific Grove houses were vacant. We need to provide a strong incentive for either living here or making vacant houses available as rentals.

In 2002 after working with a Pacific Grove Affordable Housing group I wrote a report compiling a list of seven (7) ways to create Affordable Housing - Without any Bulldozing. You can read it by clicking here.

Free Basic TV Cable means a Better Informed Citizenry

If you can't afford cable TV, you cannot view local public access TV. Basic TV cable is free in San Francisco. It includes the local public access channels and a few local TV stations. It does not have movie or specialized channels. We can have that here – for no cost to the city or our residents.

This can be negotiated with the city's cable franchise contract right now, but rarely is. We can make a law that the Pacific Grove city’s cable franchise contract must include Free Basic TV Cable – we would always benefit from everyone being able to view our local public access channels. 
 

Free Internet means a Better Informed Citizenry

Mountain View residents began enjoying free wireless internet service in August 2006 thanks to Google, who along with Earthlink will soon provide free wireless internet service for all of San Francisco.  Philadelphia and Chicago have determined to provide city wide wireless internet as well, but those services will not be free.  Silicon Valley has just announced free wireless internet service from Santa Cruz and Gilroy all the way to South San Francisco.

My decades of work in the computer industry provides me with key contacts who tell me we might be able to arrange free wireless internet service here in Pacific Grove. While there is no guarantee, it is a perfectly reasonable possibility to get free wireless internet for everyone in Pacific Grove at no cost to the city or our residents. 

Caution

One caution is that this would increase the amount of electromagnetic radiation in our town. We already have TV, radio, police radio and cell phone electromagnetic radiation running through our air all the time. The increase from wireless internet would be about the same as is currently put out by the half dozen cell phone towers already operating in town (such as Holmans and Forest Hill Manor). While this may not seem like much, some might validly have real concerns. 

Note: Most people are not aware that cell phone or wireless internet users are much more strongly affected by electromagnetic waves radiating from their cell phone itself – simply because they are much closer to it than they are to the more powerful transmitters in cell phone towers. In any case, I would insist on preparation of an Environmental Impact report so we can all get fully informed about this before a decision is made.

• We live in a spectacular, world class community. 
• We have a right to "Expect More" from our government than the bare minimum. 
• We don't have to reinvent the wheel, as plenty of other cities have already done the pioneering work. 
• We can simply follow hundreds of successful examples. 
• Many successful programs have already existed for years which could notably improve our quality of life – AND save us tens of thousands, or possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. 

We can reasonably expect world class government 

Right here in Pacific Grove.

For Questions, Suggestions, Enthusiastic Support, 

to Volunteer or to Donate – call or write me at -

831 / 624-6500 -- 166 17 Mile Dr. , Pacific Grove, CA 93950

Search whole Web

Home

www.Dilworth2Lead.com