My Priorities as your future Town Council member:
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Public Safety
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Neighborhood Integrity
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The Rule of Law
Yes, they overlap and support each other.
Public Safety is a must. We have outstanding first-responders – our Police and Fire Fighters. I support keeping our own force, as opposed to outsourcing those services to the County of Santa Clara, as proposed.
To our standard safety concerns we should add wildfire mitigation by hillside property owners, and safe access for our firefighters going into these high-risk areas.
Los Gatos has substantially preserved its small-town character in spite of outside efforts to capitalize on it. We have a General Plan. We have the Hillside Development Standards and Guidelines. For anyone to act outside them requires a procedural manipulation and the exercise of discretion by our Town Council. I have a history of enforcing our laws and protecting our character.
Proposed planning/expansion could easily overshadow the reasons we live here and want to stay – be it the charm of a neighborhood or the “feel” of the Town. Though development is inevitable, controlled development will preserve what we have and add to our living and work environments – for us, our children, our grandchildren, for those who eventually move in, and for businesses.
Our country is unique in that it was founded on the rule of law, which, by definition, is applied equally; in practice, it’s supposed to be applied equally. No group gets special treatment.