‘We have nothing to fear ...’

A little over a year ago, I made the decision to leave my radio program on KSRO and return to the Petaluma political scene. In the past year, I have learned the true meaning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words, when he proclaimed at the height of the Great Depression, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

People are legitimately fearful of losing their jobs, pensions, houses and retirement savings. Our youth can’t find work to pay the ever-increasing costs of college, and locally, the state of normalcy was rocked when Doyle Scholarships were suspended for lack of funds.

The Petaluma City Council determined priority survival mode expenditures for our vital city services, choosing to maintain police protection at its highest possible level, but necessarily sacrificing many things we have done in the past, such as sponsoring the Veterans Day Parade. Unfortunate, yes, but again, the operative word here is “survival.” We will survive. While doing so, we must not be fearful of implementing the changes that will allow us to work our way through this difficult status quo and return to more prosperous times.

Working in conjunction with our city manager, John Brown, Mayor Torliatt has identified funds in our redevelopment agency that can and will be used to provide infrastructure, create jobs, improve our property tax base and augment our sales tax.

The current council has been in office for about eight months and in that time has secured the funding for local traffic improvements at East Washington Street and McDowell Boulevard and at Old Redwood Highway. These two projects will provide more than $60 million of construction work, which will help our local economy while providing traffic relief.

The council remains committed to working with Caltrans to deliver the Rainier cross-town connector.

Meanwhile, the Argus-Courier has unfortunately chosen to be divisive, lifting quotes out of context and continually bashing what amounts to volunteers attempting to deal with severe economic problems using the very limited tools available to local government in California. Because our council has made significant progress and, even in these difficult times, accomplished much, Argus-Courier columnists, cartoonists and editorial writers are left with such tired subjects as who lives where in Petaluma. The same test should be applied to its staff. For instance, the Argus-Courier publisher lives in Sebastopol while making his living in Petaluma.

While I live on the west side, I work on the east side, and every decision I make in my role on the council is irrelevant to my business or home address.

Attempts to divide our town over who wants a Target and who does not are factually unfounded. I will support a well-designed Target that comes into our community without the aid of government subsidies. I do not believe public money should be spent to subsidize private profits.

The fundamental question to be asked about new development is, “Who pays for the impacts new development creates?” Should it be the developer? Or should it be the people that live here now? I have a long and successful record of protecting the property rights of the current stake holders, making sure new development pays for the impacts new development creates. If they don’t pay, you and I will have to, since the impacts are very real.

A newspaper can perform valuable public service by informing its readers about what is happening when it happens. However, Argus-Courier columnists, cartoons and editorials often create false scenarios. This appears to be based solely on their fear and paranoia. They then proceed to fan the flames of frustration in the community, actually making it more difficult to achieve the results they profess to want. The victim of this style of “journalism” is not the City Council, but rather the town itself, and Petaluma deserves much better.

(David Glass was elected to the City Council in 2008. He served as mayor from 2003 to 2006.)