Conklin represents Petaluma working families

Win or lose, Robert Conklin has one goal for this year’s Petaluma City Council election, and that’s representation - for his age group, for working families, for residents that feel like they’re not being heard.

Conklin, 40, who works as a fleet manager in San Francisco, said his greatest strength and qualification for the council is his perspective, one developed as a lifelong Petaluman that’s raising a family and wants to see a better quality of life for his fellow citizens.

“I am the average, ordinary working family man,” Conklin said. “Me and my wife, together we have a decent income but it gets tight at times. I’ve walked the mile in every Petaluman’s shoes who has gone, ‘Oh, we can’t go out to dinner tonight because we don’t get paid until tomorrow.’ I’ve been there.”

Conklin is a Petaluma High School graduate and briefly attended Santa Rosa Junior College before entering the workforce. He has lived on both the east and west side of the city, with his wife, Gina, and has two kids, Robby, 8, and Mia, 7.

Over time, the city has shifted its priorities, he said, led by officials who are less representative of the values Petaluma was built on, forming policies that don’t echo the needs of blue collar, middle class families.

“It might work for the progressives or the moderates, but it doesn’t work for the 80 percent of the other people in the middle,” he said.

For Conklin, the biggest example of that is the Rainier crosstown connector, the lack of which has disproportionately affected east side residents. He cited the construction of Petaluma Valley Hospital, and residents like his aunt, who is a nurse, that purchased property in that area expecting Rainier to be built.

“Now is the time to elect a council who is going to - I don’t want to say build Rainier at all costs - but has to do everything in their power and work as hard as they can to make it a reality,” Conklin said. “60,000-plus residents are counting on this to happen.”

Conklin’s campaign is also focused on road repairs. He’s urging voters to say “no” to Prop. 6, the highly-debated gas tax repeal that would eliminate key sources of revenue for the city’s street fund and the widening of Highway 101.

Conklin is advocating for greater transparency from elected officials and a new approach to communicating with the public. One suggestion was a quicker way to see how council members voted on issues, and a brief explanation from each on why, which would show greater respect to voters and lead to better engagement.

“Petaluma is really far behind when it comes to technology,” Conklin said. “It needs to be easily accessible, whether it’s the city’s website or who voted what on a council meeting. It shouldn’t take you an hour to figure out who voted on the bathtubs” public art project.

As for the controversial Water Street art project, which features five bathtubs suspended on stilts and has caused an uproar since renderings went public in the spring, Conklin sees the issue in a different light. While critical of the process and the lack of public input, he views it as a call to action that could bring similar candidates into the mix.

“Thank god for the bathtub debate,” he said. “In my opinion, it woke some people up and those people might now get involved wherever. It doesn’t matter, whether you’re on the tree committee or the technology committee, running for city council. Phantom menace, whatever you want to call it, it woke people up.”

(Contact News Editor Yousef Baig at yousef.baig@arguscourier.com or 776-8461, and on Twitter @YousefBaig.)