Round Up for Arcata Fund

Under Round Up For Arcata every Arcatan as well as visitors to our town will have the opportunity to round up their bills, fees, and any purchases they make in Arcata to the next dollar. The money would go into a special city fund to be used for specific Arcata projects such as the City Car Share Lending library, zero-emission shuttle service, affordable housing, and the funding of environmental startups incubated at HSU. It could go to a new Arcata child care center, fixing a pothole or bikelane or a police substation at Valley West. The idea is to build a flexible fund for things that in the end benefit all residents of our town by making it a better place to live. Think of Round Up for Arcata as your rich uncle. You don't expect him to give you regular handouts but when you need him, he is there.

Here is how it would work. Every business and city department will be expected to ask their customers if they want to "Round Up for Arcata." For example, if you have a $23. 53 bill, the merchant will ask you if you want to "Round Up for Arcata" and pay $24.00. All the money collected would be put into a special fund. The farmer's markets and artisans will be asked to provide a fund jar that will be collected at the end of the event. Even contractors to the city will be asked to round down their bills, but pay the difference into the Round Up fund.

It's voluntary but I believe most Arcatans will participate and many others will as well. On the individual level it means just pennies per purchase, but together it would add up to perhaps the biggest single revenue source for Arcata.

Arcata Must Be There For HSU Students

The City of Arcata and the students at HSU have interests in common and should work together to promote their shared goals.

Proposition 215
If a person, and that includes a student, has a medical marijuana recommendation, then the state of California permits that person to possess marijuana for medical treatment. But the HSU administration does not recognize the state's medical marijuana law and punishes students who possess marijuana for any reason. As a state university, HSU should follow state law. The university administration claims that by following the state law it will jeopardize its federal funding. You know what? I don't believe it, and I won't believe it until the highest court in our country says so. HSU President Roland Richmond should not give in to the federal government without putting up a fight, a fight all the way to the US Supreme Court, if necessary. If elected I will sit down with the administration and urge them to follow California law as it applies to California universities and permit medical marijuana on campus. Perhaps the administration should be reminded that more than 70% of California voters supported medical marijuna use.

Energy Independence
Arcata is working on energy independence and so are the students of HSU. The students voted overwhelmingly to impose a $10 per student fee on them that would fund an energy independence program. Unfortunately, the HSU administration vetoed the fee. I propose to lobby the school and let them know how important energy independence is to the city of Arcata and give the students the support they need.

Local, Healthy Food
Arcata has some of the best fresh produce, fish and meat in the country yet you won't find much of it in the university cafeterias. Instead, the school contracts out food service to Houston-based Sysco. I would like our local businesses to supply food to HSU. Arcata and the students can work together toward that end.

City Car Share Library
Arcata should do everything possible to reduce the number of automobiles and in particular gas-powered autos in the city. I propose the establishment of a city-run car share program similar to the city's bicycle lending library. Any person living or working in the city, or students at HSU, could join the program for a low but sliding scale cost. The fee would entitle them to check out a zero or near-zero emission vehicle. If you need to go to go to Target you can take a small all electric vehicle. If you plan to travel to LA with friends for the holidays, you check out a larger plug-in hybrid. If you need to move or pick up furniture you check out a light truck. It's time for Arcata and HSU students to act progressively not just think progressively.

Environmental Innovation Local Implementation
There is so much to say about this and I do a lot of it in other postings. But the common link with my economic development program is always linking with HSU. If we develop the school develops. Arcata does not want just any industry or business in its city limits. We want socially responsible businesses. I will concentrate on our niche, which has been ignored way too long. The niche is the environment every which way. We have HSU with its brain trust of environmental, forestry, oceanography and fuel cell programs at our doorstep. We need to turn Arcata into the hub of all forward thinking ideas on the environment. Like Stanford is to Silicon Valley, why not HSU to environmental innovations. The conferences will be here, the think tanks will be here, the environmental entrepreneurs will be here.

Innovation then implementation. Imagine: people from around the world will come here to learn about environmental innovations and see first hand how entrepreneurs make those innovations work. Vegas is known for gambling, San Francisco for tourism, and LA for celluloid. Arcata will be known worldwide for cutting edge environmental innovation. That would be a proud, socially responsible and prosperous time.

Environmental Innovation Local Implementation

There is so much to say about this and I do a lot of it in other postings. But the common link with my economic development program is always linking with HSU. If we develop the school develops. Arcata does not want just any industry or business in its city limits. We want socially responsible businesses. I will concentrate on our niche, which has been ignored way too long.

The niche is the environment every which way. We have HSU with its brain trust of environmental, forestry, oceanography and fuel cell programs at our doorstep. We need to turn Arcata into the hub of all forward thinking ideas on the environment. Like Stanford is to Silicon Valley, why not HSU to environmental innovations.

The conferences will be here, the think tanks will be here, the environmental entrepeneurs will be here. Innovation then implementation. Imagine: people from around the world will come here to learn about environmental innovations and see first hand how entrepeneurs make those innovations work. Vegas is known for gambling, San Francisco for tourism, and LA for celluloid. Arcata will be known worldwide for cutting edge environmental innovation. That would be a proud and prosperous time.

Arcata City Car Share

I am learning a lot as I go through this campaign. The one criticism I get is that I am fairly new to Arcata and "what do I know." What I know is that being new to the community allows me to bring a fresh perspective to Arcata and to bring creative and innovative ideas to Arcata that have already been in practice elsewhere. San Francisco, Santa Monica and Berkeley, and elsewhere, have many programs we should be looking at.

In San Francisco, residents and workers can check out cars from city garages to use when they need a car.This program has drastically reduced the amount of cars and pollution in the city. Arcata is perfect to do the same but better. Arcata's program would include residents, workers and students and an inventory of zero or near-zero emission cars and light trucks. With this program we would remove thousands of vehicles from our streets because people will ditch their cars as unnecessary and save on insurance, maintenance and car payments.

You need to go to Target in Eureka or a weekend trip home? You check out a car. You need to pick up furniture or a bed? You check out a light truck. People will get rid of their cars if they can rely on the City to provide them with one when they need it. Good for the environment every which way. This will become even more attractive to even more people in Arcata when we start over with public transportation and replace it with a free zero or near-emission public shuttle service running every five to ten minutes and accessible by text messaging, cell phones, computers or just simply flagging it down.

National Global National Issues

What's my position on national and global issues? If a national or global issue comes before me and I believe in it, I'll vote for it. National and global issues are important and affect us all, we can't ignore them. What I don't want to do is spend a lot of Arcata City Council time on these issues if that time takes away from homelessness on the Plaza, fixing our roads, affordable housing, transportation, the environment, child care, art and technology and all of the other issues affecting the daily lives of Arcatans. There are other groups out there who are dealing with the national issues. I think we Arcatans can do more by supporting these other groups.

My favorite is "Truemajority.org" This is Ben Cohen's group, Ben of Ben and Jerry's. Go to the site. You'll see by joining that group, which is 300,000 plus strong, you have a voice in all of the progressive national and global issues we spend too much time on at Arcata City Council meetings. The premise of the group is to redistribute a portion of the defense budget to health, education and welfare, and the environment. We do that and many of our local problems will be solved because we'll have the money and resources to solve them.

I encourage Arcatans to join "truemajority.org". During this campaign and after I'll encourage all progressive Arcatans to join truemajority.org and then I'll get back to Arcata's local issues.