The not so great divide

It’s quite the experience, running for a major office within your community. You get to talk to a lot of people and you learn a lot. You also get asked questions from people and the media that are not always easy to answer. I was asked just such a question on Friday as part of The Herald’s candidate interview with the Mayor and myself.

The question was: why is Marina so divided politically? While the Mayor answered with issues from the past that have some resonance, they seemed limited in scope. I feel it’s not a matter of blame or perception on what has happened in the past, it’s how do you deal with it today and how will you deal with it in the future that’s important.

In my conversations with people of all ages, all parties and all segments of our community, I have come to the conclusion that the citizens agree on maybe 85 to 90 percent of the things that need to be done within our community.

We all want our City to function well. We want our Police and Fire services to be the best we can deliver. We want our streets to be maintained, we want recreation programs to be available to all ages, and we want all of our citizens to feel safe, especially our seniors. We want our City staff to deliver the best service possible to our community and we want our City to grow enough that we can have the goods and services available to our citizens that they desire. Finally, we want to have a community where jobs are available so that our kids and their kids can stay within our community and raise their families.

These are the things we all believe in and want for our City. So you see we are not really divided as a community, we are divided politically by a relative few that live and breathe politics. They are the ones that speak before City Council meetings and write letters to the editor. Even they really agree on most everything we want as a community, they just disagree as to how we get there. While it may not be pretty all the time, it’s healthy to have dialog and work towards the compromises that make agreement possible. That’s how our system works.

My goal is to work with everyone to facilitate the agreements needed to move our City forward. I don’t want to argue over who said what when. I want to go beyond that and actually get things done that will benefit our entire community.

More later.