Paso Robles Chamber of Commerce Speech

By Gregory L. "Greg" Haas

What I support

I also want to thank the Paso Robles Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters for holding this forum.

For a little background, My wife Whitney and I moved here in 1994 to take a newspaper job. Eventually I became the local newspaper editor. After that, I took my current job as a Congressional District Representative for Congresswoman Lois Capps. I'm a native Californian who grew up in south San Jose with a backyard just like Paso Robles + rolling hills, vineyards, orchards and oak trees. I'm also the Chairman of the REC Foundation, which brings you those Friday night concerts in the park and paid for the shade structures at the pools and helped fund the new playground at Sherwood Park.

When I'm out there talking to residents the first question I'm always asked is + Why would you want to run for city council?

That's a good question.

I'm running simply because I love this town and I can offer leadership and incite to help the city council make good decisions.

I want to focus on what we can do to make this city better and NOT what we can't do.

After talking to many of you here tonight and others in the city, I have a long list of challenges we face.

Traffic Congestion Affordable Homes Sprawl Growing Infrastructure Costs Healthcare Needs Rising Costs of City Services And So on...

While these challenges are daunting, they are not insurmountable.

Roblans before us and Roblans after us will face these problems.

What we have to do is address them now.

We can't look to future development to solve the problems we face today. Because with new development comes new challenges.

Since time is limited, I will tell you what I support--

I support a more aggressive business recruitment and retention program to bring and keep jobs here.

I support an open space buffer of agriculture and parks, a purple belt as the city puts it, around the city to stop sprawl from within and from without.

I support a stronger water and energy conservation policy, one that saves our resources and saves taxpayers money.

I support providing more work-force housing. Our two largest job sectors here are service and retail. The families who work in Paso Robles should be able to live in Paso Robles.

I support solving our traffic problems because it effects all of our lives and for that matter I support an eventual downtown parking structure, because our downtown will continue to grow.

And I support a more open government where the people are a big part of the solution.

I welcome hearing from you about what direction you think this city should be heading.

Please call me at 674-5315 if you want to talk. Thank you.