Points of Passion

Cities are like gardens: they grow when cared for but wither when no one invests time and resources. Lompoc hadn’t been nurtured for a long time. But we have finally begun to invest in our community. Lompoc has so much potential, and our city leaders are dedicated to making it better. A better place to be. A better place to live. A better place to visit. A better place to do business. A better place to raise our families. A city that hears and makes good on what the citizens of Lompoc want their community to be.

Community Pride

I believe Lompoc is better when every citizen invests in our city. I challenge you to fall in love with Lompoc, again or for the first time. You take care of the things you love. You pay attention to the things you love. You take responsibility for the things you love.

Go to any successful city, talk negatively about it, and witness how their citizens respond. Go to an event in any successful city and watch how the community takes on the responsibility of care for their visitors and residents. We are the Gateway to the Stars and the City of Arts and Flowers! For too long we focused on what is wrong rather than all the good in our community. While we fall in love with Lompoc again, remember to appreciate where we have been but look to the potential to support and improve Lompoc.

Choose to love Lompoc and watch our pride return.

Community Responsibility

Our city requires a vital, 21st-century-style leader with the ability to not only focus on solutions to the problems created by years of neglect by our past leaders, but to also lead us into the future with vision and perspective. Empathy, intuition, and collaboration are the skills needed to communicate our needs and build relationships to deliver results.

As a community servant leader with over 40 years of experience in communication, education, project management, and research, I understand that respecting our history and the unique culture of Lompoc is an important part of navigating us into the future sustainably. I know our biggest challenges come from within but so can our biggest successes. I am the credible, capable, and ethical leader Lompoc has elected and I want to continue to invest and bring about the changes needed that we began these past two years. With your support, we’ll get there.

To all the discouraged leaders, young professionals, artists, business owners, families, those who feel 'outside the system', and that haven’t voted locally, you are a vital voice. Everyone in Lompoc that is tired of watching the same, old ways keep us from being the community that we desire, join us on this journey to improve Lompoc.

Choose civic involvement to change Lompoc together.

Community Investment

We don’t have a choice. We must use our resources wisely and efficiently. We have allowed infrastructure to deteriorate with no plans for maintenance. We waste our assets by not up keeping our parks. We continually lose highly trained and qualified employees to other communities causing ongoing staff shortages because salaries and benefits are not competitive with surrounding cities or communities.

Residents have two direct voices in local politics: 1) voting for who represents you on city council, and 2) voting how much you pay in taxes. Thank you for investing in your community! Voting in favor of the Cannabis taxes in 2018, and again in 2021, and supporting the 2020 1% sales tax increase were so important and long overdue. And while the prior Council majority choose to use all of the sales tax increase to refinance the unfunded liabilities with CalPERS, providing no flexibility to future councils, it is dedicated funding that no longer drains the general fund for this cost.

The most recent budget cycle saw a change in resources towards the positive! Council was able to put $8 million back into the General Fund Reserve account which was negative $215,000 as we entered the pandemic. (We should have been at nearly $11 million based on our financially policy.)

Choose to invest in our city and Lompoc will improve.

I believe that to maintain a vibrant community with a vital workforce and dynamic neighborhoods, it is important to talk about our overall health and wellness. Placing health and wellness initiatives at the top of the list of our priorities is an important investment in ourselves. Supporting local agriculture; giving citizens’ access to maintained green space and play space; providing affordable access to healthy food; creating bike paths and connectivity between neighborhoods; and yes, access to community leaders – are all part of a healthy city. We have great weather for growing plants and people, we nee to continue pulling the weeds and improve our harvest.