Constituent Meeting at Loma Prieta Community Center
23800 Summit Road in Los Gatos
5:30-6:30 pm
Thursday, February 18th
Soquel Neighbors Alliance
"Fresh Perspectives" or
"What I've Learned from My First Year as Your County Supervisor"
Porter Library, 3050 Porter Street, Soquel
7:00 - 8:30 pm
Wednesday, February 24th
Constituent Meeting at Erik's DeliCafe
1664 Soquel Drive
5:30-6:30 pm
Barack Obama’s victory speech, Chicago, 11/4/08
Tuesday marked a great day of change in our country and in our community. I want to thank each of you who gave a little of yourselves to help me along the path that led to our victory.
As part of my race, I made it a point to reach beyond my relationships forged through years of work in the community and meet new people, talk about the challenges that are facing our community, articulate my vision about what a strong community looks like and build new friendships that shape that vision.
Since the beginning of August I knocked on the doors of nearly 3,000 voters and I benefited from these conversations. I heard concerns about our community and terrific ideas about how we can work together to address issues of dense development, gangs and graffiti, and environmental threats. I will carry these ideas and help them find a home in the policies and projects of the County of Santa Cruz.
This election is not simply about my success at the ballot box, but about harnessing the energy and creativity of our community to help preserve and protect our wonderful area. I will work to be accessible to all the disparate parts of the 1st District by meeting with residents on a regular basis. I will seek to engage them all in the development of plans that will help maintain the best parts of our neighborhoods and address the unique challenges that each face.
I will not be seated until January 2009, but I will use the intervening weeks to prepare myself for my new responsibilities. During this time, I will continue to meet with neighbors, build an effective team to meet the needs of our community and identify partnerships that will help the district.
Thank you to all of you who gave me financial support, endorsed my campaign, volunteered time to help walk precincts, made phone calls or helped with events. All of those provided the ingredients necessary for victory on Election Day. I am humbled by the outpouring of support that my campaign received, and I will never forget all the hard work that each of you gave to help me win.
I will work hard to honor your support and to represent the residents of the 1st District and the entire Santa Cruz County community. Let me know how I’m doing and stay in touch. I will do my best to stay in touch with all of you.
With my deepest thanks,
John
566-0122
This past month saw two different law enforcement stories playing themselves out in our community. One community has the resources to claim success while another is still reeling from another round of violence. We must do all we can to ensure that residents of Santa Cruz County have equal access to law enforcement.
The Seabright neighborhood is celebrating regaining control of their community due to stepped-up law enforcement. Responding to a spike in public drunkenness and other nuisance crimes, Santa Cruz City police were able to commit additional officers to enforce existing laws and bring order again to that residential neighborhood.
Meanwhile in Soquel, the community experienced another senseless violent crime, as two men were serious injured in a stabbing that occurred in the Village. This episode comes after a shooting in the spring in Soquel and a murder in Live Oak in January. Unfortunately, the residents of Live Oak and Soquel don’t have the same ability to call on additional officers in the area because there aren’t enough to go around in the county. All of our deputies have been on mandatory overtime for the past three years.
Our county faces a serious problem of recruitment and retention of deputy sheriffs. At present over 15 vacancies are budgeted but unfilled. But even if they were all filled, the communities of Live Oak and Soquel would have considerably less law enforcement coverage than their neighboring communities of Santa Cruz and Capitola. On a regular night while Live Oak and Soquel might have three or four deputies on patrol in their neighborhoods, residents in the city of Santa Cruz has twice as many police officers on duty.
Cabrillo College is attempting to fill a pipeline to ensure qualified applicants to the pool of recruits, but it can’t stop there. We need to ensure that the communities of Live Oak and Soquel have a comparative number of public safety officers to deal with increasing gang activity and “tagging.” We must step up our recruitment efforts and develop innovative strategies to retain the best deputies possible.
Once we have a sufficient number of deputies, the Sheriff’s Office can expand the county’s participation in inter-agency task forces that track gangs, and there will be enough deputies to resume having school resource officers at our local schools who can ferret out problems before they start. We need to enforce the laws on the books not simply draft up new ones for busy weekends.
We must also employ the latest technologies to fight the growing graffiti problem. In Santa Clara County they are using web-based technologies to trace the introduction of new taggers and gang symbols to enhance their enforcement strategies. Michael Beaty, who has spent countless hours covering graffiti in Soquel, documents every instance and shares it with the sheriff’s office. Unfortunately his contributions never appear to be used for prosecution or apprehension. Let’s leverage this volunteer effort into a crime-fighting tactic.
Lastly we must ensure that we have positive and organized activities for young people if we want to provide an alternative to criminal activity. The county needs to partner with our local schools and area non-profits to provide effective teen activities for the youth in the mid-county. Our teenagers are our future community leaders and we need to treat them as a valuable asset and invest in programs that help them grow.
The communities of Live Oak and Soquel deserve greater law enforcement coverage. Working together we can address the serious problem of crime and enhance our community at the same time.
John Leopold is a Cabrillo College Trustee representing the Live Oak/Soquel area and is running for County Supervisor.
Bill's statement:
I am pleased to endorse John Leopold for Santa Cruz County Supervisor.
I first met John when he served as the Executive Director of the Santa Cruz AIDS Project. Since that time, I have known John as a strong community leader and advocate who has embraced many of the same humanitarian causes and issues that have inspired me. John has demonstrated his commitment as a board member of the Rex Foundation, a trustee of Cabrillo College, and as an involved parent and community member.
John will prioritize green building and technology while protecting our rich coastal resources. Based on my long time acquaintance and friendship with John, I am confident that he will bring a measured and diversely supported level of new leadership to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors.
John Leopold looks forward to working with Bill Monning when both elected this November.
Santa Cruz: Carolyn Busenhart announced today that she has endorsed John Leopold for Santa Cruz County Supervisor in the 1st District, representing Live Oak, Soquel, and the Summit areas. Carolyn ran for the position in the June primary, taking third in a six-way contest.
“John and I have disagreements on some issues, but his commitment to the district is unquestionable. My endorsement is evidence that John knows how to build alliances with many different types of people to get things done. He will be a full-time Supervisor who’ll fight for District 1 every day,” said Busenhart. Busenhart added, “I have a lot of disagreements with John’s opponent, Betty Danner and have found the way she has campaigned to be disingenuous and self-serving. This is exactly the wrong time for a Supervisor with such a lack of experience.” Busenhart concludes, “At the end of the day, I am convinced that we need a full-time Supervisor who will work hard for the district everyday – and that person is John Leopold.”
Carolyn is one of Santa Cruz County’s leading anti-tax advocates who has run twice before for Supervisor. She led the “Take Back Our Town” rallies in the late 1980’s. She and her husband, Vernon Bohr, live in Soquel where she operates the Charisma hair salon.
John talks about what got him into politics, his perspective on the presidential race and his three favorite records.
Check out the interview here.
