Trust me, I don’t think of serving on the Commission as my life’s work or purpose. HOWEVER, since concerned citizens asked me if I had interest in this role and after reflection I thought yes, that I could contribute to the community by serving.
I think there have been light years of progress made in the areas of collaboration, citizen outreach on projects, marketing Commuterride and our budget process, better accountability and usage of the small sums of money in our budget that, when added together as in the case of the Syringa Development mitigations, decided on and funded while I was President of the Commission, ACHD has done better than in years previous.
During that time I oversaw some $6.5M dollars for those mitigations that would otherwise been spent elsewhere. No taxes were raised and no projects jeopardized, either. There is more to do. I wish to continue the education outreach that I began earlier this year to neighborhoods, elected and others concerning the limits of ACHD authority in LOS matters and expand it to matters of Land Use Planning. Too often there are still major questions as to who can do what in the approval processes and this is just plain crazy. It causes delays, upsets folks to the max, and is totally unnecessary.