After being elected Mayor as your write-in
businesses at best, and put up unnecessary
barriers at worst. We need to change that
mindset and those practices and become
far more active in soliciting new businesses.
We should reorganize our community
development department to facilitate
business development by assigning a staff
‘business champion’. We need to consider
incentives and support measures such as
less restrictive signage that will help ensure
business success. There are only two ways
we can sustain –let alone increase- the
services and benefits we all enjoy and
demand. Either welcome and pave the way
for additional business development and
adopt policies to assure business success, or
significantly increase taxes on current
residents to pay for those benefits.
Some handy reference phone numbers:
Emergency Medical, Police, or Fire 911
Arroyo Grande City Manager 805-473-5408
City Clerk 805-473-5412
Community Development 805-473-5441
Planning Department 805-473-5420
Police (non-emergency) 805-473-5110
Public Works 805-473-5466
Recreation Department 805-473-5474
5-Cities Fire (non-emergency) 805-473-5490
Trash- South County Sanitary 805-489-4246
Arroyo Grande Hospital 805-489-4261
AG/GB Chamber Commerce 805-489-1488
South County Library 805-473-7161
Arroyo Grande High School 805-474-3200
Paulding Intermediate School 805-474-3500
Harloe Elementary School 805-473-3710
Ocean View Elementary 805-474-3730
Fairgrove Elementary 805-474-3740
RE-ELECT JIM HILL AG
MAYOR NOVEMBER 6
___________________________________
Your voice is important!
AG City Council meets: 2nd & 4th Tuesdays
at the Council Chambers, 215 E. Branch Street
San District meetings: 1st & 3rd Wednesdays
Check www.SSLOCSD.org/Agendas for location
Meetings begin at 6pm
-----------------------------------------------------
Please contact me with any questions
or comments:
JIM HILL, Arroyo Grande Mayor
(805) 481-5654 (home)
Find us on Facebook
Paid for by Committee to Re-Elect Jim Hill AG Mayor 2018
candidate four years ago and earning your
confidence for re-election in 2016, I continued
working to serve Arroyo Grande residents and
businesses. I’m very proud -for this third time-
to be endorsed by the Arroyo Grande Police
Officer’s Association. Committed to the pledge
of civility, I’m known for being a listener and
acknowledged as respectful of all voices in our
community. As your Mayor, I continue refusing
city-paid insurance in personal support of
balanced budgets. With your support, I’ll keep
working to preserve and improve city services
while maintaining our financial viability. The
past two years have seen many successes and
several challenges:
 At the Sanitation District, I instigated the
investigation by Carl Knudsen into former
Administrator John Wallace’s practices and
delivered the result to the District Attorney.
After their own investigation, charges were
brought and Mr. Wallace was convicted of
criminal conflicts of interest, not only at the
Sanitation District but also at the Avila CSD.
Unfortunately, Wallace’s supporters on the
San District Board mounted retaliatory
personal and political attacks on our Grade
5-licensed plant superintendent, whom
they saw as aligned with me in bringing the
Wallace information to light. They used
their majority power to forcibly buy him
out. In an irony that would be comical had
it not cost residents tens of thousands of
dollars, our city council joined with those
Board members to have me investigated for
interfering in District personnel matters. I
am proud to have defended and stood by
our superintendent and to have closed out
the years of corruption at the San District.
 Carl Knudsen also investigated corruption at
the Integrated Waste Management Agency
and just reported his findings to the District
Attorney for further investigation. If I’m
reelected, I’ll continue effective oversight of
those other agencies to which I’m assigned.
 Our ongoing water conservation efforts
have provided more time to prepare for
wastewater recycling, the most economical
and environmentally sound answer to
declining reserves in our groundwater basin
and at Lopez Lake. “Central Coast Blue”, a
project we share with Pismo Beach and the
Sanitation District, provides a tangible
demonstration of our future ability to put
pure recycled water in the aquifer to
protect against seawater intrusion and
ultimately use for domestic purposes. We
need to continue the conservation habits
developed over recent years and to hold
the line on new residential developments
and annexation proposals. For residential
infill projects, we will continue our water-
neutral policy so that future development
must retrofit enough other locations to
completely offset their additional demand.
 Until now, we have carefully limited
spending and our financial reserves have
grown every year in response. This year we
have had serious budget challenges caused
by a combination of two important factors.
First, the CalPERS retirement system for
public employees has often not achieved
anticipated investment returns, causing
deficits in the State pension fund and
passing large unpredictable cost increases
(‘unfunded liabilities’) to California cities.
These increases have bankrupted cities
including Stockton and Vallejo. We have
used a portion of our reserve funds to make
significant additional payments and reduce
our overall pension liability. The city would
still be able to absorb these pension related
costs except for the second big challenge.
 That challenge is the 5-Cities Fire Authority.
Through the efforts of the paid officers and
largely volunteer firefighters, the Fire
Authority has delivered on the original
vision of great service for our area. But
increased training mandates in State and
Federal regulations and dramatic growth in
our area have made the original volunteer
model for firefighter positions untenable.
We need paid professional firefighter
positions with the increased resulting cost.
Unfortunately, the Fire Authority has failed
to address the redundant three-fire station
situation it inherited at its inception. The
Oceano and Grover Beach stations are so
close together as to have virtually identical
coverage areas and response times. The
current funding arrangement is also unfair,
costing Arroyo Grande disproportionately.
Instead of addressing these fundamental
problems, the Fire Authority Board voted to
adopt an economically unsustainable
“Strategic Plan” causing current and
projected future cost increases up to nearly
a million dollars per year for Arroyo
Grande! That plan would continue to
maintain all three stations and fully staff
them all with paid firefighters. Arroyo
Grande would have to compensate for
other members’ inability to fund this added
staffing. Further, the plan would have even
more chief officers than when each
jurisdiction had their own separate fire
departments! As early as mid-2019, we can
pull out of the Authority without penalty
and reconstitute our own Fire Department
with equivalent service at considerably less
cost. Withdrawing would return direct
financial control over fire protection to the
city and enable balanced budgets in the
future. But because of the need to stay
with the Authority into 2019, we have had
to make very difficult staff reductions and
service cuts to balance this year’s budget.
 Property taxes in the city are not sufficient
even to completely pay for our police
department, let alone fire protection, street
maintenance, parks, or any other services.
Thus, more residential developments will
only further challenge our ability to pay for
these essential and desired services. The
funding shortfalls we continually face from
property tax are made up with sales tax and
transient occupancy (hotel) taxes. Without
our businesses providing these additional
tax revenues, the city would not be able to
pay for a complete police department and
all the other benefits –including a balanced
budget- we all enjoy as residents. To
support our current lifestyle, taxes would
have to be raised on residents until none of
us could afford to stay here.
 It is essential that we support our existing
local businesses. Further, we need to
actively recruit new businesses to come to
Arroyo Grande. We have undeveloped and
underdeveloped properties in commercial
zones that will not contribute to our
financial benefit until they are built and
occupied with tax-generating businesses.
Until now, the city has passively encouraged