Facebook is a terrific free way to promote your campaign online. Most of the City Council candidates are using Facebook to promote their events and send campaign messages to their supporters. Recently, Facebook announced Facebook Places, a neat tool for those with the right mobile device. Not necessarily a campaign tool, but a clear indication of the continued growth and expansion of one of the most popular social networking phenomenons to date.

For those of you involved in local elections who are looking for assistance or guidance, I’d like to once again offer my support. I live and breathe this stuff on a daily basis and would be more than happy to share some techniques or offer guidance, no strings attached. I can’t help it. I love this stuff. It’s a sickness!

If you listened in to the live discussion last night with the challenging City Council Candidates, you heard a lot of criticism of the sitting Council and City Management regarding Farmers leaving the city. However, you may have also heard that none of the candidates had any definitive answers on what to do about it. The truth is that both a newcomer and a seasoned veteran would need to take a step back and consider the best game plan. I can choose to believe what everyone tells me about the Farmers Insurance training center, but unless I’m sitting in front of the Farmers Insurance decision makers, there’s no way to really know why it moved out of Simi Valley and if it truly marked the start of their ultimate exit plan. For all we know, it was a decision based purely on logistics. Either way, it’s done and the focus should be on filling that space.

If this weren’t an election cycle, we’d be looking at our current leadership for a strategy on how to make that happen. We’d be expecting them to represent our interests and interface with city management to entice a new tenant. But it’s election season, so naturally we wonder if new representation is needed.

In a time like this with a situation like this one, people are inclined to take risks. Some may consider the best risk to be voting for someone with new ideas. Others may consider the best risk to be voting for someone with experience in City Hall. But no matter what, I don’t think that now is the time to make that decision. We don’t know enough and we haven’t heard from everyone. Put those emotions on hold and wait for the discussion to continue.

And this may seem off topic, but it’s important to me to say…

Barbra Williamson is one of the boldest people on the City Council. It takes guts to put yourself out there like she does. You may not agree with her but you cannot argue that she isn’t honest. Before you get upset, I’m not talking about her positions, her policies or her opinions — I’m talking about her willingness to post on these blogs and engage the people on their turf. It’s hard, thankless work that’s got to sting at times. Barbra, thank you. Not everyone realizes it, but you are a very good listener even if you throw in an argument or two, and it means a great deal to me.

Moving on…

I plan to coordinate a chat with the incumbents to address many of the same issue we covered last night and to give them an opportunity to respond. I think you’ll see we have thoughtful people on both sides here. I’ll follow-up here when I’ve got more details.

What a great evening with the challenging City Council Candidates. Each candidate had plenty to share on topics such as doing business in Simi Valley, the Shop Simi Valley First program, City Council salary and benefits and more. I’m pleased to present the recorded playback of our live chat.

For more information about the candidates, see the following links:

• Keith Mashburn
• Ken Sandberg
• Mike Judge
• Mitch Green (no public website or Facebook page yet – look-up Mitchell Green on Facebook)

In our 90 minutes of time, we did NOT cover all the topics I was hoping to touch on. Hopefully these candidates will return to cover some additional topics before the election.

My sincere thanks to the participants and for those of you who listened in. More to come, I hope!

Listen Now!

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Ted Mackel, local technology guru, shows us all how in his latest how-to video. Check it out and consider giving it a try:

The comments need to be turned around. I’m comfortable with the remarks tossed in my direction, but when people I consider to be community leaders and personal friends prefer to stay away instead of join the conversation, then this becomes pointless for me.

Pseudonyms make us say what we ordinarily wouldn’t in public. That’s fine if what you have to say is really moving or particularly relevant. But if it’s just a personal shot at someone else, then I don’t want it here. Consider that before you hit the Submit Comment button.

I’ve banned a few commentators today in the hopes of restoring order. Please try to be respectful of this website’s “main thing” as well as the requests of our candidates to show support while keeping it civil. You can read their positions on negative comments by clicking the hyperlinks that appear right above the box where you submit your comments.

Thank you.

City Councilmembers acknowledged that the city employees are making sacrafices and are grateful for that in these rough economical times. Councilman Steve Sojka was quoted in the Simi Valley Acorn acknowledging that city employees are effectively taking a cut in an effort to help the city keep its head above water during hard times.  The Acorn article elaborates on the deal:

That help included the SEIU’s making significant concessions concerning employee retirement plans. Under the terms of the new agreement, current employees will contribute 3.97 percent and all new employees—hired on or after July 1, 2010—will contribute 7 percent of salary to the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS).

The change is expected to save the city $1.65 million.

It’s probably a sure bet that the city employees aren’t necessarily happy with the deal or walking away from negotiations with a warm fuzzy feeling. Nobody wants to make sacrifices in either the form of reduced pay, reduced benefits, or suddenly having to contribute more to a benefits program when not having to worry about that in the past. Speaking personally, I can say with sincerity that I am VERY grateful for the sacrifices made by our city employees. Thank you!

But the negotiations aren’t over yet. Simi Valley Police were asked to make pay cuts last year and did so after a lengthy and dramatic negotiation process, where the Police Officers Association (POA) considered hiring a Public Relations firm to spread the word about the issue. Once the terms were settled, the POA was clearly unhappy with the resulting cut in salaries and shortly after announced the formation of their Political Action Committee (PAC). The PAC is funded by an increase in POA union dues.

Despite the fact that other city employees were asked to take cuts in pay, a strong belief remains that the pay cut applied to Police Officers in Simi Valley was unfair. With more contract negotiations looming, anticipation is certainly beginning to build. City Council Candidate Mike Judge has something to say about it to his supporters, suggesting that “pro law enforcement” sentiments by our current City Council are disingenuous (see his remarks below on his campaign page on Facebook).

Our City Leadership scored some points with the negotiations with city employees, but it’s obvious there’s more challenging work ahead.

City Council Candidate Mike Judge on Facebook

Dear City Council,

Please encourage the outraged neighbors who will be attending the City Council meeting tomorrow to learn how to communicate with their neighbors without intervention by police or with new laws on the books. There are so many better things to address than someone who can’t communicate to their neighbor that their dog barks too much.  However, if you’re going to cave in, rather than creating new laws, please instead contribute the anticipated funds to enforce those laws into dog training courses for Simi residents.  Thanks!

Love, Mike

It’s true, outraged neighbors plan to make their problems with barking dogs known at the City Council meeting tomorrow, May 11th.  With any luck, they may be able to get a new law approved making it an actionable offense to allow your dog to bark excessively.  Only recently, a law was recently approved for the books making it a crime to feed certain kinds of birds, even on your private property.

I received an email several weeks back from a lady who lives in the Woodrach neighborhood in Simi Valley.  She’s lived there for a while and has a problem with her neighbor.  She’d like to move, but the current real estate market has her pinned down to her home, so that’s not an option.  The problem she’s having is her neighbor like’s to relax in the sun in his backyard in the nude.  When he’s feeling really frisky, he’ll go so far as to… well… you know.  It doesn’t seem to bother him at all that he’s visible by his neighbor, and her kids for that matter.  Pretty disgusting?  You bet.  Anything she can do to get this problem with her disgusting neighbor solved?  Surprisingly, no!

Her calls to the police have indicated now on multiple instances that this guy’s behavior, while disgusting and wrong on many levels, is not a crime.  He’s engaging in activity on his private property, bottom line.  No one can touch him.  Hard to believe, but it’s the truth.

If City Council is going to do anything to make something unlawful, it should be something like the situation I just described.  This is a real problem, it’s happening regularly, it’s offensive to residents and potentially harmful to children.  Barking dogs, on the other hand, not so much.

I have dogs.  They bark.  Three years ago, my neighbor knocked on our door to tell me that my dogs were waking her up late at night.  It turned out that a rat would venture into our backyard to eat the dates from a palm tree.  My dogs didn’t like that.  When she told me what was happening, I got to the bottom of the issue, called an exterminator to remove the rat, brought the dogs inside at night, and we all slept peacefully.  Easy.

Perhaps if we kept small issues like barking dogs out of City Council, we’d have more protection against disgusting, horrifying issues like the one described above.

Simi Valley, on the other hand, is different.  Few people are worried about losing their jobs, but it seems those that are concerned are willing to accept a pay cut and aren’t anticipating pay increases.  Here are the results.

Q.1 Are you concerned that your position might be laid off or terminated within the next 6 months?
YES – 16%
NO – 84%

Q.2 Are you concerned that your position might be laid off or terminated within the next 12 months?
YES – 37%
NO – 63%

Q.3 Would you be willing to accept a pay cut if you believed your job was in jeopardy?
YES – 74%
NO – 26%

Q.4 Are you expecting a salary increase within the next 12 months?
YES – 53%
NO – 47%

Q.5 If you usually receive an annual bonus, do you expect to receive one in 2009?
YES – 21%
NO – 26%
NOT SURE – 53%

The question I have is what level of obligation will the city of Simi Valley take on in regards to the increasing unemployment rate?  Does the city have programs in place to help match local employers with local job seekers?  I know the private sector has services in place at a significant cost to employers, unfortunately.  Also, there are programs at the State and County level as well.

My interest in this topic relates to a personal project in progress.  As the city chops millions of dollars from their budget, it’s difficult to predict what programs they’ll have in place to help boost our economy.  Having said that, I’m redeveloping an existing application that I plan to use as a tool to match employers with job seekers in Simi Valley.  The concept in my mind truly keeps business in town and reduces expenses.  Matching local job hunters with local employers keeps our cash flow local and reduces fuel expenses, saving individuals’ dollars and boosting our local economy.

I’m hoping to fine tune the application and relaunch it as a completely free service.  I’m also hoping for the city’s endorsement or support, but I’m ready to press on without it.  I look forward to your feedback if you have any.

To give me a better sense of how to prepare my site content, could you please assist me by taking the following survey?  I promise you, it’s extremely painless and super fast.  It’ll give me a clear sense of the minds of the Simi Valley working class.

http://www.polldaddy.com/s/422487E04994F8AC/

Thanks so much for your help!

* Restaurant/Entertainment Blog – Rate, review and discuss Simi Valley’s dining options and entertainment venues
* Fitness Blog – How best to stay fit and in shape in Simi Valley
* Neighborhood Blog – Meet your Simi Valley neighbors, a blog about stars in the community
* Business Blog – The ins and outs of doing business in Simi Valley

Of course, we’ll defer to Brian Dennert for those interested in reading about local government!

This website will be free for everyone who joins, and ANYONE who joins is free to create and publish their own blog. Each member blog is hosted free and uses the powerful WordPress blogging engine, a professional level tool that is easy to customize. Members will be encouraged to create personal profiles, meet new Simi Valley friends online, join groups, discuss issues in the forums and promote their events and businesses free.

Technology is a terrific way to promote unity and to give all members of the Simi Valley Community a voice. For those interested in participating and helping me launch this online community, please contact me.