THE ISSUES

TERM LIMITS

At present, Mr. van Doorn's opponent has served for sixteen years as your county supervisor. Each of the other four supervisors of this county are either completing their third term or are presently serving or completing their fourth term.

While it could be argued that there are benefits to having elected county officials with this level of experience, one can also make the case that without the influx of new leadership, our government’s agenda for our county will eventually become stagnant and fail to meet the future needs of our county’s residents. John believes that this is the position we find ourselves in today, and here are his reasons why:

• We’ve suffered two seasons of major firestorms, and while the addition of Reverse E-911 has been a blessing this past year, the County Board of Supervisors has done little if anything to protect the residences of the people of this county from this force of nature since the Harmony Grove fire of the late 1980’s. In fact, with the elimination of our county labor camps by the current members of the Board of Supervisors, we are at greater risk of loss from wildfire than ever before.

• Too many years have gone by and we are still debating about how or where to expand our airport.

• Discussions about the Chargers and a new stadium continue without any real advances.

• The county keeps growing and in this coming year, we are all being required to reduce our water usage. Where was the planning! Was there any planning? What plans are being made today to meet the water needs for the San Diegan’s of tomorrow?

• We continue to dump tons of sewage and wastewater into our ocean, yet for years we have had the technological means to recycle our waste water (as was done by the City of San Diego). If we had built water recycling facilities over the past 10-15 years, we would have an alternative non-potable water source available to mitigate the present water shortage while also reducing the damage we currently inflict on our local coastal ecology.

We San Diegan's know all too well what transpires when an elected official becomes too obligated to the special interests that fund their continued stay in office. And to a lesser degree, we all know and many have experienced how the public is ill-served when an elected official becomes too comfortable in office; little effort is made by our elected leaders to comprehend and express genuine concern for every issue of importance to their constituent base. Each is the direct consequence of allowing an elected official to remain too long in office.

John van Doorn believes the people of San Diego County are best served when we do not allow the office of County Supervisor to become a life-long professional entitlement! This is after all, the People’s government, YOUR government! Not Pam Slater-Price’s, not Bill Horn’s, nor Dianne Jacob’s, or Mr. Robert’s, or Mr. Cox’s. This government belongs to all of us!

As such, …

• John van Doorn believes that holders of the office of County Supervisor should be limited to two terms in that office.

• Mr. van Doorn promises to fight continually for changes to the County Charter, that would place such limitations on the term of this office,

• In the absence of such limitations, John promises to voluntarily impose such limits on himself.

CORRUPTION AND INCOMPETENCE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

At present, we have a county government that frequently violates the rights of its citizens. Many times these offenses come about as a result of accident or neglect on the part of a county employee. But many of these offenses are a result of misguided county policy or by deliberate action on the part of a county employee or management. Both types of offenses, when they occur, should be followed up with identification and correction of the offending act, and if necessary, reparations should be made to the offended citizen.

To ‘protect’ the public, an Ombudsman Office is provided within each county agency and empowered to investigate complaints as they are brought to that agency’s attention. Unfortunately, because these functions are built into the agency they are entrusted to ‘police’, the Ombudsman Office has become corrupted and is little more than a ‘clearinghouse’ for the collection of information regarding county misdeeds. Very few citizen's complaints, if any, result in a report being openly shared with the injured citizen, and the information collected is more likely to be used to protect the agency rather than to restore the injured citizen. In addition, since the findings of an investigation are kept within the agency, the Board of Supervisors can cleverly avoid being advised of (and thereby accountable for) any wrong one of their constituents may suffer. The Ombudsman Office does not protect the public, rather, the Ombudsman shields our County Supervisors from accountability to their voters!

To learn more, go to my “What You Should Know About County Government” tab and click on the article “The Ombudsman Does Not Protect You!”

In addition, our county government is essentially an extension of our state government. Much of what our county government does is mandated by State or Federal Law, and, as a result, the State of California and the Federal Government must reimburse the county for performing these functions. The more ‘services’ the county provides, the greater the reimbursement. And our county does a great job at providing as many reimbursed services as they can!

For instance, with each child placed in foster care, the county collects Federal funding that is in excess of the cost to the county for the care of that child. For each county citizen (properly or improperly) identified as a possible child abuser, the county collects a reimbursement. For each non-custodial parent in the child support courts, the more the county can show that this parent owes and the more money the county can collect from this parent, the more the county receives from the Federal government.

In each instance, California law specifies that the county must act in the best interest of the public. Instead, many of our county's citizens, Mr. van Doorn included, have discovered that the county prefers to act in its own best interest, that being to maximize Federal and State reimbursements. What exactly does this mean for each of us, the people of San Diego County?

• With the foster care system, many children are placed in county custody that don't need to be. And we all pay for that!

• Within the child abuse prevention system, many individuals are falsely identified as child abusers and their names are submitted to a state ‘criminal’ database. This in spite of the lack of any evidence that might suggest that an act of abuse had even happened in the first place. And you cannot correct this 'mistake' of the county through legal actions or otherwise!

• Within our local child support enforcement agency, the objectives are many; to falsely name another as father if the true father cannot be located, to deny a person paying child support his or her rights to a fair hearing, to object to any efforts by an individual to conduct discovery and demonstrate to the Court that support has been set too high or imposed on the wrong individual.

In each case, the county shows its preference to do whatever is necessary to maximize the reimbursements that are received and little if any concern is given to the unconscionable damage that is forced on the families of this county.  

To learn more, go to my “What You Should Know About County Government” tab and click on the article “Drunk at the Federal Punchbowl!”

In summary, if John van Doorn should receive the honor of being elected as your next County Supervisor, John promises…

• to work tirelessly to expose and put an end to the incompetence and corruption that currently exists in our county's agencies and provide a voice that affords our county government no "cover" in continuing to accept and practice such incompetence and corruption,

• that he will lobby our Legislators in Sacramento and Washington to change the manner in which our county's mandated programs are compensated, such that payments to the county are no longer based solely on the quantity of services provided but rather, reimbursements will be made based on the quantity and QUALITY of services provided,

• And that he will work to restructure the role of the Ombudsman within each county department, such that this 'internal affairs' function no longer reports to the Director of the potentially offending agency, but rather, that all Ombudsman's findings are reported directly to the Board of Supervisors, thereby providing a legitimate path of 'grievance' to the People of this County, one that PLACES FULL ACCOUNTABILITY ON THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS!

BETTER PLANNING FOR OUR COUNTY’S INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDS

So much of our present infrastructure is operating at maximum capacity, or worse, is deficient to meet our current needs. As such, many of us have had to bear a burden in the form of longer commutes, higher water costs, power outages, loss of property (firestorms), etc.

If elected, Mr. van Doorn will utilize his experience in the engineering field to devise viable short and long term development plans for this county’s infrastructure. John will seek out partnerships, both individual and corporate, in which all work together as a community to remedy our current "bare-bones" infrastructure. And he will work to pro-actively plan the future infrastructure needs of this county, such that the county our children and grandchildren take over from us is better equipped to meet and exceed the needs of that day.

It is John's position that, ….

• in regard to auto transportation,

• We need to make certain that the current widening projects along the I-5 and I-15 corridors are the last that are ever needed (we need better mass transit systems and we need to couple those transportation systems with better community planning, through the development of lower-income, higher density housing at mass transportation nodes).

• The same concern applies to the main transportation corriders along I-8 east and I-5 / I-805 to the south at such time as they are improved.

• in regard to air transportation,

• I believe that we do not need our own international airport nor can we independently afford one! Neither does the County of Orange or Riverside or San Bernardino. But collectively, we have a combined need for such a facility (as our present airports are overburdened).

• I will begin discussions to look into combining our collective resources (political and financial) and if such is determined to be feasible, to identify a joint airport location that will service the air cargo and international transportation needs of our respective counties .

• Combined with this, I will initiate a study into alternatives for rapid transportation that would connect such an airport to each county's respective civic centers and airports, as well as ensuring the development of ready access between such an airport and our present interstate highways.

• in regard to firestorm defense,

• I believe that buying more helicopters and ground equipment, as our present Board of Supervisors is discussing, is NOT ENOUGH! It is but one part of the solution, but it is NOT the entire solution for our protection!

• I believe that we need to be immediately reinstitute the prison honor camps and have fire breaks cut into our adjoining wilderness before the fires come!

• I believe that we need to work with fire experts and environmental advocates and come up with a firestorm preparation plan that provides the best preparation for setting backfires and protecting the boundary of communities when the firestorms come (and they will!). And we need to make these preparations in such a manner that we minimize the damage inflicted on our local environment.

• I believe that we need to enter into cooperative ventures with industry and our local universities, with the purpose of inventing and procuring a new arsenal of tools for use by our firefighters.

• And last, I believe that we need to work with homeowners (and developers), those whose residences (and developments) form the boundary of our more denser neighborhoods with nature, and we need to provide them with tax incentives to improve these properties, such that a "defensible boundary" is formed along the fringes of the denser regions of our county (such as the residences in Crosby Ranch that withstood the onslaught of this latest fire without the benefit of our best firefighting defenses).

• In regard to water and sewage,

• I believe that we should be re-using all water that is used in our county.

• I believe that we need to commit to the building of water reclamation facilities (such as that built by the City of San Diego), by ourselves or through private industry, and we need to re-plumb our county over the next 50 years to take advantage of this "wasted" resource.

• I believe that we need, where possible, to facilitate and encourage investment in reverse-osmosis plants to help us meet our ever-growing needs for water.

• in regard to electrical power,

  • I believe that we need to do what we can today to create a 'greener' mix of power used by the county.

  • We are facing a 'crisis' in the real estate and construction industries, and a number of talented San Diego residents are facing unemployment. I advocate using our local community colleges to re-educate these workers, creating a workforce well-versed in the planning and implementation of small wind and solar energy installations, and thereby taking full advantage of Gov. Schwarzenegger's Million Roofs Initiative.

  • I believe that we need to provide property tax credits to local home and business owners for participating in this effort, and by doing so, we will create an environment where we are all working together to keep our local workers employed while also reducing our reliance on power generating facilities outside of our geographic area.