2005 State of the County

By Richard Gordon

County of San Mateo

State of the County Address Redwood City/San Mateo County Chamber of Commerce Progress Seminar + April 16, 2005

Creating the Constituency for Change

Eight years ago this week you elected me to serve as a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. It has been an honor and a privilege to be able to serve this community as a member of the Board. I presently work with an outstanding group of public officials + Supervisors Mark Church, Jerry Hill, Rose Jacobs Gibson, and Adrienne Tissier. They are individuals with courage and commitment. They have elected me this to be the President of this Board of Supervisors and, as has become the tradition, I come to this Progress Seminar as Board President to provide a State of the County address.

I have thought about this responsibility and it occurred to me that I could discuss the accomplishments of the past year.

Since we last convened here, we passed Measure A to guarantee transportation dollars for the next decades. The voters of California embraced Proposition 1A which should provide security in funding for local government. The County has established a new Department of Housing to give this issue a new priority. We survived the Peterson trail. We continue to be a safe county with one of the lowest crime rates in the state. And test scores at our schools are up.

I also thought that I could discuss the problems that we face.

Housing our people is a major problem. Housing prices have risen to the point that the median home price is now above $800,000 and only eighteen percent of San Mateo County households could afford to buy their home today. We have an under-funded public hospital and a growing number of uninsured citizens which has lead to a debate about charity care. Our jail is overcrowded. One-third of our children are overweight. Our population is aging and living longer requiring new levels of care.

So I could have discussed our accomplishments and our problems.

But what I want to discuss is what I believe is the biggest single challenge facing us. And that is the creation of a constituency for change.

John Kennedy once said, "The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."

"The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."

In fact the only constant is change.

In 1950 my parents bought their first home in San Mateo for less than $20,000. There is a family photo of my dad and me, as a two-year old, standing in the mud with the stick framing of a house behind us. That house would be our home and the mud would be paved as Monterey Street. We lived just off of Hillsdale Boulevard. There were no other houses up the hill and we could look over the fence of our backyard and see a large vacant property below us. Hillsdale High School was later built on that property.

When we lived on Monterey Street, we shopped on Third and Fourth Avenues in San Mateo. My sisters got most of their clothes at Levy Brothers. When we went to downtown San Mateo, my sisters did not want to drive down El Camino; they wanted to go by way of the Alameda de las Pulgas. There were horses in the corrals along the Alameda where now there is the California Casualty building and four lanes of Highway 92.

We later moved to the edge of Hillsborough. At the end of our block was a large open field. As a nine, ten, and eleven year old boy I would go into that field with my friends. Every spring there was a pond and we watched the tadpoles grow into frogs. Later we would collect the frogs.

Now I want to be very clear that this was well before we knew anything about seasonal wetlands and long before the frog was endangered.

Today that pond is under Interstate 280.

From that house in Hillsborough we could look across the valley formed by San Mateo Creek to the hills of San Mateo. One day I noticed buildings going up and I asked my parents what was happening. They said that the students would no longer be forced to attend classes in Quonset huts at Coyote Point as a new College of San Mateo was being built to guarantee quality education.

My parents looked at all of this + Hillsdale High School, Highway 92, Interstate 280, and the College of San Mateo + and they called it progress. I guess that was before development became a dirty word.

The point is this: San Mateo County is not the place it once was.

The Ohlones who fished along San Mateo Creek and build their shell mounds there would not recognize this place today. The Spaniards who built their ranchos here would not recognize this place today. The railroad barons and the financiers who built their summer mansions here to escape the fog of San Francisco would not recognize this place today. The hog farmers would be surprised to see that the slaughterhouse in South San Francisco has been replaced by businesses that use technology and science to extend life. My grandfather who settled in San Mateo after World War II would not recognize this place today.

And we will not recognize this place twenty to thirty years from now.

Humor me for just a minute. Get out your secret decoder rings and dial up the future. What will San Mateo County be like thirty years from now?

There will be vibrant downtowns where mixed-use buildings allow for retail and residential uses. The average height of a building in these downtowns is now eight stories. Everyone has been surprised how young families have embraced the town homes in these buildings. In fact, there are so many children living in our downtowns that there has been a cry for more tot lots and play space.

Fortunately, on many commercial corners there are vacant lots where gas stations used to be. These are now being converted into parks. The gas stations started closing when gas prices reached $25 per gallon. Folks switched to hybrid, solar, and electric cars and the SamTrans fleet of electric shuttle vehicles are effectively and efficiently moving people around the county. These vehicles join the pedestrians and bicyclists that use the Grand Boulevard that connects our communities. You may remember when the Grand Boulevard was known as El Camino Real.

The crime rate remains very low. The two police departments that serve the county have developed efficiencies and skills in investigation that have made them among the best in the state.

It was very fortunate that in 2006 the voters of San Mateo County passed a sales tax measure. With this Parks for the Future tax, we've maintained and expanded our open space and have provided new recreational opportunities in the network of regional and local parks.

We all remember when the county fair closed because the state ended its subsidy for local fairs. Fortunately, with the cooperation of the University of California we were able to build the Center for Agricultural Excellence at the U.C. Elkus Ranch just south of Half Moon Bay. The annual festival there each year in August which celebrates agriculture, our 4-H programs, and eco-tourism has proven to be very popular.

With the closure of the county fair the land at the former Expo Center became the home of our world-class convention center. The convention center is a popular destination because it is conveniently located with a station for high-speed rail located directly inside the center. The monorail that connects the convention center to the bay front hotels and SFO is also very popular.

The state of the art desalination plant that we built at Redwood Shores is providing for all of our water needs. This proved to be very important because when San Francisco was forced to tear down the O'Shaughnessy Dam and restore Hetch Hetchy Valley, we had enough water. In fact, we are now selling water to San Francisco.

It doesn't matter whether your fantasy of the future is anything like this Flash Gordon's future, the message is: We will change. Change is inevitable. It is the only constant.

In fact there must be change. A community is like a living organism and all living organisms need to constantly renew. We either grow, evolve, live or we stagnate, decompose, and die.

There is a Chinese proverb that says, "If we do not change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed."

And so, it is important that the change should be planned. We can create the change that we want. We can make the change work for us. We can manage the change. By the choices we make we can influence the change.

Many times over the last several years, many of us in this room have gathered at what I call the "Temple of the Converted". You may know it as the Oracle Conference Center. We've been there for transportation forums, for housing symposiums, for transportation and housing workshops, for economic updates, and leadership days. And when we have gathered at the Temple of the Converted we have held hands and chanted the mantra: "Transit Oriented Development. "Transit Oriented Development".

Yet, there has not been much progress. We've had a hard time making this vision a reality. I believe that this is because there is no constituency for change.

It is a law of physics that it takes more energy to get something moving when it is sitting still, than the energy it takes to keep something moving that is already in motion. It's called inertia. People have inertia. We are creatures that do not like change.

If you ask the average citizen and voter how they feel, they will report being fairly satisfied with life her in San Mateo County. Yes, you will hear some complaints about traffic. But, generally people are satisfied. We have a very low unemployment rate, so people have jobs. The folks who live here are in houses of high value. We enjoy good schools and have great access to quality health care choices.

The average person works hard and long and comes home to collapse. They aren't very involved. And yet, we have seen them mobilized to stop development and change. You've heard them. They say:

"I don't understand why they want to build more housing. All of my neighbors have houses and there are enough people here already."

"I like it the way it is."

"I moved here because it was the suburbs."

"What's in it for me?"

"If they want tall buildings, let them move to New York."

For the past several years I have been involved with a small and eclectic group of people known has the Housing Nachos. We have explored civic engagement as a step in the solution to the problem of housing. We discovered a group in San Diego called Viewpoint Learning. They are affiliated with the pollster, Daniel Yankelovich. We contracted with them to put on a series of community dialogues. These were all day events for groups of citizens who were selected using polling techniques. That meant that the participants were a demographic representation of the county + they weren't the folks who typically show up at public hearings. Using polling techniques the opinions of these people were measured at the beginning and the end of the day. There was a significant shift in opinion after they had spent a day getting impartial facts and discussing consequences for various actions. The key finding of the work of the Housing Nachos is that when people are sufficiently engaged in policy issues, they will give thought to the trade-offs that have to be made. When you do engage people they will thoughtfully find the common ground. And they will support change.

I believe that we need a new way to engage people in policy decisions. Our traditional process is debate, advocacy, and decision making. We need a process of community engagement and dialogue to precede this traditional process. Such dialogue can help uncover assumptions, share and broaden perspectives, and find common ground. Such dialogue and community discussion enables the later debate and decision making to be more productive.

The folks at Viewpoint Learning point out that there is a difference between debate and dialogue. Dialogue isn't about winning; it's about finding common ground. Dialogue isn't listening to find flaws; it's listening to understand. And dialogue isn't about seeking an outcome that agrees with your position; it's about discovering new possibilities and opportunities.

This community conversation, dialogue, and civic engagement will allow us to accomplish the following:

First, it will allow us to build trust. This may be the single most important thing we need to do. There is a disconnect between our leaders and our citizens.

The leaders see people who want everything, but who don't want to pay for it. The public, however, sees their tax dollars disappearing into the black box of budgeting and they see decision making controlled by special interests and partisan bickering.

The leaders see an apathetic and uninformed public. And the public sees government doing little of value to address the challenges that matter most to them.

We need to bridge this gap. We need to build trust and dialogue can help us.

Secondly, we need a community conversation to create a shared vision for our future. I believe that this collective vision must be bold and dynamic. I would remind you that what holds us back is not the pressure of reality, but the absence of dreams. If the dream is strong enough, no reality can stand in the way.

Finally, I believe that a community dialogue can provide the political will necessary to more forward and allow us to bridge the gap between concept and real projects.

To create the constituency for change we will need a new level of community engagement and dialogue. I suspect that there are many ways to get there + many ways to move people off their couches and into the community. Many of you are exploring with techniques. There are citizen academies, community forums, and visioning projects underway in many of our communities.

To create the constituency for change will take work and commitment. And I believe that it will require a renewed faith in our people.

At the beginning of these remarks I used a quotation from John Kennedy. Since I am elected to a non-partisan office I would like, as I near the end of these remarks, to quote from Ronald Reagan.

Reagan once said, "The history of our civilization, the great advances that made it possible, is not a story of cynics or doom criers. It is a gallant chronicle of the optimists, the determined people, men and women, who dreamed great dreams and dared to try whatever it took to make them come true."

". . . the optimists, the determined people, men and women, who dreamed great dreams and dared to try whatever it took to make them come true."

As I look out at the audience this morning, I see collected here the leadership of San Mateo County.

You know that there will be change. You also know that we must change.

I believe that it is our collective responsibility as leaders to engage our citizens in a new level of civic engagement, community conversation, dialogue, and involvement. To do so is to create the constituency for change.

I would remind you that leadership is the art of convincing others that their dreams can be realized and that their actions will make a difference.

As leaders we are stewards of this time and place. There is an African proverb that says, "The earth is not left to us by our parents, it is lent to us by our children."

We are responsible for the future.

My prayer this morning is that our children, our children's children, and their children will look back on this time and judge us well. I hope that they will be able to say that we choose well. I hope that they will say that we were good stewards and that we left this place better than we found it.