Questions for City Council Candidates 2016 – John Mangelos

Questions for City Council 2016 – John Mangelos

1. Please tell us about yourself, your interest in serving on the city council and what strengths you feel you bring to the Ripon City Council.

As a lifelong resident of Ripon I’ve always had an interest in the betterment of our community. I feel I’ve been successful in a number of public interest ventures over the past 35 plus years in our community, I would like to continue my service to our community by serving on our city council.

1. In your opinion, what are the three most important values or concepts city staff and the city council should emphasize in planning for the city’s future?
   

Quality of life Preservation of historical values Building a bright future.

1. What do you feel are the biggest issues our city is facing and what would your plans be to work toward remedying them?
   

Retention of our experienced and trained police officers, we need to have a compensation structure that is equivalent with the departments that are drawing our officers away.

1. What do you envision for the city of Ripon in the next 5-10 years?
   

I envision Ripon to be a vibrant city in the near future, I see us retaining our uniqueness, through the support of small family style businesses that offer services that enhance our community. Not the big box stores of our neighbors to the North and South, but a small town with family friendly businesses.

1. What actions do you think should be taken to preserve and enhance the city’s downtown area?
   

We need to attract family style restaurants, traditional service stores such as shoe repair shops and seamstress/tailor. Unique eating experience’s gourmet food shops, local wine tasting, artisan cheese stores, microbreweries etc. We need to seek out businesses that carry on the traditions of Ripon. Our city needs to be more welcoming on an administrative level, embracing these businesses and extending a helping hand to them as opposed to making it difficult to enter our community.

1. What are some of your other goals or ideas for our city or is there anything else you’d like to add?
   

I am most concerned with preserving what we have, we have a wonderful community and I love that. What I hope to do is to enhance what we have by leading us in a direction to make us better, cultivating businesses that promote art, food, or culture, while retaining the values that have made our community all that it is.

1. Several years back our city had to cut back during the recession by letting many positions go which we still haven’t filled. With the growing population, how do you plan to pay for the necessary infrastructure to maintain our quality of life and not become South Manteca or North Modesto?
   

We need to analyze the budget and allocate our resources in the wisest ways possible. We seem to spend an awful lot of our budget on outside services for studies, for legal services, and others. We should reevaluate the current way we do business as a city and change to be more efficient with our limited funds. We need to have limited growth to help fund the future infrastructure needs of our community.