Lopez Deception

The Truth

"21,000 acres of farmland in our County. Gone."

Here are two links to the report, cited by the Lopez campaign for this misstatement on the left.

You can read the report for yourself.

http://www.farmland.org/resources/futureisnow/documents/
FutureIsNow_SummaryPamphlet_Aug2006.pdf

http://www.farmland.org/programs/states/futureisnow/
developmentefficiency.asp

To summarize, despite the challenges of balancing the loss of good farmland with growth, Stanislaus County and its cities are ranked 3rd of 11 Central Valley counties in preserving farmland.

Here is an actual quote from the report, rather than some extrapolated distortion:

“Since 2000, the county has approved 16 general plan amendments that resulted in the conversion of 512 acres of farmland. Most of this was within city spheres of influence. (Stanislaus County Planning Dept.)”

This results in Stanislaus county being ranked #1 in "Lowest per Capita AG Land Consumption" for farmland urbanization.

With that in mind, here are some other facts you can find for yourself:

The California Research Bureau, at the request of Assembly Member Juan Arambula D- Fresno has published an article in 2005, written by Dr. Kenneth Umback that states that Stanislaus County Farmland has INCREASED by 1%, between 1997 and 2002.

San Joaquin Valley: Land, People and Economy, page 94.

www.library.ca.gov/crb/05/07/05-007.pdf

"Jeff Grover has taken $51,000 in campaign contributions from big developers."

Note that the very small fine print combines the campaign contributions from the 2002 campaign, four years ago, with the contributions from the current 2006 campaign. Also note that while Jeff Grover raised developer fees by 285%, Gary Lopez received the single largest contribution from any developer in the entire campaign, Ron Malik. Mr. Malik wants to change industrial land and the agricultural buffer in the Salida area to build more houses. This move goes against the Salida plan, agreed to by the community, and puts the incorporation of Salida into a city in jeopardy.

Lopez Deception

The Truth

Health Care for Retired Public Employees
“Voted to slash health care for retired public employees, including thousands of retired AFSCME members.”

 False Information in two ways:

1.) Retirement benefits for public employees are determined by a separate board, StanCERA. This Board is independent from the Board of Supervisors. The StanCERA Board composition has a majority of current and retired county employees.

Jeff NEVER voted on this issue.

2.) To help retired County employee members cope with high health care costs, Jeff did support allowing retirees to buy insurance at the lower rates in the County’s current health insurance program.

Retired County employees have saved THOUSANDS of $$$ on Health Care because of this vote.

Outsourcing
“Repeatedly voted to outsource our jobs in Stanislaus County to the highest corporate bidder.”

No County jobs have been lost to outsourcing since Grover took office.

There is one contract in Salida, where a Special District’s residents voted to raise their annual assessments and contract with a private landscape firm to provide maintenance for their 6 miles of streetscapes and 22 acres of new parks.
The County administers this contract for the Special District.

No jobs were displaced, because the County was short of staff to do this additional work.

AND

The Salida Special District CSA10 is now saving $$$ thousands per year.
The county parks department estimated it would cost county staff $400,000 per year to do the job.
The private firm’s bid was fixed at $90,000 per year for 3 years.

Cousin’s Landscaping
“Twice gave his cousin’s landscaping business lavish contracts to do work that should be done by county employees – at taxpayer expense.”

No truth here ….

First, the City Council of Modesto has contracted with Grover Landscaping for their parks maintenance.
The city is a completely separate agency from the county. Supervisors don’t vote on city contracts.

Second, for the record, the county does not provide maintenance for city parks.

Third, both contracts were awarded through a competitive bid process. In each case the public agency had opportunity
to compete for the work.

Fourth, for the record, both agencies are saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars annually with these landscape contracts.
Isn’t that what we elect leaders to do?

Gary Lopez’s County Experience
“…as a member of the Modesto County School Board.”

Gary serves on the Modesto CITY School Board.

Gary has no experience serving at the COUNTY level.

Lopez Deception

The Truth

Supervisor Pay
“Because Jeff Grover took the lead…on taking pay raises…two in four years…at taxpayer expense.”

Based on Board of Supervisor Minutes

Since 2003, the Board has been eligible for 11 automatic pay raises.  2 were taken.

9 times Jeff and the Board voted to deny themselves an automatic raise.

Local Unemployment
“Meanwhile our local unemployment rate went from bad to worse.”

CA Employment Develop. Dept.:
1/03 , 1/06 (StanislausCounty fell from 47th to 52nd in the state for worst unemployment rate.)

Based on research from the INDEPENDENT Stanislaus Alliance…

And using data from the SAME state agency…

The County has IMPROVED.  See the facts below:

CA Employment Develop. Dept. Data – Average for each year