BY ALEX CANTATORE
Staff Reporter
While all of the Turlock City Council candidates have signs up across town spouting various slogans, incumbent Vice Mayor Kurt Vander Weide’s tagline of “Standing Tall for Turlock” is, undoubtedly, the most tongue-in-cheek of the quintet. Not only has the candidate strongly served the city council for the past four years, but, at well over six feet in height, Vander Weide does quite literally stand tall.
Double entendre aside, Vander Weide truly considers his candidacy to be defined by his wide-ranging political and community experience.
Not only has Vander Weide been actively involved with the Turlock Poultry and Dairy Festival and the Kiwanis Club of Greater Turlock, but he has also served on the steering committees for the San Joaquin County Valley Water Coalition and the Crows Landing Air Facility.
At California State University, Stanislaus, Vander Weide was elected as the Associated Students Senator for Graduate Studies. He later served on the CSUS Alumni Board of Directors for seven years.
Vander Weide spent four years as a Chamber Ambassador for the Turlock Chamber of Commerce, sat on the Turlock Mosquito Abatement District Board of Trustees for six years, and was a member of the inaugural class of Leadership Turlock. In 2004 Vander Weide even played Willie Wonka in the Denair Gaslight Theater’s production of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Despite these myriad experiences, perhaps the most important is the fact that the incumbent Vice Mayor is the only returning candidate on this year’s council ballot. According to Vander Weide, that experience is a crucial difference between him and his competitors.
“I had some assumptions (coming into office) that were overtaken by new conclusions on how government does and does not work,” Vander Weide said. “There are so many differences between government and business. I wish you had as much freedom in government as you have in business.”
Of course, Vander Weide was not always as informed about politics as he is today. Growing up on a small farm in Ripon, a 40-acre ranch with 12 acres of walnuts, Vander Weide’s formative years were spent as far away from the council chambers as one can get.
“The almonds were always hot and dusty, but I loved the walnuts,” Vander Weide recalled fondly.
Unfortunately, his parent’s farm really didn’t pay the bills due to its small size. To make ends meet, his father ran a construction business building barns on the side.
Vander Weide became a working member of his family early, driving the tractor around the ranch by age five-”very slowly,” he adds-and starting work for his father’s barn building company when he was just 12. It was a deconstruction job in Livermore that he remembers as if it were yesterday.
“I still have the calluses,” Vander Weide said. “I haven’t swung a hammer for a living in over 10 years.”
In 1988 Vander Weide moved to Turlock to attend CSUS, where he earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology. He continued on to achieve a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, an unlikely duo of diplomas that Vander Weide planned to parlay into a role in resource management.
“I was planning on becoming a bureaucrat!” Vander Weide said disdainfully. “In the idealism of youth, I thought I’d make a difference. Ha!”
Quickly dissuaded from the idea of working as a bureaucrat, Vander Weide spent his first four years out of college as a Quality Assurance Supervisor for Foster Poultry Farms. Moving on to a position with his father’s construction company, Vander Weide became more and more involved in political issues in his spare time as he volunteered with election campaigns.
In 1998, Vander Weide was able to parlay his political experience into his first post in public service as a member of Assemblyman George House’s staff. Since then, Vander Weide has served for a string of Republican politicians, including Assemblyman Dave Cogdill, Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian, and U.S. Representative George Radanovich, whom he currently represents.
Some Turlockers may be concerned about Vander Weide’s strong involvement with the Republican party, but the candidate is unapologetic. As he believes in the basic principles of republicanism, individual responsibility, limited government, and fiscal responsibility, Vander Weide sees it as only logical to work alongside like-minded people.
“I’m a deeply conservative individual, and there’s only one party that trends conservative,” Vander Weide said. “I laugh when people suggest (that I am a part of the Republican machine). It’s a job. It’s what I do. It’s public service.”
Vander Weide quickly recalls several stories of recent opportunities he has had to “knock bureaucratic heads around,” in the service of constituents, brokering deals with the National Forest Service, Cal Trans, and local Turlockers to make change and solve problems. Those are the kind of things that Vander Weide says he wouldn’t be able to do in any other profession.
“I didn’t choose politics,” Vander Weide said. “It kind of chose me.
“Government frequently makes me angry,” he continued. “That’s why I’m still in it. There are enough bad things happening in government to keep me engrossed and aggravated.”
One of the worst things happening in Turlock, according to Vander Weide, is the gradual decline of streets, sidewalks, and storm drainage in the older parts of town. The reason for that, he says, is that while development has paid its own way in Turlock for the past 15-plus years, there is no funding coming in from the older parts of town.
“We can’t address these problems simply because the revenue isn’t there,” he said.
The answer, according to Vander Weide, is Benefit Assessment Districts.
By routinely assessing homeowners to help pay for their own neighborhood’s improvements, existing neighborhoods can begin to pay their own way and see their streets improve with the help of a consistent source of revenue. Even if Measure S passes this November, it will be just a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $70 million needed to repair Turlock’s streets as it stands today.
While some oppose the idea of BADs because homeowners will have to vote to incorporate and assess themselves, stating that neighborhoods that choose not to form BADs will become “ghettos,” Vander Weide sees that sentiment as ignoring the problem as it stands today.
“We don’t have run down areas in town as it is now?” Vander Weide asked. “Let’s start making some headway against it.”
According to Vander Weide, islands that initially resist forming BADs will naturally become more amiable to the idea when they see results in other neighborhoods. Also, Vander Weide sees the possibility of neighboring BADs using their combined economic might to go out for bonds to bring immediate capital improvements that can draw in a new neighborhood.
These problems are all the legacy of Proposition 13 and declining property tax revenues, in Vander Weide’s view. Fortunately, Vander Weide sees an opportunity to build a model of economic sustainability here in Turlock that other cities could follow.
Vander Weide believes that his council experience also offers him an informed perspective on growth.
Within his first year on council, Vander Weide inquired a with local infill development specialist. Much to his surprise, Vander Weide learned that, while Turlock used to have a lot of infill opportunities, they are disappearing rapidly.
One major problem for local developers is out of town landowners. While development seems natural for the lot at the Northwest corner of Hawkeye and Geer, for example, no builder has been able to get in touch with the property owner, according to Vander Weide.
“It’s not for lack of trying,” Vander Weide said. “In a lot of cases, there’s just no response.”
While he admits that there are still some infill opportunities left in Turlock, one way to add land to Turlock without extending the borders could be incorporating the county-owned islands in the city limits.
“We need to do it,” Vander Weide said, “it’s another project to work on.”
Beyond the move to incorporate county islands, Vander Weide believes the best way to plan for Turlock’s growth is to engage the community in a discussion as to how the city should look in the future. As an active member of the San Joaquin Valley Regional Blueprint process, Vander Weide has already begun the process of reaching out to constituents, even though the recently passed Senate Bill 375 could drastically effect what is even allowable for the future of Turlock.
In general, Vander Weide sees the best path as continuing the city’s current course. High-density development should continue near Highway 99-something Vander Weide sees as a major resource-and development should continue to the south. Unfortunately South Turlock lacks freeway access, but a proposed interchange for Highway 99 and Highway 165 could help.
Ultimately, though, Vander Weide believes that how much Turlock grows is not really an issue for next council to decide.
“It’s the market,” Vander Weide said. “I don’t think we’re going to be doing a lot of growing for a long time.”
The council’s goal, Vander Weide says, should be to start looking at undeveloped areas in order to plan for the future in a way that could not be done in the older parts of town. Even if that growth may be tens of years away, it is better to plan now than to be caught by the next surge of development.
“Have we built out to the current extent (Of our General Plan)?” Vander Weide said. “No. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start with the next one.”
Anything that ends up on the next General Plan needs to come from community and make the community stronger, according to Vander Weide. Even, potentially, a homeless shelter.
“We’re going to see a Gospel Mission here,” said Vander Weide. “We’re going to see an effective comprehensive solution to homelessness.”
Vander Weide believes that Turlock needs to facilitate the process of developing a homeless shelter with no entitlements, and no government handouts.
The Vice Mayor says that he understands the community resistance to a homeless shelter. At City Hall just last week Vander Weide and city staff witnessed a brawl on the grassy knoll that showed little concern for public safety or traffic as the fight spilled into the street.
However, despite the resistance, Vander Weide believes something must be done to get the homeless off the streets. He expressed disdain at the thought that the council was somehow against local homeless service providers such as the United Samaritans Foundation.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Vander Weide said as went on to commend the USF for their food trucks and clothes closet. “Let’s help (the USF).”
As legislation limits the work that a city can do, Vander Weide believes that USF plays important role. The work of non-profits is essential to Vander Weide’s plan for addressing homelessness, simply because of the different rules facing city governments.
While the City of Turlock may have its hands somewhat tied in addressing homelessness, there are a few other issues that will become priorities for Vander Weide’s next term, should he be reelected.
The budget is a definite concern to Vander Weide. The possibilities that the state may withhold funds from Turlock or that sales tax revenues may decline in the wake of the current economic state must be considered seriously.
While Vander Weide believes that the city has done well with planning in past, preparing Turlock well for slim times, the city was forced to dip into reserves this year. In order to prevent that from happening in the future, Vander Weide would like to implement a zero-base budget, starting from scratch to draft a newly trimmed, logically structured budget.
“We can better plan if we know what we’re working with,” Vander Weide said.
The new accounting software recently employed by the city is expected to help with the budget revamp, but careful budgeting alone may not make ends meet. Bringing in new businesses is also crucial to Vander Weide’s plans to retain services.
Vander Weide believes that, while commerce looks at a lot of things before coming to an area, certain businesses, such as Costco, Lowes, only come when certain markers-like population counts-are reached.
“What we need to do is focus on small businesses,” Vander Weide said. “Major corporations come when they come.”
The Turlock Downtown Property Owners Association’s recent decision to brand Downtown Turlock as the Bridal Capital of California is one opportunity that Vander Weide sees to attract small businesses. While the concept may seem odd, many companies-and jobs-could set up in Turlock to gain access to the clientele coming from around the state to shop in Turlock’s Bridal District.
The one negative to moving to Downtown Turlock could be the prohibitive cost of renovating old buildings to meet new safety standards. To address this concern, Vander Weide proposes the idea of declaring Downtown Turlock a historic district that provides legal exemptions to some of building code.
“That’s not something that people have really looked at yet,” Vander Weide said.
And, perhaps, that’s the sort of thing that his competitors wouldn’t have thought of in the first place, Vander Weide muses.
Kurt Vander Weide can be contact through his Web site at www.kurtvw.com or by calling 404-3928.
To contact Alex Cantatore, e-mail acantatore@turlockjournal.com or call 634-9141 ext. 2005.
Originally published in the Turlock Journal 10/8/2008.
Retrieved from the Turlock Journal Web site.