Mayor Jenelle Osborne is running for reelection in November; she has served as mayor for the last two years, during which she has been consistently disrespected by three councilmen who serve with her. They regularly ignore her ideas and instead impose their own brand of governing, and it has caused a significant deterioration of city services.
Mayor Osborne is always upbeat and has seemingly boundless energy; Lompoc is her home, and she has invested her time and energy to try and make it better for everyone living here. I had a chance to interview Mayor Osborne, and her observations and her plans for the future are worthy of note.
She sees the biggest problems facing Lompoc in the next two years as multifaceted. The council majority made budget cuts in planning, code compliance, and parks a priority in two budget cycles. Osborne said, “Lompoc has lost much of its quality of life for so many in so many ways. This comes down to budget and personnel cuts, so I approach these issues from the source of the problems—lack of investment and vision.”
She said, “In doing this they adversely impacted people choosing the career such as policing and electrical line workers in our city due to lower pay when compared to surrounding communities.” This position can be attributed to a failure of the majority to acknowledge the fact that Lompoc must offer competitive wages to attract new employees.
While chairperson for the Economic Development Committee, Osborne worked to craft the Economic Development Element of the General Plan. It is important for every city to have a vision for the future and to achieve improvements for its citizens, and a vibrant and growing economy is a must.
Osborne also sees a lack of revenue flexibility. “We finally put the 1 percent sales tax on the ballot, and residents supported it. Unfortunately, the council majority choose to reset the unfunded liabilities with CalPERS and left no flexibility to accomplish the immediate needs the funds should have been considered for,” she said.
She sees “creating new events in partnership with various organizations, building park facilities that generate revenue, and restoring local venues to useful community centers, providing additional programs and safe havens for our at-risk youth that provide the support and resources they need to make better choices” as important quality-of-life issues.
COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on local businesses. This will impact the revenue side of the general fund budget. To help resolve local business concerns, she observes, “Our locally owned businesses have weathered several difficult cycles for several decades. Many have started utilizing online retail, delivery, even outdoor options. It is important for the city reevaluate how we make it easy for these changes to remain in place and even expand them.”
Concerning the general fund, she said, “COVID-19 has only worsened a bad start. The council majority approved a deficit budget for 2017-19 and had already dipped into the [general fund] reserve fund for several cycles, depleting it far below appropriate levels before the pandemic.” For the 2020-21 budget, “that reserve is now exhausted, and we are at an approximate deficit of $1.2 million.”
“With the passing of the cannabis taxes and the 1 percent sales tax, Lompoc was poised for growth, but the uncertainty of the economy and not knowing when it will rebound makes it difficult to fully understand when and how quickly expansion will occur,” she said.
Mayor Osborne added that she looks forward to the next two years and said, “Furthering the improvement of our community’s public safety and reinstating the Drug Enforcement Task Force and the Gang Reduction Task Force is my highest priority and always has been. We need to find a balance in what we ask our police officers to do and find other resources and personnel for homelessness, mental health, and code enforcement, just to name a few areas we have pushed onto law enforcement.”
To do these things, she needs help. As she says, “Don’t just hope for a better Lompoc, vote for it.”
Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send your thoughts, comments, and opinionated letters to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 3, 2020.