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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the theme Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, How you doing everybody? Welcome to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties on location at the beautiful Sonoma County Fairgrounds. You know, the fairgrounds is the site of the annual fair and hundreds of other events throughout the year.

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Today we're here to talk with two men who were involved in the new city or town of Windsor. Actually it's a new city we're gonna be talking to joe radioed in the center of your green joe you might recommend remember I should say as being the

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parking recreation director for the County of Sonoma. Before that the city of san rafael, he was in that field for about 37 years, retired a few years ago. I was elected mayor of Windsor about a year ago and I believed you just finished your first term.

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Is that right? And your out of office momentarily, but I still sit on the council city council. All right. The new city of Windsor as you know, it was incorporated approximately a year ago. It is santa Rose's ninth city I believe. And yeah, it's really it's

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a lovely spot and it's going to be heard from. Believe me, joe. Perhaps the first question we ought to ask the people who want to know is why did the town of Windsor incorporate? Well, I think basically the desire for local control things were happening pretty

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rapidly in Windsor lots of growth and I think the people wanted to be a controller of their own destiny basically. And and that's why we we fought and got incorporated just a little over a year ago. Um Here's the question, I know a lot of the

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people in the county of the area I want to know is Windsor's growth under control. We think we've managed our growth very well. Um because of the fact of two things, I guess basically the recession has caused a slowdown of the, of the construction, but also

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the town and the council has implemented a moratorium on new subdivision and we put into place a building allocation system. So I think that we can safely say that we have managed control of growth in when you mentioned that subdivision moratorium has had a are you

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saying that's had a very significant impact on the new housing construction in this last year. Absolutely. But I say the recession itself has slowed it down, but the moratorium does not permit any new subdivision to come before the city or town, with the exception of affordable

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housing projects, but they're judge on a case by case basis. So I think our moratorium has you know, been been effective. Well joe in all probability Windsor like almost every other place in cinema county has a has or will have a traffic problem. What are the

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town's plans to alleviate traffic congestion? Well, I think basically we're accelerating our road improvement projects that have been lagging um you know, the downtown interchange, the road projects that were, you know designed and on the boards are now being underway, the most important one. I think

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that we're still trying to get into places the errata interchange. Once we get those kind of projects concluded, I think our traffic problems will will be very, very, you know, lessened our other guests did not introduce properly while ago, martin Wills is the town or town

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manager you called, but it's in the same in fact that the city manager in the sense of the word because it's the same job elsewhere and I want to do when the question I just asked if I wanted to get your comments to what about the

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traffic congestion, what can you add to that? Well, I think getting the two freeway interchange projects under construction are going to be the most important thing to relieve traffic congestion and then there are three major arterials in Windsor were also doing major road improvement work over

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the next two years and once those construction is complete then I think the congestion problem will be alleviated significantly. One of the interesting things that came up that we did on a temporary basis because you can't construct a freeway interchange just like that and you had

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people in the morning getting on the freeway and off the freeway and they'd be waiting in line for a half hour. It seemed like the people and the suggestion came out of the audience at one of the council meetings is to get a flag a person

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with a flag that gets out there and controls the traffic. This was brought up in lieu of another suggestion to put in a temporary traffic signal and hiring a flag er was a whole lot less expensive than putting in a temporary traffic signal. So we've done

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that and it was one of the most effective things. We've done, one of the most efficient things we've done and had the both the best reaction from the public so far martin, you're the town manager was the decision to incorporate financially sound turns out now that

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we're just completing the New year's budget and it's the first budget that I've been directly involved in. Is that yes, it was financially sound. Now it doesn't turn out that the numbers match up with the original and feasibility study that was done before incorporation. The numbers

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a little bit different but it turns out, yes it is winter is in good shape and it looks like it will be for years to come. It was a logical place for another city in Sonoma County. Its distance from santa rosa to Healdsburg was was fairly

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great and the area was desirable to live in. So it was very logical that Windsor would eventually become a city. Has the town been affected by the state budget cuts? Well, we thought we were and when I've worked here in other towns every year, the last

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few years, you just never know until the state adopts the budget. But unusual for me is that this is the first town where we're not affected directly by the state budget. As it turns out, newly incorporated towns had never received some of the, the state property

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tax transfers that other towns had received in the past. So when they stopped those transfers, well, winter had never gotten those transfers, so we're not directly impacted. So you hadn't been using the money that you didn't have that. I wish we could say the same for

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some of the other cities. You're setting a good example back to you. One of the town's plans for old downtown winter park has been there for so many, many years. Well, obviously, rich, it's a high priority for the town and the council to turn that around.

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It needs some attention. Obviously we, you know, are doing a marketing study. We're looking at alternate plans for the downtown that can fit into the commercial situation that exists in the town of Windsor, there's been some talk about expansion of our civic center there in a

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talk of a new library perhaps bringing the new post office, the post office back And an entertainment center has been suggested like a cinema five or 6. Um, so we're hoping that in the near future we can get a little distracted. It's a competition, the outdoor

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studios, but at any rate, uh, we have some specific ideas that hopefully in the near future can gel. And uh, with our redevelopment agency that includes the downtown that we can make that turn around and make that an asset to the, to the town of Windsor

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joe. One of the things that's important in every community here of it all the time and I'm sure it's been with you for this year. Certainly Police department. Have you developed a police department to protect the people of, you know, we're real proud of. That is

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one of the greatest accomplishments I think of this past year. We have in force right now a full complement police service under contract with the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. We have a full complement of depth police officers on the street and in the community and we're

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really proud that we have a, an excellent coverage for this town of Windsor and its citizens. That's really important and I know you people have worked with Mark Heidi in the county of Sonoma and listening and, and set up a real good plan. Talk to nick's

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pastilles a few months ago and he was saying that he thought this was sort of a, a pilot type project and would certainly be used elsewhere. Did you want to comment on the new police department? Yeah, I think since I've been with the town, that was

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one of the highest priorities. People in Windsor were served by two deputies that served a 500 square mile area. And now there's no less than two officers on duty full time in Windsor and often several more than two officers on duty. Uh, people are also going

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to recognize that traffic speed limits are going to be enforced now. So there's gonna be some learning curve involved for the people that live in Windsor painful learning curve that is, has Windsor been able to provide any new services to the community since you incorporated? Oh

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yes. You know, we've gotten a uh, of course, uh, in addition to the police services, we, we have a full blown parks and recreation program. We, we hired this last year, a parks and Recreation director. We, we've incorporated a new town planner to guide us in

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the development of our specific or update of our general plan and those are just some that come to mind that we are able to offer for the town of winter. What else would you add to that? Well, the thing that most people are going to recognize

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is the police services that they haven't had in the past and along the other lines I guess of on the enforcement side is we have our own planning department and our own code enforcement officer. So things that are a nuisance in the neighborhood that people weren't

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able to get a quick response on in the past, we can take care of those problems right away. Now, are there any new services planned for this next year? I think building up of the recreation program, The person just started in a couple of months and

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in a couple of months that she's been here, put together a summer youth program. And we're gonna build on that. I hope we don't have to go the way of other towns and counties where they cut back on those recreation programs. I think that's a real

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mistake and I know other cities haven't done it because they wanted to, but we're gonna do everything we can to expand that program rather than to have to cut back. Well, I certainly agree with you that I think that if if you cut back on recreational

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programs like that, you've got more kids loose, especially in the summer months without things to do. And you're probably gonna get more and more problems. Um, we're gonna pause right here to bring the audience of public service announcement. We'll be back just a second with more

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questions. Ladies and gentlemen, in just a moment, martin Wells town manager and joe are due to the first mayor who just went out of office and I will be back. Excuse me. Do you wear your safety belt? Why? No, I don't wear my safety belt. Thank

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you. You could learn a lot from a dummy buckle your safety belt, You lost little boy, get out to victor. This isn't just a drawing, it's a cry for help, learn to protect your Children from drugs and violence call now and take a bite out of

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crime. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties on location. The beautiful Sonoma County Fairgrounds. We've been talking with martin Wills, the town manager for Windsor on the left screen and joe, who was the first mayor and they have been telling us about

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Windsor in its first year, joe was the mayor just has gone out of office. A lot of things are happening up there. It's a new community and I think the thing we want to ask next is Bert, what are the major projects that town is working

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on right now. One thing that's interesting about working in a brand new town is that there is unbelievable enthusiasm among the people, you know, they've been waiting for several years to become incorporated so that finally they can do things that they're not able to do when

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it was just another part of the unincorporated area of the county. So one of the biggest projects is trying to sort out which of those ideas are the projects that you're actually going to be able to devote some time and and money on and come up

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with a list of priorities. And of course right now we're just ending the budget season. So a major work effort has been putting together that first year budget of the town after one year of experience. That's always a major work effort in any town. Working when

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you really don't have a track record is more difficult. Everything is new. You can't go to the file and see how it was done before. We're working on a five year capital improvements program so that the next person will know a little bit where we were

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and where we want to go. Organization. Just organizing the town as you know, it was formerly the core of what was available in Windsor was a water district. And so the original plan was to build two parallel organizations, a water district organization and a town organization.

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That just in my mind wouldn't work. Plus you're doubling the expense when you could have all kinds of efficiency if you can merge the two organizations. So we spend a lot of time on retraining people that worked for the water district to take on municipal responsibilities

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and at the same time, then we save people some money by having people do more than just one job. That's good. that is, that's, that's a very important job. You went out of office about a month and a half ago, july july 1st I think it

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was, yeah. Okay. And who is the new mayor? The mayor now is julie Adamson julie Adamson. Well, joe you were married during that first year. What do you view as the significant accomplishments of the town during your years, mayor? Well, I think uh, I'd have to

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say that our biggest accomplishment was getting fully organized and doing so quickly and efficiently and putting into place all of the services that a new town has to incorporate and we, we alluded to earlier about the police force in in high priority. I think one of

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our other significant accomplishments is undertaking the now updating of our general plan so that we can determine the future of the town of Windsor. Um The other accomplishments obviously are, you know, numerous things that we've done in detail. We're pleased that we were able to hire

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Bert Wills as our town manager and that's an accomplishment. We, we also have other personnel that we are now having developed the traditional cities, programs, parks and recreation and planning services. And I think that all in all with the council's efforts been a busy year for

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me, but with their help and the staff of the town and the citizens of the town of Windsor that, that we all can be very proud of. The accomplishments that we undertook in just one year. It's really an amazing job and all of those folks and

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people that have contributed to that need to be recognized and complimented. I think we were real proud of that readily understand the concern that burke. What's the status of the town's general plan Right now? The state law sets forth that new towns have to have a

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general plan in place within two years after incorporation. So you don't have a lot of time to fool around. You need to get started and get going. And it's further complicated because it was very clear from the council in Windsor that they did not want some

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consultant to go off and prepare the plan or some staff person to go off in a closet someplace and and write the plan. They wanted to make sure that the people of Windsor were involved in writing a plan. So we have an extensive citizen participation process

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to make sure that the plan, once it's developed reflects what the people of Windsor want. I'm glad to say we're on schedule so that no later than december of next year, we will have a plan in place and we hope it's before then. But you've always

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got to allow for things are, it's usually controversial and it's gonna take some public hearings to get it adopted, but we're well underway. We have citizen committees meeting and reviewing the basics of the plan and we'll meet that time schedule. Getting it done by next year?

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Burt Burton wills. Ladies and gentlemen is the town manager of Windsor. Where were you before you came to Windsor? I was in the town of Reedley which is in Fresno County and it's about 18,000 people. A lot of similarities to the town of Windsor but it's

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nice to get out of the san Joaquin valley for a while and get up here to Sonoma County, just a little cooler. I'm beginning to wonder, I'm wondering in the last few months joe what's the status of the Windsor sphere of influence? That yes, bert mentioned

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briefly about the general plan process. One of the things is that that we uh by law not by law but by the incorporation were given one year to develop a recommendation for our sphere of influence. Obviously we haven't met that but we were graciously given um

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an extension by by Lafco rather recently so that we can prepare enough data along with our general plan to submit to Lafco for a logical sphere of influence recommendation. And they have given us until December of 94 which is, you know, in concurrence with the schedule

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of the, of the general plan. So we can develop an intelligent meaningful recommendation to Lafco and as I mentioned, they generously allowed that to us. We're very pleased about that. What? Well two questions here joe. What do you think of the major problems facing Windsor and

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what was the town council like to achieve, let's say over the next two years problems and what, what deal with? Well, you know, I think problems are fairly, you know, common with particularly new cities and towns, but with the budget crunches that we have to look

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at. But uh I think we're in a good position because being new, we don't have to undo a lot of things. We can, we can approach them under the conditions that we all are faced with these days. The problems obviously is to, is to keep our

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uh growth managed properly and to see that our infrastructure is concurrent with our growth that we don't have this a problem of, you know, growth that has an impact on the schools and the roads and the parks and so those are the problems. But I think

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that we have the council a dedicated a number of people that are going to solve those problems uh and again with our staff and and their participation in solving the problems of budget and infrastructure. And I think that we're gonna see that we're able to deal

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with the problems effectively. There will be trying times obviously in the future like everybody is experience. But I'm confident that we have the wherewithal the to meet the challenge and I'm confident about the solutions I think so from what you folks have done in this first

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year, as you say, getting things organized, getting some police protection, getting hiring Burton wills to help you get the general plan, drawing out at least you say not in the closet, but out there where everybody can have an input into its very important, but joe one

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of the things that becomes obvious as you look at this town of Windsor and read about it is that it's a very involved community with a lot of individuals appointed to citizens advisory commissions or committees. It might be now is the town in encouraging. Uh and

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if so, how do you involve citizens in these committees? Well, number one, we, we do encourage it, but it doesn't take much encouragement. I'll tell you, the people have been really responsive. Uh we have numerous commissions and committees that were put into place in the first

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year. Um and the citizens have responded tremendously. You know, we advertise for a committee on law enforcement study. We'd have 30 applicants, all you know, very, very qualified people. And this has been the, the history and they have been tremendously responsive. I think that the energy

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of a new town has been part of this process that they want to be a part of it and help make it work. And as I say, we we've definitely encouraged it. But the community has been just tremendously responsive tremendously, joe nothing can be so deadly

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to a community as lethargy on the part of people that could not interest. We felt that in the county county level. but I'm really encouraged to hear what you say about these people jumping at the chance so to see it really makes everybody feel better about

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what you're doing, what you want to add to that Burton. Yeah. The building that we're in was built by the water district and now and there's a meeting room in there that I would thought would be more than adequate for years to come and it's used

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virtually now every night with some kind of community meeting going on in that room when we at the staff level first started out, we thought it was one thing to have five bosses but with all the citizens commission we virtually have 100 bosses. So there's certainly

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a partner for staff. But when you look at the big picture of what is a community is supposed to be about, it's well worth it that you can get that many people willing to be involved in their government. We're down to about a minute and a

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half. And I wanted to ask you one thing as you celebrate the orgy just recently celebrate the first year anniversary. Was there anything that was particularly surprising and what are you most proud of? Well, what was surprising, surprising I guess, and I should have known better

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I guess with my governmental experience is the tremendous task that were before us, I think was none of us really appreciated the fact that it was such an enormous undertaking, But I think that the accomplishment is that we were able to um meet those tasks effectively

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quickly and efficiently and and we're in business, Windsor is working and it's a great community. That's the whole story burden. Any final thought. The word that was mentioned earlier was lethargy. And I'm sort of used to lethargy people not being interested in government. What a nice

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change to come to Windsor and see people that want to be involved. Thanks for being down here. Burton Burton Milk, the town manager. I want to say city manager, which he is and an old buddy here joe ricotta, former former mayor of Windsor. If you will.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Rich McGlinchey, the program cinema can in the nineties I'll be back with you next week with a member of the local government families Until then. Good night, good luck and good help to each and everyone