Candidate Spotlight: Denise Athas

Co-owner of Athas Realty; on council since 2009
Past president of the Novato Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Novato Business Association

www.DeniseAthasNovato.com

Why I’m Running

“I’m re-running because I’m not done. I want to be part of Novato’s future and help it become everything it has the potential to be. I’ve had an open door policy and have met with anyone who’s got suggestions.

Public Safety:

Keeping our streets safe and fighting to raise the number of officers patrolling our streets and keeping us safe.  At the present time it is nice to see the numbers of officers being raised, some of which has been through grants.  We have a new Novato Response Team that works citywide with crime prevention and other creative programs – it is funded through a Dept. of Justice Grant and some Measure F funding.  

Finances:

With the budget somewhat in balance, we are facing a revenue issue in order to replace the Measure F money with a sustainable budget.  We need to implement a long-term strategy for fiscal sustainability so that we do not rely of sales tax measures that are just helping us plug the budget hole.  

We must find a way to meet the needs of today without sacrificing tomorrow.  We need to find creative ways of growing our community services for everyone, especially seniors and youth.

Land Use: 

We have some strategic goals in place to try and deal with our aging historic buildings that are suffering from neglect and need to prioritize how they are being addressed. We need to make sure that our General Plan and Zoning speaks to our neighborhood concerns.  

We need to look at Novato as an incubator for more biotech, biomed and bioscience businesses – encouraging growth off of the Buck Institute, Ultragenix, BioMarin and others.  The North Redwood Corridor needs to have a clear and concise plan that reflects a cohesive look, compliments our downtown and reflects community needs.  We need to address the $169 million a year of retail leakage from our community and do intelligent, thoughtful building with the last 5 percent of commercial land in Novato and take into consideration all areas of Novato, including Bel Marin Keys, Hamilton, and the North, North Redwood Corridor.

“My hope is that we don’t have to ask people to renew Measure F in 2016, but find other ways of generating revenue.”

“There have been some really wonderful businesses that haven’t been able to go in there because it’s not zoned correctly. This is also true for downtown where certain kinds of businesses have been kept out because of zoning. But the issue is you can’t spot zone because if you change it for one, it changes it for everyone and you could end up with a hundred of something (ie. Nail salons) because you can’t keep it up.

I also support zoning changes in Hamilton. We need to try to figure out how to utilize the land. I’m in favor of building more senior housing, of having an assisted living center that would take people from independent living all the way to skilled nursing so that Novato seniors don’t have to move north but stay close to their family and doctors.”

Has the city done enough to reduce pension liabilities and what else would you like to see done?

“The city of Novato has always been fiscally prudent and we’ve done everything in regards to pension reform that we can legally do at this point. One hundred percent of the employer contribution has been shifted back to the employee with some backfill from the city. We’ve changed the final pay calculation used to identify the employee’s pension from 12 months to three years…The cap on employee pensions for safety (police) is 90 percent and 100 percent for miscellaneous (all other workers) per state law. We’ve created a new tier for new employees, but there’s still $2.7 million of unfunded liabilities for employee healthcare. This needs to be addressed at the state level but for now Novato has done everything we can do legally.”

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