Council Corner: Congratulations, Let's Get To Work

Now that the November elections are behind us, I want to congratulate the winners, Steve, Art and Herb. I also want to thank those who ran but were not elected, for their service to our City. I hope that each of you will continue to be an important presence in Foster City. I urge you to join a resident committee, a service club, a religious or civic organization and continue to be a driving force in our community. We need leaders and each of you has proven yourself to be one, so don't stop now.

To the winners, welcome to the Council and get ready for lots of work. With the economy as it is today, each of you, along with Pam and I, have our work cut out for us. The way I look at it, however, and I hope you do too, is as an opportunity. An opportunity to shape Foster City's future in a positive way for all members of our community. Better yet, I can sum up my vision of how to do that in one word, sustainability. It is now our collective job to build a sustainable Foster City for our residents and businesses. This is not a small task but one I believe that collectively we can accomplish.

I continue to believe that we must together form a vision for Foster City that is based on economic sustainability. The landscape for Foster City is changing and we must change with it. We must put in place a vision for our City that allows it to grow and sustain itself for years to come. A focus on the development of a sustainable economic model based not on the generation of new taxes but on a blossoming business community tailored to the needs of our residents and our City. I think the first step is to go out into the community and get to know our residents' needs, and understand our business community and then begin to develop a model to help bring in new businesses and sustain existing businesses by focusing on the needs of our City and matching those needs with the types of businesses that we bring in. Expect to see me in our shopping centers talking to residents and meeting our business owners while I work to gain a better understanding of what we need at the retail level.

I will also continue working on the Foster City Village project. I continue to believe that we need a mechanism through which Foster City seniors can be provided services both at a low cost to them and at minimal expense to the City. If this is something you would like to get involved with, please email me and I will get you on the mailing list.

Finally, I also want to congratulate new San Mateo Foster City School Board member Audrey Ng on her election victory. I feel strongly that we are at a time when the relationship between the School Board and the City Council is going to tell and I see a lot of joint projects that will help us improve our City by maintaining and improving the quality of our schools. I see resolution of the crossing guard issue as a great first step and I look forward to working on that as well.

These are interesting and exciting times for our City. I know that the new Council will be full of energy and ideas on how to improve for the future and I am feeling both excited and privileged to be able to be involved. I hope many of you will be at the Council Chambers on December 5th to welcome the new Council Members as well as offer our thanks to two great Foster City residents who are leaving the Council.

Those are my thoughts, I love to hear yours at cbronitsky@fostercity.org.