The nation's mayors send their ideas for Obama

San Jose, CA
Pop. 989,500
Chuck Reed, mayor
1. Clean technology and green jobs: For the first time in years, manufacturing jobs are returning to San Jose despite the downturn in the economy. Clean tech offers opportunities for good jobs that can't be outsourced. Congress took the first step when it renewed the alternative energy tax credits as part of the economic rescue package. Now it's time to encourage investments in energy efficiency and solar installations. We should allow residents and businesses to sell the clean the energy they generate back to the grid.
2. Green transportation: Let's transform transportation. Projects like BART in Silicon Valley and California's high-speed rail network will take cars off the road. Let's create the infrastructure so we can rapidly adopt electric vehicles. Tesla Motors will manufacture its electric sedan in San Jose, creating 1,000 green jobs. Cities will need charging stations and energy capacity.

Saratoga, CA
Pop. 29,843
Ann Waltonsmith, mayor
The economic turnaround, and alternative energy.

Solvang, CA
Pop. 5,332
Linda C. Jackson, mayor
1. As the state of California's budget deficit grows we cannot afford to have our local funding cut off or payments in funding delayed. Protection of local funding would be our number one main concern.
2. Federal funding assistance in helping to build a north county jail. We have only one facility in the entire county, and it is over crowded, and therefore people are being released and put back on the streets before the needed time.

South El Monte, CA
Pop. 21,144
Blanca M. Figueroa, mayor
1. Help address employment and job retention with benefits. We have many businesses that have gone under for one reason or another, but mainly to a crippled economy. The domino effect has caused many business large and small to lay off workers, close their doors and move to another country, creating vast unemployment for hard working people who no longer have health benefits or a paycheck. This has caused many families to live out of cars, vans or mobile campers that now reside in our parks and empty parking lots.
2. What plans or vision does President Obama have to address the medical needs of many families that are low to moderate income that cannot afford, medical, dental, or vision care at all? How will he help assure many families that they can and will receive any and all health and medical attention that is so desperately needed?

Suisun City, CA
Pop. 26,118
Pete Sanchez, mayor
1. Stopping our involvement in the Iraq war and redirecting that $70 billion yearly cost into subsidizing the health insurance premiums of families.
2. Directing part of the $700 billion bailout money into direct assistance to homeowners who are already in foreclosure or about to have foreclosure problems.

Colorado

Cañon City, CO
Pop. 15,431
Frank Jaquez, mayor
First of all, the president-elect needs to look at what he feels he will be able to get Congress to support.
It would in my opinion be right for him to attempt to put, say, health care. But if he isn't going to get the support he will need to make it happen, all this would do is get the public's hopes up for some kind of health care reform. So I guess my real answer would be based on my previous statement.

Denver, CO
Pop. 554,636
John W. Hickenlooper, mayor
1. Task the proposed White House Office of Urban Policy with developing an infrastructure investment policy around transit and sustainable mobility options in metropolitan regions.
2. Accelerate the transition of national education policy into a transformational 21st century model for public education, examining charter-school innovations, appropriate incentives for high-performing teachers and other results-driven incentive/reward models.

Grand Junction, CO
Pop. 41,986
Gregg Palmer, mayor
1. Make federal lands adjacent to urban areas available for economic development. Grand Junction is a rapidly growing community, surrounded by federal lands. As we seek to expand our regional airport, and push our boundaries to accommodate both commercial and industrial needs , we will need to gain access to large acre parcels controlled by the federal government, either through purchase or exchange. Our ability to respond to the growth in population and industry make expansion onto previously held public lands necessary.
2. Increase transportation dollars to areas with strong energy industry activity, to help lessen the impact to infrastructure. Grand Junction and surrounding counties in western Colorado are in the midst of a massive energy-related boom. With both natural gas, oil, oil shale and uranium all active, we have unprecedented growth. We need to repair roads damaged by trucks and expand capacity on major roadways.

Thornton, CO
Pop. 118,000
Erik Hansen, mayor
1. The president needs to examine the formula for the federal gas tax. Currently the tax is politicized, and money is not redistributed equitably among the states. Some states receive more money than they put into the system, and some less. There needs to be a formula based on vehicle miles traveled or some other objective measure to redistribute the tax more fairly.
2. Mass transit projects/FasTracks. The Denver metro area is building a multi-billion-dollar mass transit program, FasTracks, the largest of its kind in the country. A change in the formula for how the Federal Transit Authority allocates money for mass transit projects is needed to keep this important project on track and allow more federal money to be used for mass transit projects.

Vail, CO
Pop. 4,531
Dick Cleveland, mayor
The one issue that directly affects the Town of Vail and many other resort communities in Colorado is immigration. Specifically, Congress needs to revisit the H2B visa program, particularly that expired part that exempted prior H2B workers from the cap on visas. The reduction in H2B visas when coupled with the inability of prior H2B holders to return exempt from the cap has created a severe worker shortage in many Colorado resorts.

Westminster, CO
Pop. 100,940
Nancy McNally, mayor
1. We have transportation issues needing federal help in our region. I am also the chair of Denver Regional Council of Governments. We have tremendous needs in bridge replacement, highway repairs, highway expansions not updated since 1951, and the Regional Transportation District passed a measure in 2004 to put in six rail lines to interconnect the Denver region. Money from the federal government has almost dried up.
2. There was a bill passed in Congress to mandate unions for fire and police officers in every city/county/municipality in our country. It has not passed the Senate as it was taken out of an agriculture bill trying to be hidden. We all believe in local control. Some cities find unions for such employees works for them. Other cities are able to work with their fire and police employees in a very positive manner without having unions. Will the President be an advocate for local control?

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