A Founding Council Member’s Perspective on Sam Salmon’s recollections

My friend Sam Salmon misleads readers in writing (“General Plan Update” Commentary, The Windsor Times, April  28, 2016) that our “first Town Council looked at Windsor’s sphere of influence as an opportunity for growth while others living here desired to preserve open space and stop urban sprawl.” This comment distorts the motivations and commitments of the five of us who were elected from a field of 15 candidates to our first Town Council.
All of us campaigned hard for incorporation as the Town of Windsor for a number of local-control reasons, not least a passion to manage our own growth. The election process involved a double challenge for us. We had to ask voters to check our names, and also to vote “yes” on incorporation. We had zealous, well-funded opponents, mostly from out of town, and the debate was not pleasant.  
Our first mayor, Joe Rodota, was the longtime director of County Parks and Recreation and had devoted his career to open space and parks. The county gave his name to a major trail that represents his dream for connecting towns with safe walk/bike paths. All five of us – Joe, me, Alan Rawland, Julie Adamson and Barbara Siegler – desired that as well, and one of the major things we wanted to control was sprawl.
 As for open space? We were for it, to say the least, when you consider our record in creating and preserving both recreational and natural parks. Joe had a career’s worth of history with the county, Barbara was a Windsor Water District veteran and parent, Julie was a local girl turned Windsor businesswoman, parent, and effective representative of young families, and Alan was a small businessman with county agency experience. Once our papers for incorporation had been filed by a fiercely dedicated group of local citizens, the promotional campaign for incorporation was drawn up on my Windsor dining room table. I served for four years with the county’s Agricultural Preservation and Open Space office, on the citizen’s committee that advised the commission on acquisitions – which included the oak grove at our Town Green. I call this progressive. As was our campaign for the incorporation of the Town of Windsor, and all of the related choices with which the first Town Council positioned the future success of our community.
As for Windsor’s sphere of influence, I did want us to have a greater say in what happened with land at our boundaries. So yes, I would have preferred to include them in our sphere of influence, rather than resigning those areas to county control. Others saw the sphere as nothing more than growth potential. That’s something that reasonable people can debate, as we likely could have done.
As was his right, Sam opposed incorporation and spent the evening of the Nov. 5, 1991 election at Round Table Pizza watching the returns with a group that had urged voters to say “No” to local control. We pro-incorporation folks celebrated at a crowded Kevin’s, a dark but spacious Chinese restaurant down Old Redwood Highway where a veterinarian building now sits. I congratulate Sam for later coming forward to run for the Town Council that he initially opposed establishing, and for dedicating his time and energy since then to its success.
To Sam, later “more forward thinking” council members, consultants and a new Town Manager “set the stage for some of what we see today.” But no; we were all forward thinking. At my suggestion the first council readily brought in the first consultants who formally introduced to our community the ideas we now see in effect, especially downtown.
These included mixed commercial and residential use, street parking, thumbs down to more strip malls, defensible park space, a Town Green, narrower streets, pedestrian-friendly planning, and a town center that united public offices with usable gathering places and small, locally owned businesses.
Sam may remember that even before the incorporation was official and the Town Council sworn in, I organized, and he attended, an informal informational presentation about precisely these concepts sometime in late 1992. (Also at Round Table; there weren’t many meeting places back then.) The ideas were new to him at the time, but to my delight, Sam embraced them. I have always appreciated that the Town went this way; eventually my husband and I even invested in the Town Green area. We are happy to be part of its progress. If re-elected in 1994, I would have continued to work for the direction we have taken. When Sam won his seat in 1994, he stated to the Windsor Times that he hardly had “a mandate” with some 10 percent of the vote. Now he implies that public sentiment repudiated our work. Actually, only two of the charter council members were running, and I came in fourth for three seats, in a field of 10. Candidates of a like mind to mine were the majority of vote-getters.
At the time, I was disappointed to lose re-election. But my feelings changed, and I soon forgave my supporters and everyone who voted for me.
Sam mentions that one thing “it took” was a new Town Manager. No again. Our first Town Manager was a savvy, kind, efficient professional who knew that his job was to execute the elected Council’s direction.
He was fired for mainly political reasons, at considerable expense to Windsor taxpayers for the early termination of his contract.
I didn’t expect Windsor would grow so quickly to its current population of nearly 30,000 people, but I love living here. The friendliness, the civic groups, the schools, the public safety services, the parks, the shopping, dining and cultural arts here add up to terrific quality of life. This is why I regret the implication that the founding Town Council, which we campaigned so hard to create by working for incorporation, impeded progress toward the success we have today.
As a fellow progressive, I applaud Sam’s concluding remarks that citizens should express their thoughts and ideas at the council meetings or online at Windsor2040.com.