Suzanne Bragdon Suisun City Manager

The election is over. Locally, statewide and nationally. For Suisun City, we had two Council seats open and, to add a bit more drama, Mayor Spering – after 20 years of service – decided to move up to the Board of Supervisors. That left open the Mayor’s seat.

After figuring out the myriad of outcomes with four candidates vying for the Mayor’s seat and four for council, the potential existed that – after all was said and done – we could have three new personalities added to two incumbents to fill out our elected board. A new and different majority.

This means that a potential major shift in goals and priorities of where we have been heading could have occurred. But it didn’t. Vice Mayor Sanchez is our new Mayor-Elect, Councilmember Jane Day has kept her seat, and businessman Mike Hudson joins incumbents Michael Segala and Sam Derting to fill out the Council.

We will take it as a sign that we are on the right track when it comes to our top goals of economic development, strengthening our business outreach and broadening our revenue base in order to provide core services of public safety, street maintenance and youth services to our community – all issues highlighted by the candidates during the campaign.

Undoubtedly, new ideas and nuances to existing approaches and programs will percolate up through the system. That’s a good thing. In contrast, completely changing course on core goals and priorities every two-years (i.e., the election cycle) wreaks havoc on efforts to accomplish just about anything. Some communities experience just that. Oftentimes it’s over the rhetoric of growth versus no growth. Sometimes over fears of crime and violence. Although change isn’t always bad, it can be troublesome if the power struggle gets so intense that only the extreme positions are heard, drowning out the more moderate, consensus building approaches to issues. But such is not the case for Suisun City. Our residents and local businesses understand the hard decisions that have been made to get to where we are. To shift course when we are within grasp of the fruits of these hard decisions would be folly. So we continue forward. That’s a good thing.