Warden's mayor starts plan for city's future

WARDEN - Warden's new mayor wants to establish a plan for the city's future.

Mayor Tony Massa presented the process to develop a plan for the city during a recent meeting.

Massa won the seat vacated by former Mayor Roldan Capetillo in November, defeating Kayla Kight.

"This is where I want to lead and hopefully, everyone will go with me," he said.

The first part of Massa's process is finding out what vision people have for the city, he said. He plans to work with various groups in the community to determine what should be the present and future for the city.

"That vision is, 'Who are we?' and 'What do we want to become?' because we can't go some place unless we know where we are now," he said. "While we may all think we know where we are now, some of us might be surprised."

As an example, Massa said the police chief has a vision of eliminating gangs from the city. Another example was developing a plan to attract new residents.

"Councilman Capetillo, when he was mayor, had a vision of a water park for kids and there is money in the budget for that," he said. "So that would be part of our vision."

He pointed out a $100,000 grant the city received from the state Transportation Improvement Board to fix sidewalks on South Main Street.

"That will be part of our vision and part of what we're going to discuss," he said. "Overall, coming up with a plan that's not just the mayor's plan or the council's plan, but the citizen's plan and the business' plan and the industries' plan ... and the development council's plan and the port's plan."

If all the parts of the community come together to develop the plan, Massa said it will last beyond him being mayor.

The next portion of the mayor's proposal is learning what are the values of the community, he said. He defined values as what people believe in and how does the city get where people want it to go.

"If we believe that, let's say, 'Government has a limited role and volunteers have a role and processors have a role and businesses have a role,' deciding what those are and what government can do and can't do," Massa said. "Certainly, where we want to go say in beautifying the city. Do we want to be looking over people's fences to see what's in their backyard? Is that a value that we want or not a value that we want?"

The last portion is developing specific goals for the city, he said.

"If in this vision we decide one the things that we need to do is be friendlier to new housing coming into town or development coming into town, and let's say in that vision we decide that gravel streets aren't the best way to do it. Well, we'll set those goals and those victories," he said. "If we have to plan to pave a street a year and that's how we have to do it, then those will be our victories."

Massa expects the discussion to take a year, he said. He plans to start with business owners on Main Street because of the grant.

"They'll be invited to the next council meeting to discuss what their vision of downtown should look like, so we don't run off in a direction someone who has to do business there every day, didn't like or didn't want," he said.