Dear Friends and Neighbors, I began my term as Mayor four years ago by visiting San Leandro High School, talking to students about the importance of civic involvement, listening to their concerns, and answering their questions. I ended my term as Mayor by giving a proclamation Tom Rousseau yesterday declaring December 31, 2014, “Tom Rousseau Day” in San Leandro. Tom has been physically challenged since a child. He and his family settled in San Leandro in 1951, when Tom was 20. Tom is most known for his greeting card business. For over 60 years, Tom has sold greeting cards across our city. My wife Amy grew up in San Leandro and said the first lessons she received as a child in being a compassionate person were from seeing how her parents related to Tom. Thank you for providing me the privilege and honor to serve as your Mayor. With your support, as well as the incredible love and support of my wife Amy and children Fiona and Maeve, I dedicated myself to working to make our richly diverse city a more prosperous, tolerant, safe, and sustainable community for all San Leandrans. In December 2010, shortly before I took office as Mayor, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that for America to thrive in the 21st century” we must invest in education, infrastructure, and innovation yet we could not lost sight of fiscal accountability. We need, Friedman advocated, “what I’d call ‘pay-as-you-go progressives’ — those who combine fiscal prudence with growth initiatives. I took Friedman’s commentary to heart and this what the City Council, in coordination with the City Manager and city staff, sought to achieve. We balanced the budget each year and negotiated in good faith with city employees to curb rising pension costs which left unchecked threatened San Leandro’s long term fiscal solvency. With a balanced budget and a growing local economy, we restored the Cherry Festival, re-opened the Art and History Museum, began classes and programs at the Senior Community Center, and kept our libraries and community pools open. We contributed funds to save San Leandro Hospital from closing and provided financial assistance to the school district to build a student health center next to San Leandro High School. We boosted funding for nonprofits like Davis Street and Building Futures that provide vital services to those in need in our community. At the same time, we set the audacious goal of San Leandro becoming a new center of innovation in the San Francisco Bay Area, and have made remarkable progress. Our high-speed fiber optic network, called Lit San Leandro, is bringing advanced manufacturing and other high tech businesses to San Leandro, creating quality jobs and generating revenue for the city to invest back into the community. We wanted San Leandro to not only come strongly out of the Great Recession, but to achieve greater economic progress than neighboring cities. Nearly five thousand new jobs have been created and unemployment has dropped by more than half since the peak of the recession. Moreover, assessed property values have risen in San Leandro at a greater rate than all other cities in Alameda County, except for one city, since 2011. Our economic progress has been noted in TV news and print media reports. “This small town between Oakland and Hayward is coming out of the downturn like few places around, attracting tech startups, artists and brewers to a onetime traditional industrial hub,” the Mercury News stated earlier this year. We worked to enrich our city artistically by creating an Arts Commission, allocating funds for murals and “art wraps” on utility boxes, and requiring that public art be incorporated into new development projects. Finally, we embraced and promoted San Leandro’s rich diversity in numerous ways, including celebrating major events of the members of our community to ensuring equal opportunity in the hiring and promotion of all persons in city positions. As I leave office, I see a bright future for San Leandro. I believe the best days for our city are ahead of us. I look forward to supporting and working with Mayor Pauline Cutter and the new City Council, as well as the trustees of the San Leandro and San Lorenzo Unified School Districts, in seeing our city continue to thrive. I love San Leandro. It’s been the greatest honor of my professional life to serve as your Mayor. Very truly yours, Mayor Stephen Cassidy
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 01:08:24 +0000
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