Letter: Mattson has great ideas 

To the editor, 

–This election cycle we have an outside of politics, independent and energized candidate, Nicholas Mattson running for Mayor or Atascadero. As a resident of Atascadero, and a local business owner, I am placing my support for Nic Mattson, as I have concerns when I hear radio advertisements with candidates teamed up or running as a team. This is a community of diversity, however having teams of experienced politicians managing the city for numerous years doesn’t sound very diverse. It seems the candidates just trade jobs every few years, and we have the same leadership, leadership supporters and ideas.

Listening to the Atascadero mayoral radio ads, it gives the impression you would need to be aligned with the city council and have 15 years’ experience in politics to run for mayor of a city with 30,000 people. In local city government, I don’t believe it’s in the cities best interest to be aligned with others. It would make more sense to have an independent thinking city council that can amicably agree or disagree and work on issue solutions for Atascadero, and only for Atascadero.

Atascadero City Council has had great ideas in the past, however if we keep using the same great ideas, they are no longer great ideas, just the same thoughts revised. Atascadero is a wide-ranging community of families, raising young children with quite a few parents commuting to nearby cities to work. Many children walk or ride bikes to school with very few safe routes for them to travel along to school, this is a concern. We are in real need of anchor retail business amenities in Atascadero to keep shoppers and tax dollars in Atascadero, rather than leaving to the nearby retail outlets. We need more options to grocery shopping; we lose local dollars to nearby communities. If we can keep families and shoppers “living” in Atascadero, we can capture the lost tax dollars to generate revenue for improvements into our cities infrastructure. Voters in Atascadero recently agreed to raise taxes to improve our roads, that’s great, however the county now has a measure to do the same thing. If passed Atascadero voters will be paying multiple tax increases to have the roads repaired in our city.

Creating sustainable tax revenue in Atascadero would be a long term solution to failing infrastructure and required maintenance issues for the city. Atascadero has great events, however, we need a place for the folks that live her, to “live” and invest in. A lot of people live and stay in hotels here and invest in cities like Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo for shopping, eating and entertainment because of their atmosphere and amenities. Creating events is a great way to attract visitors and fill hotels, but not a long term improvement plan for the folks that enjoy living in Atascadero. I think Nic Mattson has some great ideas as a younger person living in Atascadero, as a father raising his family in Atascadero and as a person committed to the growth and prosperity of Atascadero.

Please join me in support and vote Nicholas Mattson for Mayor on Nov. 8.

Mike Avila
President M.E. Avila Companies