For Campbell mayor: Dill

For Campbell mayor: Dill

Campbell is a city facing some very difficult financial problems, and proposed solutions have proved controversial.

The one thing Campbell doesn’t need is a candidate who promises more than he can possibly deliver. Worse still would be a candidate who hasn’t even thought out how he might begin to fulfill his promises.

F. Anthony Fontes, who is challenging incumbent mayor John Dill, is just such a candidate. Though we have disagreed with Dill on some issues in the past and may again in the future, we strongly endorse him for re-election.

During a meeting with Vindicator editors, Fontes stated flatly that the city doesn’t have to sell its water treatment plant. But he had no budget figures or specific alternative plan. He also suggested the city should bring its safety forces to full strength, resurface city streets and cut the income tax by a half percent. All are certainly attractive proposals to voters, but Fontes couldn’t say how he could do any of it, given the city’s financial situation. After the interview, he complained that if he had known he was going to be “grilled” by the editors, he’d have been better prepared.

Dill, on the other hand, discusses in realistic fashion the need for the city to continue to work its way out of financial problems that were a long time in the making. This is a city that has lost 40 percent of its population, a large part of its tax bases and is trying to maintain infrastructure and services to some streets that now only have a few occupied dwellings.

We believe Dill has been too ready to sell the city’s water treatment plant to a private operator, but we understand why he would believe the deal makes great economic sense for the city. The fate of the treatment plant, however, will not be determined by the election of the mayor, but by a referendum on the issue that will also appear on the November ballot.

No matter how that referendum turns out, Dill, a pragmatic public official with a strong background in private business, is the only one of the two candidates who could be trusted to lead the city for the next two years.