Where I stand

Menifee is growing whether we plan for it or not. The question is what we get out of it.

The city’s 2026 economic strategy reports a sales-leakage and unmet-need analysis identifying approximately $2.2 billion in annual spending occurring outside Menifee on shopping, dining, and entertainment.1 The strategy describes that as an opportunity to redirect spending back into the community, and the city’s economic development director repeated the figure to the Planning Commission in July 2026.2 An older city study put the retail gap at $829 million, but that was a 2019 snapshot of a five-mile radius, and Menifee has added tens of thousands of residents since. That’s families driving out of town for a sit-down dinner, and the same gap shows up in services that figure doesn’t even count, like childcare. The jobs picture is the same story: the same economic strategy reports that approximately 93 percent of employed Menifee residents work outside the city, with an average commute of about 42.5 minutes.1

Nowhere is it clearer than in our own northeast. The city had already approved a 132,580 square foot shopping center at McCall Boulevard and Menifee Road under a plot plan it numbered 2009-051.3 The grocery store families actually needed did not break ground until July 9, 2026, when Stater Bros. started the first supermarket to serve the Heritage Lake community.4 The shopping center had been planned for more than fifteen years before a grocery store finally broke ground. The company said it was waiting for enough rooftops, and that is the market’s call to make. But a wait that long is exactly why the city should recruit hard, keep sites ready, and track every promised project in public instead of leaving residents to wonder.

I will push the city to actively recruit what we’re missing:

• Sit-down restaurants and gathering places, not just another drive-thru
• Medical and dental offices, so more routine care is available close to home
• Licensed childcare and preschool capacity. Countywide, a licensed space is available for only 15 percent of Riverside County children age 12 and under whose parents are in the labor force.5
• Room for the local entrepreneur. Build the small bays and keep permitting fast and predictable, so more residents can plant their careers here.
• Schools that keep up. We approve thousands of homes at a time. Help the school districts forecast enrollment so classrooms arrive with the rooftops.
• Somewhere to take the family. Finish the Central Park amphitheater and program it, and recruit the entertainment businesses families now drive to other cities for.6

Good commercial development means more of daily life can happen here: dinner out, a doctor’s appointment, a job close to home. I’ll fight for the kind families actually use. The General Plan already directs the city to promote retail by locating needed goods and services close to where residents live.7 I will hold it to that on our side of town.

We have enough warehouses coming to Menifee. What we’re short on is space a local business can actually start in.

I started my business at my kitchen table, and the hardest step was the first commercial lease. Small bays, light industry, and flexible workspace are how a resident’s side business becomes an employer. The city’s 2026 economic study reports that approximately 93 percent of employed Menifee residents work outside the city.1 Build for the local entrepreneur, and some of those commutes come home.

Let’s be honest about where we are. City and state records show millions of square feet of industrial projects in Menifee’s pipeline, at stages ranging from proposed to approved to under construction. Much of it entered the entitlement process before September 30, 2024, the cutoff the Legislature wrote into state law, and the approvals have kept coming, including a 1.26 million square foot distribution center in July 2026.23

Most of those older projects sit outside the new state standards. California’s warehouse law, AB 98 as amended by SB 415 in 2025, does not apply to logistics projects whose local entitlement process began before September 30, 2024, or that were approved before the law took effect. Section 65098.1.6 contains no stated expiration date. A separate five-year rule covers only narrower siting protections, and what remains possible for any single project depends on its own approvals and vested rights.4 The council cannot simply declare AB 98 applicable to a project the Legislature excluded. Whatever other lawful discretion remains must be evaluated project by project.

You may have heard that nine industrial projects were already in the pipeline ahead of the new law. They are not nine done deals. Some are under construction, several are approved but have not broken ground, at least one approval was set aside after a court challenge, and others face active lawsuits.5 The city’s remaining discretion is different for every one of them, and I will treat them that way.

But for future projects, the same law expressly preserves the city’s authority over logistics development, including the authority to say no. What happens next is where the council matters. My position:

• Favor the business-park model: smaller buildings, more opportunities for local employers, and first-lease space that gives the local entrepreneur a fighting chance
• Change the rules for what comes next. Use the General Plan and zoning to steer future development toward light industry and small bays instead of more speculative warehouses, starting with the Northern Gateway.
• Put real teeth in the city’s Industrial Good Neighbor Policies. Today they are guidance a hearing body can waive. Make the buffer, setback, and truck-routing standards binding conditions of approval, and add operating-hour limits where industrial meets homes.6
• Make industrial revenue work for residents: the fees and taxes it generates should fund roads, parks, and the services we actually want, with every dollar spent within the legal limits of the program that collected it

Industrial development is part of our economy. It just shouldn’t crowd out the higher-job uses and services residents actually want.

I grew up here when open fields still separated the neighborhoods. Nobody can freeze a growing city in time, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But we decide what stays.

Menifee’s General Plan parks and recreation policy requires at least five acres of public open space for every 1,000 residents,1 and the city’s parkland dedication ordinance sets the same five acres per 1,000 for neighborhood and community parks.2 Measured against that standard, the Parks Master Plan the council adopted in July 2023 found just 2.6 acres of active parkland per 1,000 residents, roughly half, and a shortfall of about 255 acres. That count included the Valley-Wide district’s parks alongside the city’s own, and it was calculated against a population of 106,627. We have added thousands of residents since, and the city has not published an updated inventory showing whether parkland kept pace. It should, every year.3 The same plan projects that even after the 68.92 acres of parks already in the development pipeline are built, the city will still be about 300 acres short of that five-acre goal in 2035.3

We already know what winning looks like. In May 2025 the council unanimously approved buying the 398-acre Menifee Hills as permanent public open space for $1.15 million, below market value, paid for with a developer community benefit instead of the general fund.4 Future hiking and mountain biking trails, and not one new rooftop.

• Hold the city to its own park standard. Five acres per 1,000 residents is Menifee’s own promise. Report progress against it every year, in plain language.
• Finish the Salt Creek Trail. The plan is a 16-mile regional trail from Menifee to Hemet. The only completed Menifee segment is the four miles between Goetz and Antelope, and the city’s own feasibility study puts the trail at just over 40 percent complete once a planned 1.6-mile extension is built.5
• More deals like Menifee Hills. Use development agreements and park fees to preserve open space without raiding the general fund.
• Developers provide parkland up front. Menifee already requires parkland dedication or fees from subdividers. Apply the ordinance consistently, require the full lawful contribution, and explain any exception in public.2

Open country, once it’s gone, does not come back.

Newport Road is a daily frustration in District 4, and it isn’t getting easier on its own.

That is not just a feeling. Menifee’s own General Plan Circulation Element says an eight-lane roadway is required in at least one location in the city, Newport Road in the vicinity of the I-215 interchange, based on traffic projections.1 The official fact sheet for that rebuild, issued when construction started in 2015, forecast traffic on Newport growing to 62,000 vehicles a day by 2030.2

We’ve proven this can work. The Holland Road Overpass opened in October 2024: a four-lane crossing over the 215 between Antelope and Haun. The city’s adopted capital plan puts the final cost at $38.6 million, with $4.7 million from our local sales tax measure and $10.3 million from TUMF, the regional fee developers pay on new construction, and the rest from road fees, benefit district funds, and the general fund.3 That’s the model, and it is exactly what I mean when I say growth should pay its lawful share. Developer fees and growth-related programs carried roughly two thirds of that cost. No single source had to carry it alone.

The record since then tells the story. The Newport interchange was rebuilt in 2017,4 and Scott Road’s in 2020 with Measure DD dollars in the funding mix.5 The next relief, a new Garbani Road interchange, is still under study, with construction not expected until 2029.6 In the northeast, the city’s own project page calls the McCall Boulevard interchange inadequate for today’s traffic,7 and the city’s adopted capital plan still has that project in environmental review, with construction dollars not yet assembled.8 And the city’s street construction update for the week of July 24, 2026 lists a dozen active projects across Menifee, none of them on Newport Road.9

What I’ll push for:

• Infrastructure that arrives with the rooftops, not a decade later
• Developers paying their fair share up front, through the local and regional fee programs already on the books
• Aggressive pursuit of county, regional, and state funding for corridors we can’t afford alone
• The fixes that can deliver sooner, first: signal timing and targeted intersection improvements that make a daily difference

Menifee has placed in the top twenty of SafeWise’s annual California safety rankings three years running, 17th this year among the 169 California cities that met SafeWise’s criteria to be ranked, based on 2024 FBI crime data.1 We stood up our own police department in July 2020, and that streak began in 2024.2 That’s worth protecting.

But “we’re safe” isn’t a plan. Our police response times are public, if you know where to look. They sit in a table spanning printed pages 255 and 256 of the city’s 348-page budget book. The figures reported there, fiscal year 2024-25 actuals through March 30, 2025, are not good news: Priority 1 emergency calls averaged 11 minutes against the city’s own 8-minute target, up from 8 minutes the year before. Priority 2 and Priority 3 calls came in ahead of their targets.3

You will not find any of that in the annual review the department actually publishes for residents, which reports officer counts and 9-1-1 call volumes and nothing about how long you wait.4 The city’s own strategic plan set a deadline to “develop a response time matrix for the Menifee Police Department by June 2026.” That deadline has passed.5

License plate cameras deserve a straight answer too. Menifee’s Flock cameras have been credited with more than 120 arrests.6 Residents’ privacy concerns are still fair. The department’s public portal reports a 30-day data retention period. Its procedure says access logs include a case or event number and the purpose of each request, and the system keeps an audit trail. Menifee PD now publishes that procedure and the usage portal, and the procedure requires at least two program audits each year.78 The next step is public accountability: publish the audit results, any violations and corrective actions, and a clear summary of which agencies can access Menifee data.

• Put the response times where residents will see them. Numbers buried on pages 255 and 256 of a budget book are technically public and practically invisible. Report them on the department’s website and in its annual review, with the trend, and explain what is driving it. If we’re funding a department out of our own pockets, we should be able to see what we’re getting without a document search.3
• Staffing measured against the city we actually are. The city's own annual financial report prints our police headcount and our population four lines apart and never divides them. Publish the ratio, track it as we grow, and staff to it instead of a budget cycle behind it.9
• Fire and emergency medical coverage that grows with the northeast as new neighborhoods come online. Fire and EMS are contracted to CAL FIRE and Riverside County Fire, so those response times sit with the county, and the city should be asking for them on our behalf.10

I don’t take money from developers. Not local ones, not out-of-town ones, not their companies or their principals.

Menifee’s council has a formal pledge on exactly this, and it goes further than I do: it covers contributions from developers, city contractors, and people seeking city jobs, and it asks for voluntary disclosure before voting on matters affecting them.1 The city’s own pledge page lists two signatures on it.2 I’ll sign it, and I’ll hold to all of it.

This campaign is funded by me, my family, and our supporters. That is a choice: when I vote, no one will be holding the receipt. I have no development business, no land awaiting city approval, and no clients with projects in the city’s pipeline.

You should not have to take my independence on faith. Every contribution our treasurer records is published for anyone to see.