Robles Cites Experience & Grand Terrace Recovery In Seeking Reelection

Sylvia Robles

Sylvia Robles

Sylvia Robles is seeking reelection to the Grand Terrace City Council for the first time, four years after she was first elected to that post.
With another incumbent, William Hussey, Robles is vying against two newcomers, Brian Reinarz and Becky Giroux, for three council positions up for election this year. Another incumbent, Jackie Mitchell, is not seeking reelection.
Robles said she believes she merits reelection because “We have gotten the city to the point
where it is fiscally stable. We brought in a permanent city manager after we went through several interims. We really are in a strategically better place than we were four years ago. We have a staff and city manager who know how to bring in business and grow our property tax and sales tax base. We are in an excellent negotiating position with the Lewis Operating Company with regard to the development of 55 acres controlled by the successor to our redevelopment agency which fronts the freeway.”
Robles said, “Another thing we have done is we have established park fees so that whenever people come in and build be are banking money so we can redress the shortage of sports fields and recreational amenities we have. We are working with the Colton Joint Unified School District to keep the fields we have open and create new ones. We had to shut some of our parks down during the 2008 to 2012 recession. We have reestablished our summer youth programs and opened up the pool again for the community. Our city manager is working to get competitive grant money and we have created a master plan for our parks that covers the entire city and Blue Mountain. We obtained money from the community foundation to get a dog park.”
Without taking credit for it, Robles said, “We were lucky that in our negotiations with the City of Colton over our arrangement with them for wastewater treatment we were able to have them take over the lines, and we obtained a one-time infusion of $400,000, which we are using for our youth and senior programs and for sheriff’s deputy overtime.”
Robles said she is valuable to the residents of Grand Terrace because of her experience and knowledge, including her understanding of the financial challenges the city has faced and must continue to deal with.
“My main thing,” she said, “is that the City of Grand Terrace never had a stable tax base and historically used its redevelopment agency to buttress its general fund,” she said. “The state ended the existence of all municipal redevelopment agencies back in 2011 and that means that Grand Terrace, which has one of the smallest commercial districts of all 24 cities in San Bernardino County, must work to intensify and enlarge and strengthen its retail base to allow us to collect the revenue for our city government so we can be a full service city and maintain levels of police and fire protection that are adequate. We need to bring onto Barton Road and along the property fronting on the 215 Freeway the kind of businesses that will do well by locating there. I understand this and do not have to go through a learning curve to understand what the city needs to do to reach those goals.”
Robles was born in San Bernardino and attended San Gorgonio High School. She attended the University of Redlands, from which she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in business and then went on to attain a master’s degree in public administration from Cal State San Bernardino. She is retired from the employment of San Bernardino County, where she had been a budget analyst in the county’s special district division, overseeing the provision of services to the county’s unincorporated areas.
She has lived in Grand Terrace for 38 years. She and her husband, Bob, have three adult children.

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