Fires and floods have existed on this plant since the Creator made it.  And He also created us, hopefully with some common sense on how to cope with fire and flood.  The cost of putting out fires, dealing with the aftermath of floods, and rebuilding after the destruction that mudslides cause, is millions and can be billions of dollars.  The ultimate price of the costs is the most tragic, the death that destruction can bring.

What would the outcome be, if we took the cost factor of what we have paid, year after year, in saving structures, some to no avail, and our fireman putting their lives on the line, and included the cost of using the airplanes, the helicopters, the land crews, the bull dozers, and all the communications used for fighting fires, floods and mudslides, and put the money instead into prevention?

As your governor, I would require that all builders and the cities remove all growth up to a half a mile around all new construction and replace it and maintain it with a desert ground cover that is fire retardant.  So when the fire comes there are no embers to start the houses to burn, there is no firewall to knock the houses down.  And even if the ground cover did burn it is so short and so close to the ground that even a garden house could keep it from ever spreading.

And all cities and all counties, building departments and contractors will work together to ensure this preventative maintenance.  Not only will it save us millions and billions of dollars but the home owners, insurance, and fire insurance would and should be reduced.

On the water across our state we have developed bureaucracies to take care of our water.  They have a guarantee that anybody that lives in their district has to have water.  And like all bureaucracies they see how important and powerful they are because no matter what, 99% of all people pay their water bill.  So they give themselves a raise of unreasonable amounts and medical benefits, that outreach any of the private sector average, all the holidays and more, not to mention the sick days that even if you are not sick you have to take them or lose them.  Because government has only grown and not gotten smaller, we have an overwhelming number of people that have retired.  These retirees have longer life spans, so with that comes receiving very hi benefits, (3 times the average in the private sector) year after year, which is now strangling our state.  And of course the bureaucracy says there is a simple answer…just raise the water bill.  Well we could all just work for the government and be cared for by our caring government employees but it would still be the same.  The food chain would continue because those that have the power will have outrageous amounts of salaries, benefits and pensions.

All water departments and all government bureaucracies must by law have all compensations reduced to the equivalent of the average private sector.  The greatest problem that has developed with water is one district has more water than the other district.  Now, that district has the power and they want to profit on God’s gift to man, the water, which they now can build a bigger bureaucracy and give everyone a bigger raise. Water is to be at cost with no profit, for hi benefits and slush funds, for other than the water delivery or storage,

As your governor it will be my endeavor to enforce restrictions that no water district can sell their water to another district; they can only share the water.  There will be no hoarding of water, but there will be and should be proper conservation of water, such as all new construction must have a cistern to collect the rain water that, electronically, will either accept the rain water or divert the rain water.  Your sprinkler system would use the water collected and recycle water from the sink and other areas.