State Assembly Candidate Joe Grcar

Long-time Castro Valley resident, Joe Grcar says he is tired of the way politicians have taken advantage of people who live in San Leandro, Hayward, Union City, and the unincorporated areas including Castro Valley. The retired US Department of Energy scientist says it’s time to put, “Southern Alameda County First.”

“Because we are the center of the Bay Area, our highways become parking lots as soon as they are built, and most of the cars come from outside the district,” Grcar says. “Why spend our money on them? Instead, use our infrastructure money to build new schools. If we are going to build back better, then we must do things differently.”

To instigate that different way of thinking, Grcar (pronounced GER-chur) announced last month he is running for California State Assembly District 20, a 2-year seat currently occupied since 2012 by another scientist, Dr. Bill Quirk of Hayward. Grcar ran against Quirk in 2018 and lost in the General Election. 

This time around, Grcar says his ideas will only benefit the southern areas of Alameda County and not the general Bay Area. His 12-point plan proposes creating jobs and encouraging more businesses to open up or stay here instead of sending them to San Francisco or Silicon Valley. He is also in favor of abolishing the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), supporting big construction projects including a toll tunnel directly linking the San Mateo Bridge to West Dublin, and lowering taxes.

“Our sales taxes are highest in the state, in part because local politicians raised our taxes to build highways here—an example of old thinking,” Grcar said. Yet, our county has the lowest average income per person in the Bay Area. If California needs more money for anything, let it raise taxes in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.”

Grcar says he is critical of some of the recent spendings within District 20 including $500 million on dumping even more broken concrete and asphalt along the Hayward shoreline. Instead, Grcar would rather the area be developed as a public beach like the man-made shoreline along Alameda’s Crown Beach.

“Most of the Bay shoreline is publicly owned, and all of it should be made into a state park,” Grcar said. “The state park system is best equipped and financed for such an undertaking. It is high time we had a state park, and a big one, for the Eden Area.”

Other items on Grcar’s to-do list include support for online voting to prevent rigged elections and ending the county’s pandemic emergency powers. When asked about his stance on unsheltered families and the housing crisis, Grcar pointed to his ideas to keep companies to increase their working wages, which he says would help with the rising cost of buying a home.

“Developers want to build expensive, ‘market rate’ homes on open space, while they want to shoehorn ‘multi-unit’ homes (a.k.a. small apartment buildings) into existing neighborhoods, Grcar says. “Recent laws enable city councils to pass-the-buck by claiming, ‘the state tells us to do it,’ and the laws even nullify environmental protections. The state is taking over local zoning and thwarting the rights of citizens to object. We need to repeal those bad laws so that city councils are again answerable to residents.”

California’s general election is on November 8. A primary is scheduled for June 7. The filing deadline is March 11, 2022.

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