Councilman Kroonen Starts Re-election Run

Incumbent Palm Desert City Council Bill Kroonen kicked off his re-election campaign Thursday night with a small fund-raising event at the Desert Willow Golf Resort. 

Kroonen, who is looking for a second two-year term, said that the playing field has totally changed since he first took office.  

“You have a new environment with the demise of Redevelopment agencies,” Kroonen said.  ”We have to review, and in fact, create new visions for our city that are relates to the fact that we have diminished resources.  So I want to work very carefully on planning for the future, knowing that the future is going to be different in many ways because of the lack of traditional funding streams.” 

The long-time educator says part of the future means reviewing the City’s General Plan, while involving major input from the community regarding the future of Palm Desert.  

Kroonen told Patch that the biggest challenge the city needs to address is the lack of state redevelopment funding, which is sending Palm Desert, and cities state-wide, in a different direction than they had planned.  

“It’s been a huge event to lose the fairly traditional funding from redevelopment agencies… That is pretty well gone.  We need to do things as well as we’ve done them before, or even better, but with restricted resources,” he said.  

 “At the same time, we’re looking for new avenues for revenue.  We want to be sure we’re giving our business community lots of support, because we depend a lot on sales tax revenue.  Our recreational community needs support because of the income from the transient occupancy tax.  So I will try to insure that we are working progressively with those organizations too.”  

Kroonen feels that some groups in the community are not being served as well as they should, and recognizes that there is an income gap between Palm Desert residents.  

“I also want to take a good look at how we are serving EVERY contingent group in the community, Kroonen said.  “ We need to take a good comprehensive view, and not assume everything is ‘hunky-dory’.  Do we have people in the community that are basically shut-in and don’t have any social interaction or getting the services that they need?  We need to know and understand that.” 

Kroonen, along with council member Cindy Finerty and Mayor Bob Spiegel, have their city council seats up for re-election on the November ballot.