Eichler announces candidacy for City Council

Steve Eichler say she considers running for a seat on the City Council a privilege and plans to take that attitude with him to the polls. The West Anaheim resident is a self-published author and says he expects his second, as yet untitled, book outlining his thoughts on the political direction the country is taking to be 'released by a publishing 'house in the fall. He is "From Rags to Royalty" examines his own spiritual journey. The following are some of his thoughts in his first bid for public office: Q: Why are you running for City Council? A: "Well, there's several reasons. I believe Anaheim needs to go in a new direction, butwithout sacrificing , our old-and' standard values. I see Sorrietroubling things in Anaheim and I have based my platform on five points. "First of all, we need to teach our children. What does that mean? You're familiar with the events in the past several months of abductions and kidnappings. This is tragic. We don't ever want that to happen in Anaheim. "Second of all, we need to be able to teach English to all of our students in school. Our law books, our constitution, our whole society is based on English. We need to teach English without sacrificing the culture of our students. So, if somebody has a strong cultural background, we don't want them to lose that cultural background, but they need to speak Eng"The (third) thing we need to do, and what I want to do, I want to be able to have protected neighborhoods. Because of the increased traffic on Beach Boulevard, Harbor and so forth, there are some neighborhoods right off Harbor Boulevard where I live is right off Harbor we need to be able to have a classification of a neighborhood that's protected. What that means is it's not a standard neighborhood because of the traffic pattern, but a neighborhood that needs a little bit more attention. Example: parking, speed bumps, possible study on the traffic flow to create some cui de sacs so there's not so much drive-"The (fourth) thing I want to be able to bring forth is I want to restructure the business license fee. Right now for retail, wholesale, and also manufacturing it is $60 for the fee, $27 for the processing fee, and then it's I think 9.5 percent per thousand on gross receipts. We need to eliminate that eliminate that just have a nominal fee for businesses that do less than $500,000 in gros"Why do we want to do that? Because we have to attract small businesses to Anaheim so our employment will go up. "The (fifth) thing I want to do in Anaheim is I want to be able to direct the city in a couple of ways. There is a real problem that I see developing. It's hard to express because it's a difficult problem that meets to the very heart of people. I want to endorse our police department and we endorse our police department by a couple of ways. "First of all the mess and I'm going to use the word mess the mess that's happening down here at City Hall is atrocious and insulting to the city. That mess is that there seems to be a tremendous amount of anger, frustration, hostility in several groups within Anaheim. One of the groups is a small fragment of the Hispanic"Now my wife is Hispanic and I cannot believe that the tens of thousands of wonderful Hispanic people here in Anaheim, and the thousands of Hispanic business owners, and the people that are here that pledge allegiance to our flag, the people that are here that have served in our military, wants Anaheim to turn into a place that's controlled by illegal aliens. I don't believe that. "We need to define and say wait a minute, this is not really a Hispanic problem, this is a problem of the city of Anaheim and being able to handle the illegal aliens that are coming here. They're coming here illegally and we have to be able to process them. "And we have to be able to return them back to Mexico or return them back to China or Canada, wherever they come from. But the majority of them are people from Mexico." Q: What would you do to improve the city if you are elected? A: "We need to grow more as a theme. We don't want to be just the city that hosts Disneyland.We want people to come here and live it up in Anaheim. We want people to spend money, enjoy themselves, and maybe move here. We have everything but beachfront property to offer people. "We would have to develop more of a theme for the city, more of a fun theme. We should live it up in Anaheim. We should encourage people to come here and not just promote one or two attractions, but many things. "Q: What do you see as the key issues in the race? A: "There's some zoning difficulties and I do have to do some more research on this. The zoning issue down at the Beach and Lincoln area; there's a western police station that's being discussed now and there's talk of the gymnasium and rezoning. One issue that I want the people of Anaheim to know, it's this: The whole city has to respect property rights. "I don't want to happen over there at Beach and Lincoln what happened in Cypress. What happened in Cypress is a church is losing it's property, where a city has come out and said we're taking your property because we're going to put a Costco there. We don't ever want to be in a position of putting the city in a negative light and putting these people in a horrible situation. "Look, it's real simple. When somebody goes out and develops a piece of real estate, they look at highest and best use. We wouldn't put a daily across from Anaheim Stadium, you wouldn't put a used car lot across from Disneyland. Highest and best use. "Well, highest and best use can be measured by many things, including traffic and cost per square foot. But there's many considerations. When a city goes out and says the highest and best use for this piece of property is the tax revenue it will generate, they are blind, B-L-I-N-D. They're blind because they don't consider the complete picture." Q: How have you been active in the community? A: "There's several ways. I have spoken in front of Anaheim City Council I didn't even know how many times; over a dozen times. I have worked with some of the other individuals who have run for offices not only here, for Congress, but also for the city. And, I'm land of behind the scenes, and I haven't really come forward in more of a public light like I am now. "My activity in the city has been setting the stage for me to be able to step forward and say, 'I can do this."' Q: What are your community affiliations? A: "I'm the vice president of ACRU, American Civil Responsibilities Union, where your benefits as a citizen "ACRU." We have a cable show, Adelphia Channel 3, comes on Monday nights at 6:30. Dr. Howard Garber is the president and founder of that and I'm the vice president. We are anticipating nonprofit status within the next 30 days. "We've done a lot of speaking in various clubs and groups. Just a week ago I spoke down here at the Veterans Association and talked to a lot of folks. I've spoken at churches. Crystal Cathedral is not in the city of Anaheim, but it's on the borderline. I've spoke at the Crystal Cathedral several times and of course a lot of Anaheim residents go there." Two City Council seats are up for election on the Nov. 5 ballot. The filing deadline for those seats was extended until 5 p.m. Wednesday because Council man Frank Feldhaus and Councilwoman Lucille Kring, the two incumbents, both decided to run for mayor. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, 11 candidates had filed papers with the City Clerk's office. They are Robert McDonald, James Mills, Robert Flores, John Koos, Manny Ontiveros, Stephen Eichler, Stefanie O'Neill, Harry Sidhu, Olen Scott, Richard Chavez and Robert Hernandez. In addition to the City Council and mayor's races, the school district's that serve Anaheim also will hold elections this November. There are three seats open in the Anaheim Union High School District. Elected incumbent Harald Martin is seeking a third term, while appointed incumbents Dennis Doi, who was appointed July 11, and Thomas Holguin also are seeking election. Other candidates that have filed papers to run are Judy Velasquez Ashbaugh, Vernson F. Beckett, Anthony Marmaduke "Tony" Clark, Frank Cozza, Jr., Amin David, Denise Jane Mansfield-Rein king, Robert "Rob" Stewart, David G. Vill and Chrtines V. Villegas. The three incuments have filed for the Anaheim City School District. They are Sandy Blumberg, Barbara Chemey Gonzalez, who was appointed to her seat, and Jerome Silverman. The three incumbents also are the ones who have filed for the Centralia School District. They are Karen L. Blake, Arthur Montez and Irv Trinkle, an appointed incumbent. Four candidates are seeking three seats on the Magnolia School District board. They are incumbents Cliff Breeden, Esther Wallace and appointee Phillip Wolfgramm. Barbara Quintana also has filed to run. In the Savanna School District, three incumbents have filed for re-election. They are Edward A. Erdtsieck, Pat Ochoa and Linda R. Weinstock.