An interview with...

Dave Ennis
Escalon City Councilman

How long have you lived here in Escalon?

Well, I've lived here my whole life -- 54 years. I was born here in the old Jones mansion. And had a chance to travel; I travel quite extensively in my job, but I like living in Escalon because it's really a great place. It was a great place to raise my family. It's been a great place to serve the community. And it's been the type of place that I really look forward to retiring to. So for me as an individual, it's got all the things I was looking for.

How has it changed over the years?

The changes I guess have been so gradual that I've kind of assimilated them. Nothing jumps out at me. It's a lot of newer people; people that are coming in from the Bay Area, and a lot of people who are moving here from Mantica and Tracy as they sell their homes to people from the Bay Area. I guess that's probably been the biggest change, is the influx of new people.

What do you think about growth?

Well, I'll tell you what: growth to me is one of those inevitable things. But I think it has to be managed so that the other things we look for in life aren't affected. And I'm talking about good schools, police protection, and items like that. And we've been very fortunate over the years to form an alliance with the school district, working very closely with them. I think Escalon has one of the best school districts around. I know it has one of the best statistical rates, at least for crime and crime prevention. So I think that we have the things that are really the most important to people. We don't have the big theaters; we don't have the bowling alleys; we don't have the roller rinks; we don't have the skate parks. But we do have a quality of life that a lot of people aspire to. So I'm very satisfied with that.

How long have you served as a city official, and what are the city's positions on growth issues?

I've served on the city council since 1978. I've been elected within the council three times to the position of mayor. The city adopted a growth stance way back in 1978, right after I was elected to the city council. That was to manage growth as best we could. And the way that we think we've been able to manage growth is by putting in a growth ordinance that allows only approximately 75 housing units a year to be built. And through the years, that's giving us a planning instrument that we've been able to go ahead and get the services needed for the new residents that are coming in. So we've been averaging around 40-45 units if you take it over the past 22 years. And it's given us the opportunity to maintain the quality of life in Escalon, and I think it actually has helped us enhance the quality of life.

Where did you get the growth ordinance from, and what exactly does it stipulate?

The growth ordinance we picked it up from the city of Tracy back in 1978. The then-city manager for Tracy, Mike Lock, was kind enough to provide it to us. I don't know if Tracy used it or not, but he had a draft -- a prototype -- so we took it and we incorporated it for our own use. In essence, what it says is we can only allow 75 residential units to be built per year.

When you talk about quality of life, how do the elements of that manifest themselves?

Well, I'm sure they manifest themselves in different ways to different people. To me, the way I'd describe it is first of all, as I said before: good schools -- schools that people trust where your children feel safe and they can learn, and create an environment so they have a future for themselves -- and police protection. Now, we do have other cultural and leisure things that we do, and one of the most important things is we have a tremendous volunteer base in Escalon. And we try to incorporate the new people who come into the community so that they're part of those projects. It makes them assimilate much faster into the community. It gives them a sense of buy-in and belonging. And it gives our neighbors kind of a quick learning experience on who moved in next to them and what they really care about.

Local sales revenue is important for any city. What are you doing to protect local businesses?

Well, we've passed what they call a "big box" ordinance that limits the size of the type of commercial growth that can come into the city. And we're doing that as a way to create opportunity for our local merchants and businesses to go ahead and serve this community. We figure they can make up in service what they don't make up for in quantity and so it's our way of in essence protecting them, but also providing a level of service to the current residents.

You seem to have a pretty "lean and mean" city government. How do you function efficiently and effectively if you have to pay such close attention to how much money you spend?

We created a 'teaming' aspect approximately 4 years ago, where we used department heads to actually run the city. That worked for about a year, and then we decided to go back to the traditional form of a city manager type of government. And we have, as you say, really looked at all our operations. Those it really made sense to keep in-house we've kept in-house. Those that are done better by the private sector, we're farmed out to the private sector. In essence, what's happened is our reserve has grown very, very much in the last 10 years. Approximately 24% of our income comes in from sales tax, while property tax only brings in 20%. In essence, residential growth in Escalon doesn't pay for itself, and I would be hard-pressed to see if it paid for itself in any other community.

What do you see as Escalon's future?

Pretty much the same as what we're doing right here, but we are very much concerned about the outside pressures of growth. We can sit here on our own little island for only so long. I firmly believe that we have to have a regional look at growth. We cannot go ahead and try to set the tone for the entire county or the region by ourselves. We're not saying Escalon has the answer, because maybe we don't. But we set up a habitat plan for endangered species for the county of San Joaquin. We're able to go ahead and embrace and in essence protect endangered species. It seems to me we could get together and in essence protect ourselves against growth.

If you had to describe Escalon in a single sentence, how would you describe it?

My hometown.

Presentation also made possible by a grant from
the Great Valley Center