The Interviews: Don Eaton

Don Eaton: I’ve lived in town for 35 years, served four terms and been the mayor three times.

Bob Grassilli:  The biggest challenge we face is the budget. Excluding that what would you say is the biggest challenege we’re facing in San Carlos over the next couple years.

DE: I’d answer it two-fold. One is to keep appropriate economic develoment going for San Carlos...Secondly, I’d answer that I think it’s very important that San Carlos maintain its sense of community. That’s something San Carlos is very unique at. All towns have a lot of good people in them, but I think we have more than our share. How we meld that is very unique and important we keep that up.

 Randy Royce: You served several terms. After being off council for a couple of years, coming back, what would you do differently as far as how you would act? Are there any things you would change, not only with all that experience, but having time to reflect?

 DE: We had a mayor’s forum the chamber took up, and I think my comment was to have the courage to do the right thing. Sometimes it is very difficult. The real challenge here is to figure out what is really best for San Carlos. But it’s having the courage to stand up and say, “Yeah, this is what I believe and this is what is best for San Carlos. Change is inevitable so let’s make it the right kind of change.

 Matt Grocott: We can do a few things here: We can do nothing and go six months with four people, we can go with a fresh face, or we can go with someone new. What would you do in our position?

 DE: I will tell you that the crtitera of hit the ground running was a major concern for all of us when this happened last time and it was spoken in the first instance because of the necessity to take on this job for a short time and be able to meld, know issues, have a background. All of those things are very important. As a council, we thought it was important to have someone who could jump right in. I’m not trying to run for election or get back into the mix. I’m here to offer some stability for six months.

 Andy Klein: If you could be king for a day, if you could do one thing, what would you do?

 DE: There a number for projects. My 1A is a kind of grandiose kind of dream and that is undergrounding all the utilities in town...its very expensive to do this but if the entire city had undergournd utilities, San Carlos would be known for that and everyones property value would go up. My 1B – my dream for the day would be that we go to work on a big-time emergency preparedness for earthquakes.  To encourage people to prepare for a big one. The earthquake in Japan recently was six minutes long. What if we get a big one?