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Dave Roberts participates in final Board of Supervisors meeting

~ Guest Opinion



During the past four years, it has been a great privilege to serve as your Third District Supervisor. Every Friday, I have enjoyed sharing all aspects of the job in this electronic scroll. Today’s blast is Issue No. 204.

Another vast record of my time at the county is my Flickr site, which is home to more than 2,500 photographs.

As I prepare to begin a new chapter, I urge you to stay in touch. My personal e-mail address is dave@daveroberts.org.

I wish all of you the very happiest of holidays.

Last week, I participated in my final Board of Supervisors hearings.

The following is a transcript of my remarks:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to deliver some brief farewell remarks.

I have held many jobs throughout my almost 40 years working life. (When I think back I started working at 16 years old; I just turned 56 a couple of days ago.) Service to others has been central to all of them.

Whether a civilian employed by the United States Air Force in the Pentagon and Germany, a staffer on Capitol Hill, an executive with a Fortune 500 company or an international nonprofit healthcare group, or as a volunteer on city commissions in Solana Beach and later as a mayor of that city — the most fulfilling aspect of each of these jobs has been helping other people.

Helping other people. Solving problems. Really putting the “good” into good government. That’s what we do here at the County of San Diego each and every day.

And that’s why, for the last four years, I have enjoyed this job so much. I am pleased to have contributed — working together with all of you — to our quality of life throughout our county, for all 3.3 million San Diegans.

Most of all, I am pleased to have brought a brighter tomorrow for foster children, for mentally-ill people, for people who are sick with HIV, AIDS or Alzheimer’s disease, for victims of domestic violence and for military veterans facing challenges upon their return to civilian life.

It’s amazing what a bit of compassion and a few phone calls can accomplish. That and teamwork.

I want to say thank you to our entire county team. All 17,000-plus of us. The hard work and dedication of this team is truly what makes this County great.

Thank you to my colleagues: Chairman Ron Roberts, Vice Chairwoman Dianne Jacob, Supervisor Greg Cox and Supervisor Bill Horn. We’ve partnered together on various projects over the last for years and have been very successful.

So much of what I have done here happened as a result of our collaboration on various projects.

I want to thank our county team leader, Helen Robbins-Meyer, a great motivator who runs things with extraordinary skill and grace. Yours is a tough job, but you make it look so easy.

I want to thank my office staff: my chief Mel Millstein, who has done a phenomenal job, and my staffers: Evan Bollinger, Keith Corry, Janie Hoover, Adam Kaye, Nora May, Harold Meza, Tylisa Suseberry, Roberta Walker and Christian Luna. What can I say to these bright and hard-working people except thank you so much?

And I also want to send a thank you to my family. I don’t think people realize how difficult these jobs are and how difficult they are on our families. I want to thank my spouse, Wally Oliver. He’s put up with a lot over the past four years. I appreciate that. And I want to thank our six wonderful kids, Robert (and his wife Jamie), Alex, Julian, Joe, Manny and our daughter, Natalee. I love each of my kids so very much and I look forward to starting a new chapter together with them.

And finally, I want to thank the residents of the Third District for the opportunity to represent you. I will reflect with great pride and happiness on the many things that we have accomplished together. We are leaving the Third District and San Diego County better off than when we started 4 years ago.

But a large part of that, and what I hope everybody realizes — it takes a team. I could do none of this myself. I want to thank everybody for that.

And I just think of some of the projects, whether it was keeping Palomar Forensic Health Center open, where I partnered with Supervisor Horn. Our Think Local First initiative. Saving Webb Lake.

I partnered with you, Mr. Chairman, on the Getting to Zero (for HIV/AIDS) initiative, which is going to be a great success. With Supervisor Jacob on the Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easements and the Property Assessed Clean Energy programs.

Again with Supervisor Horn on the Hawthorne Family and Veterans Resource Center. So many projects working together.

San Diego County is in great shape. I look forward to a happy and healthy future. I wish all of you, including my successor, the best, and I want to thank all of you for the opportunity to serve with you for the past four years.

Thank you!



*Note: Opinions expressed by columnists and letter writers are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the newspaper.

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