LAKEPORT — Three Lakeport City Council seats are open and will go before voters in the November election, according to a press release from City Clerk Janel Chapman.
Lakeport”s five council members are elected to staggered, four-year terms. Councilmen Jim Irwin and Ron Bertsch were elected in November 2006. This year, council seats currently occupied by Mayor Buzz Bruns and councilmen Roy Parmentier and Rob Rumfelt are open.
Chapman said Parmentier and Rumfelt had taken out nomination papers. No other candidates have filed nomination papers, Chapman said. The deadline to file nomination papers for incumbents and anyone interested in running is Aug. 8.
“I”m not a career politician,” Mayor Buzz Bruns said Wednesday.
Bruns is serving his second consecutive term on the city council, and said he plans to file his papers in the near future. His fellow council members elected Bruns mayor last year.
“The reason I”m running now is because we have so many positive things coming up for the city ? downtown redevelopment, the downtown lights, storefronts. We”re going to spruce up the town and make it look like something,” Bruns said.
Bruns said he knows of three or four store owners on Lakeport”s downtown Main Street who want to use the city”s redevelopment money to have their storefronts redone as part of the redevelopment agency”s downtown revitalization project.
Bruns said he has a personal interest in the 40-plus streetlights installed on Main Street. He said after his 35-year-old son died of brain cancer in July 2001, he raised approximately $10,000 in lieu of flowers to donate two streetlights to the city. Since then, he said, individuals and businesses donated each of the lights on Main Street. Between 10 and 12 more will be installed on Third Street this summer, he said.
“The idea of redevelopment is that you want to get the business in the town itself. In the little town of MeNdocino on the coast, there are people shopping door-to-door. This is what we want to create in Lakeport,” Bruns said.
Parmentier and Rumfelt did not return calls from the Record-Bee by press time Wednesday.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
