One of California’s brightest public policy minds is retiring (perhaps temporarily) from public office after a sixteen-year career on the Garden Grove City Council.
Political professionals, myself included, often times under estimate the impact of individual elected officials. And it is easy to discount the majority of elected officials both local and in the legislature–they just don’t have the skills or knowledge or command of the issues that allows them to be great at the job of making policy.
Councilman Mark Leyes is the exception to that rule. He is in an economist by education, a political strategist by necessity and visionary by desire. And if you had ever been to Garden Grove in the late ’80s and then came back today, you would know why Tuesday night’s retirement party hosted by the city had included over a hundred admirers of Leyes and what he accomplished in his tenure on the council.
Having served on a local water board and policy guru at another water district prior to being elected to the city council, Leyes also has a deep understanding of water and waste water issues that helped him do things like eliminate a Sanitary District–a whole government agency.
The conservative principled Leyes is a leader in the Republican party (he is an elected member of the Central Committee) who grew up in Garden Grove with boyhood friend Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle.
The city of Garden Grove was a nice place to live back in the day but by the 1980’s it’s commercial areas had become run down and included numerous adult oriented businesses. The city was on the decline. Since Mark Leyes joined the council the city has seen the development of eleven new hotels, major mid- and up-scale restaurants and even million dollar new homes. He deserves great credit for his vision that included some use of redevelopment (he was chairman of the Agency for a decade).
He has several offers on the table to consult on political strategy, public policy and economic development. Leyes will be successful in private life but for those who know him and his talents we hope that he is once again in a place to make policy, make the lives of any constituency better, because he is that good at what he does.
Thank you Mark for your service to Garden Grove and Orange County.
November 29th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Here in San Bernardino County, Mark displayed tremendous leadership and managerial skills as Victory ’06 Director. He worked tirelessly with our local GOP to build a successful game plan for this past election. The citizens of Garden Grove are losing an outstanding leader on their city council.