Lodi consultant and developer Russ Munson is proud of the fact he has never held a public office, looking rather toward his record of accomplishments in the private sector risking his own dollars and employing up to 250 people. 

“In a way I have a personal passion toward the supervisor’s post in San Joaquin County.  I’ve thought about it many, many times and I look back into my experience which I don’t get to talk much about in these interviews,” he said.

He described the county’s Fourth Supervisorial District as being shaped like a banana on the east side of the county.  The candidate said it takes him some 35 minutes to travel from his home in Lodi to the southern tip of the district in Ripon.  Last week while driving southbound on Highway 99 a tire came flying over the divider, some 10 feet in the air, crashing into his right side headlight.  He was not injured in the mishap, he said, but it did shake him up.

He said it is very satisfying for him to visualize all those experiences working with various entities for so long in planning commissions, city councils, board of supervisors, LAFCO – all the agencies throughout the county.

“I think all my experiences are the all important things that go back the past 35 years.  All the consultants you have to work with and all the city councils – entities that are pro-growth or against growth,” he said.

He said it is the coordination necessary to get things approved that create results, working on the issues that nobody else wants to tackle.  Munson remembers working on a sizeable project next to Sharpe Army Depot where toxic TCU from helicopter maintenance had permeated down into the water aquifers polluting the underground reservoir. The cleanup involved some 150 acres where homes have since been built on that property.

Munson told of a vision that involved Wine and Roses in Lodi that took some 15 years for him and his partners to take to fruition.  He said he did the land acquisition of 1,400 acres that would become Weston Ranch and worked with the City of Stockton in support of the approval of Measure W. 

In addition he worked with the City of Lathrop on a number of projects, he said, and was included on its General Plan Committee.  

“We were one of the partners for River Islands – at that time ‘Gold Rush City.’  It was a visionary type project and we did the design work for the project but it changed and we eventually dropped out.  They have hundreds of millions of dollars in the project today,” he said.

Munson said he looks back to the evolution of the Wine and Roses venue to what it has become and his promoting of the Ag tours in Lodi.  

“We had less than 10 wineries when we started and now we have 85 to 90.  All these things that I have had to put together gives me a favorable background,” he said.

He was the guy who had to cut all the employees’ salaries and hourly wages at Wine and Roses when things got tough – saying he reversed those cuts when the economy improved.  

“I think just working and having the knowledge of all the different agencies you work with in the county including the irrigations districts, Caltrans, Army Corps of Engineers, working with sewer district, water districts, along with the cities and their staffs is beneficial.”

The candidate said he has traveled the country working in the newspaper business back in 1976 designing classified advertising systems from the San Francisco Examiner and Los Angeles Times to newspapers back East. 

“That’s when newspapers were converting from the old Line-O-Types and we were hooking them into the main frame computers,” he recalled.  

He said he feels it is “incumbent” upon the supervisors to get a good understanding of the different county departments and see the performance of the people working for them.  The one probably needing the most scrutiny right now is the county hospital, he noted.

“I kinda understand how it is put together, but (question) how the Affordable Care Act is going to impact the county in having to subsidize the hospital.  Can it be turned around? – I’m not sure.”

His thinking toward the development of the Stockton Airport differs from that of his opponent Manteca Mayor Chuck Winn.  

“He wants to make it an international airport.  To me it’s an industrial cargo type airport.  We’re not going to compete with Sacramento or Oakland.  The reason is that we have a Sacramento Airport.  They put all their investments into those facilities and Stockton is too close.  But, we’re perfectly set up for cargo with UPS and Federal Express,” he said.  

He said he feels it needs to be developed in a different way with all kinds of development land available between I-5 and Highway 99.  

Munson and his wife Kathryn have two adult children.  Son Tim is a building contractor involved in the creation of custom homes.  Daughter Kelly is the activities director at Butte Junior College.  

“Wine and Roses has changed our way of life,” he quipped, having their family holiday celebrations at that facility in Lodi.