Mikes face off in Los Banos mayor candidates forum

The two candidates for Los Banos mayor went head-to-head Tuesday night at Los Banos City Hall in the final Community Candidates Night forum.

The forum, hosted by the League of Women Voters and the Los Banos Enterprise, posed 22 audience-submitted questions to incumbent Mike Villalta and former mayor Michael Amabile, who threw his hat back into the ring after an eight-year absence.

The two previous forums focused on school board and City Council candidates.

“In previous forums I referred to the candidates by their first names,” moderator John Spevak said. “But that won’t work here.”

As in the previous forum, questions touched on transportation, interagency relations, city growth and jobs, to name a few.

“I think we had a well-informed audience that truly cares about politics,” Villalta said, “and came to find out more about the two candidates.”

Amabile agreed, saying he felt enough questions were asked that voters can get a feel for each candidate’s positions.

“Everybody fights for the same things,” Amabile said. “It’s how you go about doing it, that’s really the difference in the people and the leadership, is are you going to be more inclusive, or are you going to be a different way. So I think you can get that from listening to us tonight.”

The format – each candidate had 90 seconds to speak on each topic – didn’t leave a lot of room to directly address one another, but the two Mikes found ways to do that.

When Amabile spoke on why he was running for mayor, his second point touched on the crime in the city, and how he’s never seen it like this. Villalta used part of his 90 seconds to reply.

“Look on CityData.com, 2004, 2005 and 2006, and I want you to look at the crime rate when my opponent was mayor, and we had 2,000 less people in this town,” Villalta said. “He’s never seen it like that? Well, he should remember what the statistics were at that time.”

Amabile’s only direct jab during the forum was after Villalta answered first on a question about in-fill construction projects. Amabile started by saying he would actually answer the question.

“In-fill is the way you want to go, because services are a lot easier to manage, but don’t be afraid of annexation,” he said as part of his answer. “It’s not a dirty word.”

The two mayors agreed on several topics – that jobs are the top priority for the city, and both spoke in favor of Measure S, which if passed will split the council election into districts. Some topics surfaced several times during the 90-minute discussion, such as the proposed bypass and how to work with other county governments to help get that project going.

“I’ve said it a lot, but Los Banos is not an island,” Amabile said. “And you need MCAG (Merced County Association of Governments), you need the county, the other cities. Everybody has to be working to the same goal.”

Villalta said his interactions with the rest of the county have been exaggerated, while pointing out that the bypass has been on peoples’ minds since his father was on the Planning Commission in 1962.

“I’ve been accused of duking it out with the county. Our supervisor votes with me not to send the money out of Los Banos,” Villalta said, referring to Merced County Supervisor Jerry O’Banion of Dos Palos. “You can check his record. He’s voted with me twice now, and he says, ‘I have to support the city of Los Banos in not moving the RTIF (Regional Transportation Impact Fee) money.’ What a revelation.

“Dos Palos does not pay the RTIF anymore. That poor little town, the roads are crumbling. They paid $109,000, and they’ve never gotten a dime out of it.”

This story was originally published October 20, 2014 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Mikes face off in Los Banos mayor candidates forum."