Arnold names Carter Colusa supervisor
Colusa County's newest supervisor has simple goals for her new role — and the urgency of dealing with the local fallout of California's budget crisis.
"Obviously, the No. 1 priority is going to be the economic viability of the county, with the budget cuts the state's going to have to make," Denise J. Carter said Friday, hours after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to the Board of Supervisors seat Daniel C. Yerxa left after an embezzlement scandal.
She ran unsuccessfully for the seat Yerxa won in 2006. Carter, a registered Republican, will serve the last two years of Yerxa's term.
A former Texaco engineer who moved to the county in 1993, Carter owns an organic rice and bean farm outside Colusa and is a vice president of the Colusa County Farm Bureau.
The 52-year-old farm owner will represent the county's 5th District, which includes the city of Colusa and the community of Princeton near Glenn County.
Her appointment comes as many of Colusa County's services are threatened by the state's deficit, which has swelled to more than $11 billion since it passed its long-delayed budget in September. Carter said her first priorities will include defending county programs from state cutbacks, especially for law enforcement and farmland conservation.
To bulk up a thin county tax base built on barely 22,000 residents, Carter encouraged new development along Interstate 5 in the west county.
But she also urged the preservation of as much farmland — and local control over growth — as possible, especially as the county tries to craft its first new general plan in nearly 20 years.
"A lot of the land-use decisions in the (general plan) update need to be made by each community," she said. "The people who live there are the ones who need to drive what they want."
Yerxa was forced to leave the board in July after pleading no contest to charges he siphoned more than $6,000 from the Sacramento Valley Museum in Williams, where he had served as treasurer.
Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Howard Yune at 749-4708 or hyune@appealdemocrat.com.
