Supervisor Horn delivers State of North County Address

OCEANSIDE — The Oceanside City Council Chambers was the location for Fifth District Supervisor Bill Horn’s recent annual State of North County Address.

Supervisor Horn emphasized his commitment to public safety and said that next month in Washington, DC, he will lobby for federal funds to assist local law enforcement agencies in their fight to keep kids out of gangs and their efforts for gang suppression.

Horn also cited early results from a county study on the cost of illegal immigration on local services. “In December last year,” said Horn, “two million dollars in benefits were paid to support citizen children with at least one undocumented parent in the home. That took up 4,000 of more than 23,000 such cases for our Health and Human Services Agency. Children need to be cared for and that’s why I want to know where the money ends up.”

In addition, Supervisor Horn highlighted success stories for the county, including an award-winning, cost-saving program involving public health nurses. He also cited the recent freeze that badly damaged county agriculture and pledged to help local farmers recover and extend the county’s record of increased crop values to 14 consecutive years.

The Supervisor updated progress on widening Highway 76 with the San Luis Rey River Park Project and said that the Draft Master Plan for the park is now completed. He added that his Washington trip will include efforts to preserve the 22,000-acre Rancho Guejito estate near Valley Center and cited the passage of Proposition 84 as a source of potential revenue to purchase the land by the state.

Supervisor Horn said there are discussions for revised strategy to build a new library in Fallbrook and he gave his support to seeing if a venue for the San Diego Chargers to play in Oceanside would benefit all of North County.