As they say, all politics is local. Unfortunately, voters and media rarely pay attention to local elections for a variety of reasons. This year, I asked each candidate running for election in Shoreacres if they would like to participate in an “interview” so that citizens would know more about who is running. Three Four of the six took advantage of the opportunity. Neil Moyer is running for the position of Alderman.
Background

Neil was born in and grew up in California, in the shadow of Disneyland in Anaheim. He went to the University of California at Irvine and received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry. Neil is married to former Shoreacres Mayor Dolly Arons and they will celebrate their 32nd anniversary next month. He and Dolly moved to Shoreacres in 2003.
Professional Life
Neil spent the first half of his professional life working for various government entities in California focusing his efforts on air pollution. He joined Texaco in 1988 in their corporate environmental health and safety department, covering most of the western states. After Texaco and Shell formed a partnership, Neil relocated to the Shell Deer Park refinery, serving as an environmental manager, again focusing on air quality. He is now retired.
Political Experience
This is Neil’s first run for office but he has had some political experience. During his time at Texaco, part of his job was to lobby various legislatures in the western states on environmental regulations and was a registered lobbyist in Arizona. Obviously being married to the former mayor gives him a lot of insight into the politics and issues of Shoreacres. His interest in running for Alderman stems from seeing the turmoil in the past couple of years and deciding that if he wants to help the community move forward, he needed to run for office. He hopes to return council to a group working as neighbors instead of adversaries.
Issues for Shoreacres
Neil has developed a bullet point list of issues that he sees for the city.
- Get City back on track for a sustainable financial future
- Ensure that City Council is informed of frivolous demands that waste staff’s time and our tax dollars
- More effectively collect unpaid traffic fines
- Examine ways to make water and sewer operations self sustaining
- Collect payments from residents who habitually don’t pay water bills
- Implement practices to extend useful lifespans of City vehicles and equipment, and reduce replacement costs
- Improve funding to replace unreliable water/sewage lines and equipment
- Require use of program planning and management operation manuals for all City departments
- Improve control of speeders throughout the City
- Encourage pet guardians to provide adequate identification tags for wandering pets
We discussed most of the points in-depth. It wouldn’t be fair for me to try and recap our discussion because Neil is very thoughtful and has detailed thoughts about each point. That said, a couple of things stood out.
I was particularly interested in his second point and clarified that he was talking about what he and others see as frivolous Public Information Requests. Happily, he doesn’t support the current council’s attempt to stifle citizens from getting information, choosing instead to have a monthly report on the number of requests and the cost to produce the information from the requests. He thinks that simply identifying the costs of producing the requests will keep frivolous requests to a minimum because we are all paying for them.
Neil is very thoughtful on the current state of the water/sewage system, the need to replace it, the cost to replace it, the shifting of funds that basically subsidize our water bills with property taxes, and reconciling our water purchases versus our billing for usage to monitor waste.
He was also adamant that we must get more life our of our vehicles and stop purchasing new cars every two years, saving a substantial amount of money.
Neil’s slogan for the race is “Let’s get OUR City back on track!”. He ended our conversation saying that “if we don’t take control of our destiny, destiny will control us”. I would urge any voter in Shoreacres to contact Neil directly and discuss your issues with him and how he would deal with them.
Contact Information
Email: [email protected]
Election Information
Early Voting starts Monday, 4/28 and ends Tuesday, 5/6 at City Hall. Complete information on the city website by clicking here.