Carchio discusses priorities

While juggling various jobs as customers streamed into his restaurant on a recent day, newly elected City Councilman Joe Carchio talked about some of the things that inspire him.

A New Jersey native, Carchio came west looking for work in the 1970s, and after going through several jobs, he finally settled on the restaurant business.

When his first bid for a council seat failed by 1,100 votes in 2004, Carchio decided to work smarter the next time.

“I coached so many kids over the years in football and baseball,” he said. “I touched a lot of people in the community.”

But it was a decade of coaching kids in Huntington Beach that helped him get elected the second time around, he said. It helped him gain name recognition.

He focused on increasing his absentee-voter tally, and the results showed. Carchio got 24,500 votes, or 14.6%, just 300 votes behind Mayor Gil Coerper.

Carchio will be a “great voice on the council,” Councilman Don Hansen said. “Having an individual who knows what it takes to run a small business will provide a unique perspective in creating policy and how the city moves forward.”

A prominent part of Carchio’s agenda is pushing for a reduction or removal of city fees for home remodeling.

“The idea of doing this is to help other people make the city better,” he said. Doing away with remodeling fees has worked in other cities such as Anaheim and Costa Mesa, he said.

The city will be able to collect more property taxes, and homeowners will be motivated by seeing others remodel, thereby improving their neighborhoods, Carchio said.

Carchio’s other priorities include repairing streets and potholes — because that’s what the average citizen cares most about — and creating affordable housing for city employees who cannot afford to live in the city.

He’s also concerned about how the retirement of baby boomer workers will halve the city’s workforce.

“How will we get employees if they can’t afford to live here?” he said. “We train people, hire them and lose them to other cities or departments. We have got to figure out a way to keep them here.”