5 Questions for Chip Dykes—City Council Candidate

City council candidate Chip Dykes is a familiar face at civic, business and military events in Oceanside. The retired Marine has been a member various boards for local organizations such as the and the Joe and Mary Mottino Family YMCA.

Dykes, a retired Marine Chief Warrant Officer 3—and Philadelphia native—spent much of his 20-year career at Camp Pendleton. And that was no accident.  Dykes said asked various times to be stationed here and Oceanside is where the city his three children call home.

“We liked the fact that we were able to settle into a town,” he said. “I love Oceanside; it’s a great little city.”

While in the military, he served as a personnel administrator and served in the Gulf War in both Desert Storm and Desert Shield in addition to deploying to Somalia.

His reason for running, he said, is service.

"I've been serving my country whether it be in the military or a nonprofit or the Chamber of Commerce," he said. "I want to continue to serve. I think I have fresh ideas and the enthusiasm to bring the community together."

Patch sat down with Dykes and asked him about his campaign

Patch: Chip, can you tell us a little bit about your military career?

Dykes: The most rewarding experience was being a drill instructor, because the interpersonal skills that you learn and how to train recruits. To get all these different kids from all these different environments and different regions of the county and upbringings and ethnic backgrounds to get them all to do the same thing at the same time takes skill because you can't speak to one the same way to another to get the same reaction.

You have to push a different button on each one of them to get the same result in all of them. 

Patch: Can you tell us about your plans for City Council?

Dykes: I've worked with the business community here. I've worked with the nonprofit community and I've worked with the military community now 30 years.

I think I've seen a little bit of all sides and really my vision is to bring the three of those together instead of having them all polarized and separated.

As an example, the city of Oceanside is facing budget deficits. I would like for the community — which includes, the Boys & Girls Club, the YMCA, the numerous churches and civic organizations — to pick up the responsibility for some of those programs that have been cut. 

The other piece of that is energizing the business community to set their need to help support those programs, because it’s their community also.

I think quite often people look and see city government, nonprofit organizations and churches and the business community as three separate entities. I don't.

I see them as three entities that need to work together to build a strong community.

Patch: You're involved in both the military community and the business community. How do you see business in Oceanside being affected by the military drawdown?

Dykes: I don't think the drawdown will affect Camp Pendleton as much as the rest of the Marine Corps. Camp Pendleton had been drawn down before. I think we will be going back to what we were at 10 or 15 years ago. 

I think the biggest affect facing the business community is the transitioning veterans — these Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans.

Statistics show Southern California has the largest amount of transitioning veterans in the nation.

One of my goals with the chamber was to educate the business community on the skill sets of our veterans who are being discharged. We have a large amount of veterans who are very capable of fitting into any industry here in San Diego or Oceanside. 

They're trained, they're disciplined they're educated and they're ready to work. Unfortunately, the business community doesn't understand the intangible skills that a military veteran has. 

For example, a sergeant in the Marine Corps, getting out—who has done two combat deployments—has management skills like you wouldn't believe. We need to educate the business community on how to transfer these skills once they get discharged.

Patch: What kinds of opportunities in Oceanside will Marines and other veterans have upon leaving the service?

Dykes: There are a couple of opportunities. The first opportunity we want to provide those exiting the military is to readjust to civilian life, through organization like Reboot, . So that's our number one priority for veterans coming back.

This is a conversation that I have with elected officials:

You gave us your sons or daughters for three or four years. We housed them , we fed them, we hugged them when they needed hugging and we kicked them when they needed kicking.

So now, their time is done and we're giving them back to you City of Oceanside, what are you going to do for them?

Don't just give them a yellow ribbon on the door. That's not what they need, they need a follow-on mission and that mission is to be reintegrated into the community.

We want the community to embrace those veterans. They community they came from.

And then after that portion happens now it's incumbent upon the business community to step up. The military has been fighting so people can own their businesses.

There are 30,000 veterans per year being reintegrated into San Diego County, so if you want a labor pool, we've got it. I think we need to continue to highlight that fact to the business community to say, "Here they are; these people will work."

Patch: If you could change one thing about Oceanside today, what would it be?

Dykes: If I could change one thing about Oceanside, I would change the image that Oceanside is just Marines and barbershops. And I'm very thankful that we were able to develop the organization that is called Visit Oceanside. They just coined the phrase "Visit Oceanside, San Diego's North Shore" — I mean I love that slogan and I think we need to continue to develop that. If you don't live in Oceanside the impression is "it's that town with all the Marines."

You can't find another place in San Diego County that has a harbor, an airport, beaches, an agricultural region and a river — except for San Diego itself. 

Editor's Note: The answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. And a full disclosure notice—Dykes and editor Daniel Woolfolk are members of the Military Affairs Committee for the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated which boards Dykes has sat on. It has since been corrected.