Although the candidate filing period for the Ceres mayoral race isn’t until next summer, Troy Arrollo told a Saturday audience he’s ready to take on Javier Lopez.Arrollo, 60, made his announcement at River Oaks Golf Course & Event Center before a crowd of about 40, one of which was his father, former Ceres Mayor Louie Arrollo.
Lopez was elected in November 2020 to a four-year term and held his campaign kickoff event on Oct. 7.
Arrollo, the distribution/operations manager of Delicato Family Wines, took aim at current leadership, saying that residents no longer believe they have competent leaders. He said the visual appearance of Ceres “appears to a city in distress.”
“If the voters of Ceres elect me as mayor, I would plan to make city staff and employees, including members of the City Council to become team members whose goal would be to produce a well-developed plan for housing and business,” said the candidate. He said he will meet the demands of the Housing Element to build housing for all income groups.
Arrollo also said the council should treat all residents with respect and “their concerns addressed in a timely fashion … by the department head or the city manager regardless what that decision may be.”
He also called for the appointment of citizen committees “as needed” and a viable plan for economic development.
Among those supporters who attended included Ceres City Councilman James Casey, former Stanislaus County Supervisor Paul Caruso and former Ceres Fire Chief Dan Davis.
“We can do better,” said Caruso of current city leadership.
“Our mayor is different,” commented Casey, who added that he doesn’t “fit in” with the council majority.
Before introducing his son, former Mayor Arrollo mentioned serving on the Ceres City Council with Paul Caruso. “The strange thing back then is we cared about Ceres as opposed to what’s happening now for the past couple of years.”
Louie Arrollo said that former Ceres Mayor Barbara Hinton is also supporting his son.
When Troy told him he was running, Arrollo said he “about choked because I had no idea he had an interest in politics.”
The former mayor said: “For the past couple of years Ceres has went downhill. Ceres is almost like a Third World city in Stanislaus County. I think the current City Council has lost a vision of what Ceres could be and what Ceres should be. The leadership of the city of Ceres has a real problem in looking at development, talking to people, establishing PR as it were. And as I understand the events that’s happened at the City Council meetings is that they’re not really nice to the public once you get up to talk to them. And without the public’s input it’s the development of Ceres that could be lost.”
Before being hired at Delicato in February 2019, Troy Arrollo spent 33 years at Gallo Winery where he was the operations manager at E.&J. Gallo Winery from 1984 to 2017. While there he oversaw multi-million dollar budgets and took information from visits to European winery operations to enhance the efficiency of wine distribution.
He earned his bachelor of Applied Science degree from the University of Phoenix.
Councilman Bret Silveira, who is also serving as vice mayor, will also be up for re-election in November 2024.
Lopez was elected mayor in 2020 over then Vice Mayor Bret Durossette by a 8,753 to 6,924 vote margin.
