Candidate for
City Council; City of Redwood City

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

I am a passionate believer in representative government. When I have complaints about my representatives, it is usually because I think that they have forgotten to represent the public interest.

When you become an elected official, the public good should be your goal. Your private interests must be set aside to do that.

I also believe that when you hold elected office, you hold the public trust. It is important to me that people know where I stand on issues, events and what my vision for the city's future is. Further, people need to know that as an elected official, you are open to input and feedback. It is important that you always be open to new information, and that you be willing to admit when you are wrong.

I am direct and I am passionate about Redwood City. I was born and raised here, and it is important to me that our city be viable and sustainable. As the heart of the peninsula, Redwood City's future is important not just to our residents, but to the surrounding community.

We need to remember that we are one city within San Mateo County, and while many of our decisions can be made independent of our surrounding cities, all of our decisions must incorporate the regional good.

I take the prospect of representing my fellow citizens very seriously, and hope that as you get to know me, you will see that gathering information and perspectives is a part of my decision making process.

ACCESSABILITY

Hand in hand with my passion for representative government is my pledge to be accessible to the public, stakeholder groups and all of Redwood City's partners. It is impossible to represent the public if you have not been available to hear what the public's opinion is.

Since January, I have been holding "office hours" throughout Redwood City's neighborhoods, and I will continue to do so throughout this campaign and beyond. If I have the honor of being elected to the City Council, I pledge to continue to continue to hold these "office hours" throughout the city and throughout my service to the city.

I don't promise that I will always agree with your opinions, or that I will vote the way that you as an individual or a stakeholder would prefer, but, I do promise that I will listen to your point of view, consider the facts and opinions that you bring to my attention, and use those points and the others that I gather in forming my opinion and voting on the policies that will shape our city.

HOUSING AND RESPONSIBLE DEVELOPMENT

We need housing in Redwood City. We live in a desirable location, and we are a job center on the peninsula. Approximately 40,000 people per day commute into Redwood City, and at the end of the day they go back to their homes to spend their paychecks in the communities where they live. We also have many people in Redwood City that would like to downsize from their single family home, or want to enter the home ownership market. In order to accommodate those choices, we need more dense housing options, which can provide a supportive community for some and a lower cost entry into home ownership for others.

It is important that we choose our housing wisely and responsibly, so that our growth is steady and manageable, as well as being thoughtfully placed and built using best practices by workers who are making a living wage. To do this, Redwood City must have leaders who are willing to look at the pros and cons of a particular development in the short term, the mid term and the long term ranges.

As we look to the future in Redwood City, it is important that we consider who we are building housing for. As the parent of two 16 year olds, I would like Redwood City to have housing that will be available to the members of their generation. This housing needs to be well designed and built, and should be accessible to transit, with neighborhoods that include services and retail to encourage walking and biking as a viable means of transportation. There are obvious benefits to this type of development like fewer car trips per day, and less obvious benefits like a reduced need for paved parking, As a society, we are beginning to redefine what neighborhoods look like and need, and it is important that those things be considered with meeting our housing projections.

As a member of the Housing and Human Concerns Committee, I have had an opportunity to learn what circumstances and policies are needed to encourage responsible development. Redwood City has many opportunities to create responsible living environments, but with that opportunity comes the responsibility of creating housing that fits all of these criteria and is desirable and attractive to those who will be living there and be priced to accommodate everything from market rate housing to very low income housing.

The idea of affordable housing is frightening to many people. I think this is because so often the term is used with no explanation. Affordable housing actually covers everything from very low income housing to housing priced for people making 150% of the mean income in the area. In part, this encompasses workforce housing, which is housing priced to be affordable to professions that contribute to our quality of life such as teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, city and county workers and many staff positions who contribute to the community. It is unfortunate that so many of the people who contribute to our high quality of life can not afford to live in Redwood City, but, we do have the power to change that by encouraging responsible development including affordable housing in the full range of the term.

We need a mix of affordable housing and market rate housing in order to maintain Redwood City's vitality and infrastructure. It is important that we encourage development of housing at all price levels, and encourage placement of that development in areas that make sense. We also need to make sure that infrastructure in the form of parks, roads, fire and police service and public works service are available for these new homes.

It is a complicated process to add significant housing to a city, however, when you think about the fact that as of right now there is not enough housing to accommodate the children graduating high school in Redwood City, creating those housing opportunities becomes a priority.

THE CARGILL PROPERTY

It will probably not surprise you to hear that this is the question I have been asked most frequently as I am meeting people, precinct walking and holding office hours. It may, however, surprise you to know that last year when I was the Chairperson of Citizens to Protect Redwood City, and spent a great deal of time educating the citizens of Redwood City about the issues with Measure W, that I was neither for nor against development on this site. My opinion now is the same as it was then. I am very much an advocate for the open, public and transparent process that the City Council agreed to begin on August 10, 2009.

For the last several years the landowner and the developer, Cargill and DMB Associates have been conducting their outreach process. They did this because our City Council has told all developers coming to Redwood City to conduct an outreach process and determine what the residents want prior to putting a development proposal forward to the city. The process that has already been conducted by Cargill and DMB is not the decision making process.

The City Council has just agreed on August 10, 2009, to study the proposal. Currently the city is executing agreements for the landowner and developer to pay for those studies. The consultants are hired by the city, and paid for by the landowner and developer.

This means that the consultants will be providing unbiased information regarding the feasibility of the proposed development, and gather information from Redwood City residents about what they would like to see done with this parcel of land.

The citizens of Redwood City have been bombarded with information regarding this 1,433 acre piece of property. Until now, all information has come from either the landowner and developer, who are obviously for development or local environmental groups who are just as obviously against any development.

Once we have information that is unbiased, and there is a full public outreach process conducted by the city, then the process of reviewing the proposal begins. There is no doubt in my mind that the proposal that was submitted will be modified, changed, reviewed and changed again. The current submitted proposal would likely go through multiple drafts before a final version is reached.

I am very concerned about the people who have already come out strongly in support of or in opposition to the submitted proposal. In my opinion, there is not enough information to form an opinion yet, let alone to advocate for one.

As the city moves forward in this process, I hope that everyone will put forward his or her opinion about this piece of property. Whether you speak at a public meeting, submit your opinion through a letter or email or have a private conversation with a City Councilmember, it is important that everyone take the opportunity to be heard.

Once the public process is over, the City Council will have an opportunity to vote on the final plan. I hope to be a member of the City Council but, whether elected or not in November, I am a proponent of this inclusive public process, and I am looking forward to see what information comes out of it.

COMMUNITY/PUBLIC SAFETY

As a probation officer in San Mateo County for almost 12 years, I have had an opportunity to work in every community in the county, and with every law enforcement agency. I know that no matter what positive attributes a community has, unless its citizens feel safe, the community will not be comfortable, and the city will not thrive. It is a priority for me that Redwood City continue to be a safe community, and my background as a probation officer, a member of Redwood City's CERT program and a sworn disaster service worker gives me a unique perspective on this issue.

Redwood City's issues are not much different from other similarly sized communities but, how we respond to them can and should set us apart.

We have gang issues in Redwood City, particularly with our young people. These issues cross over city and county borders, and are affecting almost every community on the peninsula. We need to address them in the same way. As a full community of peninsula residents, we need to educate our teachers, citizens and youth activities staff about how to address these issues. We need to be direct and we need to be clear that gang activity including wearing gang colors, establishing territories and protecting them, violence between gangs or involving the general public and criminal activities such as drug dealing and theft will not be tolerated. Our police department addresses these issues in their way, but, they cannot do it alone. The citizens of Redwood City must report these activities, and cooperate with police in order for the behaviors to change.

The process of educating the public extends to other crime issues as well. Things like domestic violence, child abuse and drug dealing are easily noticed, if someone knows what to look for. Redwood City has several Neighborhood Watch groups, the CERT Program volunteers and the Neighborhood Association Groups. These are all great places to begin the education process. The neighborhood response police officers are often at meetings of the types listed, and these gatherings are a great place to start giving our citizens this information.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to address code enforcement as a way to improve our public safety in Redwood City. When you walk past a home with debris in the yard, multiple cars that look like they don't run, or apparent unsafe living conditions, you likely wonder what can be done about it. The answer is that you can call a code enforcement officer, and have them come and check the situation. Checks such as these are a valuable tool in keeping our neighborhoods safe. Often a code enforcement officer can see that the issue is more serious, perhaps criminal in nature or unsafe for the people living there. The officer can site the homeowner or tenant, and begin the process to get the situation addressed. Not only does code enforcement improve the look and atmosphere of our neighborhoods but also, it can help to ensure that people are living in safe conditions and that the outer appearance of a home is not hiding criminal activity inside of it.

VIOLENCE IN OUR COMMUNITY

On the first day of school a former student entered a high school campus armed with pipe bombs, a chainsaw and a sword. His goal was to injure or kill as many people from the campus as he could.

This is a terrifying scenario, and it happened in our county.

Fortunately for the students, staff and teachers at this high school, two teachers saw the former student, and tackled him to the ground, holding him there until police arrived. These two teachers disregarded their personal safety in order to allow the rest of the campus to be evacuated. Everyone followed the school's evacuation plan, and no one was hurt.

Local law enforcement, including officers from many of the surrounding jurisdictions took the suspect into custody without further incident, first removing the multiple pipe bombs from him. The Sheriff's Department's bomb squad took custody of the remaining pipe bombs, and they were detonated with no one being injured.

Everyone did their job and did it well.

This is an isolated incident in San Mateo County, but we read about these scenarios far too often, and they are not limited to school campuses. It is easy to believe that we are in a safe community, in a safe place and that there are safeguards to protect us from people who want to do us harm however, that simplistic viewpoint is at best naive and at worst dangerous.

I've been asked about my thoughts on this incident, on violence in communities in general and what we can learn from it here in Redwood City.

The biggest lesson from this averted tragedy is that we need to be well prepared for the potential of violence in our community, and we need to trust that our leaders and public safety officers will do their best to create plans that will have a good outcome.

If elected to City Council, I will work to create evacuation plans with our police department for the major gathering places in Redwood City. I will work with the Elementary and High School Districts to regularly review their evacuation plans and to be sure that the police department has those plans on file as well.

In addition, I will work to bring an education plan to Redwood City that will address public, workplace and school campus violence. This plan can hen be used in our Neighborhood Associations, CERT Program trainings and ongoing trainings for city staff to keep as many members of our community as possible trained in how to recognize, prevent and address these situations.

This type of planning can and should be combined with Redwood City's disaster preparedness planning, and should be reviewed regularly and updated to include best practices.

We cannot always predict these types of violent incidents but, we can control how we respond to them, and plan for the safest outcome possible.

FINANCES

Currently Redwood City is facing a serious financial crisis. The poor economy, the downturn in the housing market and rising cost of living overall have combined to lower revenues and raise costs to the city. As a community, we owe a debt of gratitude to our union workers, who made a choice to freeze their wages for a one-year period in order to offer the city some financial relief. Unfortunately, our state's representatives have chosen to balance the state's budget by taking local funding form California's cities and counties rather than making tough decisions on their own. This has put Redwood City, and many other local governments in a position where additional budget cuts need to be made, because the state has taken money previously in the coffers of the local entities.

Approximately 80% of Redwood City's costs are related to personnel. This means that in order to re-balance our budget, we are likely going to lose positions, which means that city workers will lose their jobs. This is how the state of California has chosen to balance their budget.

San Mateo County is a diverse collection of cities, and those cities along with the county government must combine their efforts and address the state's actions with regards to the taking of local funds. This is not an option, it is a necessity.

The state's taking of our local funds is one of the financial issues we are facing but, our revenues are also down significantly. Much of our city funding comes from property taxes and sales tax, both of which are significantly lower than projected.

As a city, we need to be seeking alternate funding streams that are not vulnerable to the state.

We also need to consider consolidation of services within the city and look at contracting with other cities for consultant services, project specific contract services and supply contracts, so that as a collective group, our purchasing can lower the prices on supplies and materials.

PARTNERSHIPS

Partnerships have always been an important component of our quality of life in Redwood City. Our ability to put together diverse partnerships not only contributes to the sense of community that we have, but also illustrates the cooperation between city departments, government agencies and private businesses.

The city's partnerships with our elementary and high school districts ensure that we have additional playing fields for residents to use. These partnerships also help to provide needed services to our students and their families through local schools. The multi-agency programs on several school campuses allow families with limited resources to seek help in a setting they trust, while maximizing the available funds to provide those services.

Several city run or funded programs depend on donations from both private businesses and citizens. Without programs like the Police Activities League and our two senior centers, many of our citizens would have a more limited community and fewer opportunities for enrichment.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Redwood City is an employment center on the peninsula. If we are to remain a destination for businesses large and small, we need to remain a vibrant, viable community. This means that we need to continue to attract retail business, research and development businesses and manufacturing businesses. Our port is a huge source of economic vitality, and we must maintain that special piece of our business portfolio as it contributes to our available jobs and our revenue stream as a city.

Currently Redwood City is home to major employers, and that will likely continue, however, in maintaining our relationships with these larger companies, we must be careful not to disregard the smaller businesses upon which we also depend.

Our strong ties with the Redwood City/San Mateo County Chamber of Commerce and our status as the County Seat must also be maintained and strengthened. It is important to remember that many of these relationships can lead to further economic growth for the city in the future.

Our downtown has become a destination, and that is fantastic. While celebrating the downtown, we need to remember and support those existing businesses that are spread out all over Redwood City. While the focus in the last few years has been on the downtown revitalization, these businesses have continued to grow and thrive without that focus, and as city leaders, we need to direct the spotlight their way as well.

Not all economic development is external. Several of our city services have contracted with other cities to provide services, creating revenue streams for Redwood City. There may services that are provided by contracted companies that could be shared with some of our surrounding jurisdictions and entering into supply purchasing agreements with other localities may be a cost saving measure.

It is this non-traditional mindset that consistently puts Redwood City focused on the future, and it is this forward focus that will help guide us through these tough economic times.

DOCKTOWN NEIGHBORHOOD

Docktown is clearly a vibrant residential area in Redwood City, and I have been asked to comment on it's lack of "official" neighborhood status as recognized by Redwood City. Having spoken to city staff and some of the Docktown residents, I am glad to say that they have formed their own association (closer to a homeowner's association), and, that as the area continues to grow, they hope to become officially recognized as a Neighborhood Association.

There is a very loose idea that with the new General Plan designation of "Bayfront Neighborhood," that the apartments at Bair Island, Pete's Harbor's live aboard boats, Docktown and the pending Peninsula Park homes will form this association.

In the meantime, Docktown remains one of our vibrant residential areas, and the people who live there have certainly formed their own community. The complications of a floating home community are numerous, and their designations are multiple. They live on a waterway, and do not own the land, but do rent their space, and many own their homes. When it comes to following ordinances, rules and regulations, they have several agencies to answer to, and I am glad to know that they are representing themselves and their interests to the city.

As the community develops along Redwood City's bay shoreline, it is important that their specific issues be brought to the attention to city leaders. As that community grows, I will advocate for a full Neighborhood Association.