PoliticalClimate - page 3

It is likely that decades from now, 2020 will be seen as a year when everything changed in Redwood City politics. Perhaps more than any election anywhere – here or across the country – the outcome of the Redwood City Council election was transformative, as sweeping as it was swift.

For the first time, a majority of the council represents the full spectrum of the city’s residents — four seats held by people of color with the return of Jeff Gee and Alicia Aguirre and the arrival of newcomers Michael Smith and Lissette Espinoza-Garnica. And, in the case of the latter two, it’s the first time the council has had two members who openly identify as gay or nonbinary.

It would not have happened without the city’s move to district elections. In a citywide race, Gee might not have not run – a decision he made in the last citywide election in 2018 — and it’s impossible to imagine Espinoza-Garnica winning citywide.

This has caused grumbling among the mainliners of the status quo, of course. There has been some online complaining from the usual suspects that the city should have fought the threatened lawsuit that prompted the creation of districts and cleared the way for the election of Smith and Espinoza-Garnica, each of whom represents minority-majority districts, and Gee, who represents a district that is substantially Asian-American.

This is what happens when the establishment loses power to a new reality, and my response to the complaints is: Tough.

We have just elected the first woman Vice President, the first South Asian-American Vice President, the first African-American Vice President. Change is coming to America. Too slowly, for some, too radically for others, too frighteningly for still others. But inevitably.

Kamala Harris represents a rising generation of young and younger Americans who will be diverse in background and ethnicity and who will see their world and the future in different ways that will break the longstanding white male dominance of this nation.

Redwood City is at the cutting edge of that change – ahead of California, ahead of America. The move to district elections, regardless of why or how, was the right thing to do.

PRACTICAL POLITICS: Two of the city’s contested seats went as could have been expected. Gee, long a denizen of Redwood Shores, easily won a new term on the council in the face of a credible challenge from Planning Commissioner Nancy Radcliffe. And Aguirre, deftly deploying all the advantages of incumbency, staved off a vigorous challenge from retired police officer Chris Rasmussen in the Farm Hills district. It is likely Rasmussen will remain a force in the community and this race may well set him for another race in the future.

The stunner was the defeat of incumbent Janet Borgens in Friendly Acres by Espinoza-Garnica. Borgens deep ties to the area looked like enough of an insurance policy against an unknown, inexperienced challenger in Espinoza-Garnica. But the pandemic clearly crimped Borgens’ campaign effort, while Espinoza-Garnica charged ahead, raising money and identifying and getting to the polls a new wave of voters. It is worth noting that turnout in this district was half that of the other districts – to the benefit of the challenger.

The new majority promises to be fascinating to watch. Espinoza-Garnica is a full-throat progressive who advocated abolishing the police. With housing and development still the dominant issues, voters elected councilmembers who were the object of dismay and unhappiness by the no-growth element of the city.

This ought to be fun.

SPOILERS: By the way, there also are those who say Mark Wolohan took votes away from Rasmussen and helped Aguirre win and, similarly, Isabella Chu took votes from Borgens and helped Espinoza-Garnica win. How do we know it’s not the other way around and Rasmussen prevented Wolohan from winning? The answer is that we don’t and to label Wolohan and Chu as spoilers is to a disservice to their candidacies.

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES: It was a meaningful election for Rainbow politics. In addition to Smith and Espinoza, another openly gay candidate, James Coleman took out well-regarded incumbent Councilman Rich Garbarino in South San Francisco. … The ease with which appointed incumbent Councilwoman Amourence Lee turned back challenger Lisa Diaz Nash also speaks to the changing politics dynamics in San Mateo. Nash was heavily backed by development interests who saw Lee as a too-progressive outsider. Measure Y, the extension of San Mateo’s height limit, was losing as of this writing, but it was still too close to call and if it passes it will have a razor-thin margin – another sign attitudes are changing in San Mateo.

WELL, NO, NOT QUITE: In my last pre-election column, I made a number of guesses, and, boy, was I wrong – particularly about how well Espinoza-Garnica would do, the Lee-Nash race and the race for a San Mateo County Community College seat between incumbents Maurice Goodman and Dave Mandelkern, won by Goodman. I said Joe Biden would win a landslide and that it would be evident on election night, although I did hedge that one a bit.

The normal post-election news media analysis would be to say these outcomes were a surprise. But just because it’s a surprise to me doesn’t mean it’s a surprise to the candidates.

Yes, some races are still too close to conclude. But look at the trend lines. If the other guy’s lead is growing, that’s a bad sign.

MOVING ON: The ideal outcome of 2020 would be for everyone to take a deep breath, let it out slowly, take a look around and get new bearings.

I’d like to see those in the political arena engage each other over honest differences and stop this constant wave of suspicion and cynicism that seems to dominate our public discourse.

What brings this to mind was a late complaint from the Yes on Y forces in San Mateo that a mobile vote center had been placed at Hillsdale Shopping Center, which is owned by the Bohannon Company, a major backer of rival Measure R. “Is this one more thing that big money can buy in this election?  Shameful!” went the complaint. Well, it didn’t work, as Measure R was thoroughly trounced. Hillsdale Shopping Center is a community gathering place, which is where a mobile vote center should go. The dang thing wasn’t plastered with Yes on R stickers. It just sat there, like the inanimate object it was.

Not every action warrants outrage or suspicion. Really.

The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Climate Online. 

Major League Baseball pitcher Joaquin Andujar once famously offered this pearl of wisdom: “I only have one word to say: Youneverknow.”

He’s right. Youneverdo. Especially, right now, in this unique, frustrating, tumultuous and chaotic year. Decades from now, we will tell young people about 2020 and they won’t believe us.

Anyway, we’re hours away from the first election results and, in the end, no one knows what will happen. Including me. Still, as a designated pontificator, I’ll offer up my best guesses. Then, I’ll add a little more about why this election, perhaps more than any other, is the most unpredictable at every spot on the ballot.

BUT FIRST, A SLIGHT DETOUR: And the first thing I’m going to do is back off on the rhetoric about unpredictability. There are some things we know.

Joe Biden will win the Peninsula, the Bay Area and the state. It is, as they say at the sports books, a mortal lock. The only question is whether his total will be at 70 percent.

All that I’ve learned about politics in more than 40 years reporting on it at the national, state and local level also tells me that Biden will win big, perhaps a landslide and that it will be abundantly clear on election night. Still, the specter of bad polling in 2016 looms over any prediction that can be made and sows deep doubts about any judgment. As Congresswoman Anna Eshoo said to me the other day, “I feel like I’m driving around with the emergency brake on.”

Still, as I started to say before I interrupted myself, there are some sure things: Congresswoman Jackie Speier will get 70 percent in her re-election campaign because she always does and there’s no reason to think otherwise this time. Eshoo should hold off the frantically weird challenge from Democrat Rishi Kumar. And Josh Becker will win the 13^th Senate District seat with similar ease, an outcome that was guaranteed when he drew a Republican opponent out of the primary.

ON THE LOCAL BALLOT: Back to my best guesses. Let’s start with Redwood City, not only because it’s the city’s first foray into district elections, but it’s also what I get paid to do. Yes, I get paid. Sometimes I just have to pinch myself.

For all the hoo-ha that attended the City Council’s tortured path to new districts, it looks as though the three contested seats are going to go to two incumbents and a pseudo-incumbent.

In District 1, Redwood Shores, Jeff Gee has been off the council for only two years. He raised the most money, had the deepest roots in the district, and, it could be argued, has been working the Shores for decades. There are definite anti-Gee (zero G?) forces in Redwood City, but district elections have diminished their impact. Planning Commissioner Nancy Radcliffe ran a credible campaign, hampered, perhaps, by her having moved into the district only a little while ago. Gee is a virtual incumbent, and voters need a compelling reason to vote out someone they have elected before. This race was never about that.

In the other two races, the same political reality prevails – two incumbents and no compelling groundswell of dissatisfaction about either of them that could be harnessed into an upset defeat. And, yes, I know neither Janet Borgens nor Alicia Aguirre is technically an incumbent – each was elected citywide and now they’re running in districts under the label “councilmember.” But this is a political column and, in that context, they have all the advantages of incumbency. Each of them could have faced difficult challenges because of the move to district elections. That’s not how it has played out.

District 3, Friendly Acres, where Borgens is running for re-election, is one of two new majority-minority districts, 70 percent Latino. She could have drawn a well-established, well-known Latino opponent who might have mobilized the community. But the reality is the historic political disenfranchisement of this part of town meant there was no bench of high-profile challengers from the Latino community. Absent that, Borgens’ long and deep ties to this district should see her through. She did draw two of the most interesting opponents. Isabella Chu, a leader of pro-growth Redwood City Forward, turned the usual campaign rhetoric on its head and advocated more height, more density and in more places. There was a fearlessness about this all-out, all-in campaign. Lissette Espinoza-Garnica was just as forthright as the most progressive candidate on any ballot in the county. Espinoza-Garnica’s affiliations with labor, the LGBTQ community, the Latinx community and the Democratic Socialists aligned with Bernie Sanders resulted in a competitive campaign treasury. Espinoza-Garnica could finish second in this race.

District 7, Farm Hills, is another example of the consequences of district elections. Aguirre is the only Latina on the council, and she lives in a district that is 70 percent white. In former community police officer Chris Rasmussen, Aguirre drew a more classic opponent – someone whose work made him a high-profile figure throughout the city. Rasmussen has ties to a core group of residents unhappy with a changing city, and who are credited with the defeat of another incumbent a couple of elections ago. Aguirre’s low-key style also made her appear vulnerable.

Rasmussen started fast and Aguirre started slow. He was up early with campaign signs, he raised a healthy campaign treasury, and he was active online, posting a particularly impressive life-story video that was notable for the passion he holds for the community. But Aguirre has been on the council since 2005 and has built deep and close ties to the county’s leading political figures. She won the endorsement battle going away and she raised a wholly competitive amount of money. Her own campaign message was that the city needs experienced leadership at this moment of multiple crises. Rasmussen’s message that it’s time for new leadership seems to have gotten less traction in this district. Mark Wolohan, the third candidate, has been a fresh and earnest voice in the district and demonstrated a grasp of key issues and some new ideas about how the city should go forward. But he self-funded his campaign and raised no money. In a non-pandemic environment, where candidates could directly engage voters, it might have been a different campaign for Wolohan’s decidedly outsider approach, but this is the season we’ve been given.

SAN MATEO: It says here that first-term incumbent Diane Papan should win and be the top vote-getter in a three-candidate race for two seats. A late infusion of independent expenditures on Papan’s behalf probably helps seal the deal. The race between appointed incumbent Amourence Lee and Lisa Diaz Nash is a tossup. The sense of it is that Nash comes out on top, also aided by more than $30,000 in late, independent money. If Lee loses, it looks like it will be because Nash was able to marshal the forces that are unhappy with a changing San Mateo. But Lee is a new face from an historically underrepresented part of town and she could benefit from a wave of new voters showing up this year because of the presidential race.

There are two ballot measures, R and Y, addressing height limits in San Mateo – Y put on by initiative and R by the city council. I think both are going to lose, putting the issue back in the hands of the city council. Really, that’s where this kind of complex land-use policy decision should be made. Thirty years ago, the first height limit was a reaction to a city council that had approved a massive project on El Camino, “going off the rails,” as one long-time observer said. The city is different, the electorate is different and the council has a dramatically different sensibility about reflecting a community consensus.

ELSEWHERE: The Caltrain sales tax measure, RR, must be close in private polling if San Mateo County Supervisor Dave Pine thought it worthwhile to loan $500,000 of his own money to the Yes campaign at the last minute, sending a meaningful signal to some late, big-bucks donors.  I think it wins, getting 67-69 percent of the vote. … At the San Mateo County Community College District, where three seats are being contested, John Pimentel should win over Lisa Hicks-Dumanske, aided considerably by a campaign that will exceed $200,000, almost all of it his own money. Lisa Petrides should win her race against Eugene Whitlock, who dropped out of the race amid lingering controversy over his $2.3 million settlement against the district. Still, he remains on the ballot, which means he could win, which would be both weird and would invite months of litigation. Incumbents Maurice Goodman and Dave Mandelkern are running against each other and it looks like Mandelkern should win, if only because he’s a more frenetic campaigner. … In Millbrae, incumbents Gina Papan and Ann Schneider should win but the race for a third seat clearly is between Anders Fung and You You Xue and it’s impossible to call that one. It has been nasty with a wave of campaign complaints filed by a Xue campaign aide. … In Belmont, incumbent Davina Hurt and appointed incumbent Tom McCune should win easily. The group of Belmont residents who dominated city politics for many years keep looking for someone to break the hold of the current majority, but it’s a different era now and it may be time to move on.

I COULD GO ON: But honestly, there are just too many races to track effectively. And all the preceding notwithstanding, this year is the most unpredictable since Harry Truman defeated Thomas Dewey in 1948, when San Mateo County’s population was about 235,000. To give that a little perspective, according to the most recent report, there are 440,005 people registered to vote in Tuesday’s election in San Mateo County.

And that last number is why this election is so up in the air, particularly at the local level.

The current registration is nearly 20 percent higher than the 2016 presidential election. Data analysts say the biggest jump is among young voters, minority voters and people who simply didn’t vote in 2016. In other words, it is an electorate of new voters, which means that their voting habits are untested. Incidentally, San Mateo County’s registered voters are 54 percent Democratic, 26 percent who express No Party Preference, and a paltry 14 percent Republican.

At the same time, local elections have been merged with statewide elections. As I’ve referenced throughout this column, there will be thousands of voters who are showing up at the polls– waiting four years to run to the polls – to vote in the presidential election. How will they vote? No one knows. They are not steeped in local elections. By the time they get to the bottom of the ballot there will be more than a few shrugs.

The best guess is that they will tend toward incumbents unless they’ve been given a compelling reason to oust an incumbent. Really, none of these races has been an all-out attack on an already-vulnerable incumbent.

While there may be significant upheaval at the national level, here at home, even as change continues to sweep across the Peninsula, it looks like the status quo will hold for one more election.

*The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Climate Online. 

If, as Joe Biden says, the soul of America is on the national ballot, you could make a case that the local election is entirely about trust – trust that local government will act for the broadest well-being of the community while walking the maze of highly localized neighborhood interests and well-funded business interests.

Up and down the Peninsula, there is an unprecedented number of contested races for office. A striking feature of that lengthy lineup is that incumbents are being challenged at every level, an indication that there are those who think the public has lost some measure of faith in the people currently running our cities and schools.

Many of those challenges can be tied directly to a wave of political reform that quietly has been washing over the Peninsula in the form of district elections and campaign spending caps, and which lowered the threshold for challengers. Overlaid on those reforms is a pandemic and a year of social change, as we confront our vulnerabilities and dark chapters in our history, all of which provides an emotional context for an insurgent candidacy.

All of which has led us to now and local races replete with challengers who represent a new diversity – candidates who are young, LGBTQ, minorities and female. A critic would call them inexperienced. They might respond that they are not tied to the old, ineffectual ways.

Many of them are politically quite progressive. And that hints of further political change in a region already very liberal. Meager labels aside, this much is clear: The next generation is coming. As a rule, they are dissatisfied with the job done by the folks currently in charge. As Bob Dylan wrote in another era of upheaval and division, “The old order is rapidly changing.”

On the Peninsula, all issues begin and end with land use. In the past, right up to this election cycle, land use has been about growth, development and profit. Land use will always be the central issue, but this new wave of candidates hints of such debates occurring in the context of fairness – how land use policies perpetuate everything from who lives where to economic equity and police-community relations.

So, what about Tuesday’s election? Will these changes result in a surprising upset in one of these elections? Not this time, I think. But most political careers start with an early loss. The foundation has been laid for more challenges and, in the end, some measure of success.

To quote Dylan again, and from the same song:

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

FOLLOW THE MONEY: With the final days of the 2020 campaign at hand, last-minute money has begun pouring into campaigns, and no special interest has been more active than those associated with pro-development and growth.

It confirms that amid a pandemic, disputes and discussions over race and a tumultuous presidential contest that could set the direction of our country for a generation, the dominant issue on the local ballot – in any race – remains development. If money is the mother’s milk of politics, real estate is the midwife.

In the hot, hot, hot race for the San Mateo City Council, the California Apartment Association has taken a big swing at influencing the final outcome. In the last several days, the CAA has dropped more than $31,000 in late independent expenditures on behalf of Lisa Diaz Nash, who is challenging appointed incumbent Amourence Lee and incumbent Diane Papan for one of the two seats up on Tuesday. The CAA also spent more than $14,000 on Papan’s behalf.

The odd person out is Lee, whose progressive politics clearly make the CAA folks more than a little uneasy.

In the Redwood City, the CAA, which plunged into the 2016 election with all the energy of a misguided missile, has kept a much lower profile. Still, real estate never stays on the sidelines and a partnership of like-minded entities have plunked down about $2,000 for Jeff Gee in the Redwood Shores-centric District 1. In District 3, one of two majority minority districts, challenger Isabella Chu’s enthusiasm for building more, taller and more densely, got the attention a couple of development backers to the tune of another $2,000.

The big bucks also have been rolling in late for Councilmember Alicia Aguirre, running in the Farm Hills District 7, including $1,000 from California Realtors, $1,000 from the Harbor Village Mobile Home Park and contributions ranging from $100 (former county Supervisor Adrienne Tissier) to $500 (Assemblymember Kevin Mullin).

In the last days of the campaign, the fundraising leaders in the respective districts are Gee, Councilmember Janet Borgens and Aguirre. … Michael Smith, running unopposed in District 4, raised more than $15,000 for his non-campaign. He used the money to repay the $4,000 he loaned the campaign at the outset, and made a $250 contribution to Jaime Harrison, the Democrat challenging Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and $200 to Mike Espy, running for the open Senate seat in Mississippi.

NOT SO GRAND OLD PARTY: If you’re looking for the height of cynicism, look no further than our home state, where the decrepit Republican Party has been putting out phony ballot collection boxes. Party officials offered up some argle-bargle for why they did it, but all it sounded like was the noise adults make in a Peanuts movie.

Within a few years after I cast my first vote, I was covering Peninsula politics for local newspapers. Peninsula politics included smart, thoughtful, principled, pro-choice, pro-environment Republican candidates and officeholders – such impressive figures as Becky Morgan, Tom Campbell, Pete McCloskey and Ed Zschau. Reagan-style conservatism began the process of driving away moderate Reeps in the name of political purity. Trump-style whatever-ism has just about finished the job, helped considerably by the boneheads who think phony ballot boxes is a clever trick.

It’s a loss. They were good people and we were all better served by two vibrant and vital political parties. Instead, what we are facing in the next few election cycles is a hard-charging progressive wing of the Democratic Party, pushing candidates further and further toward political purity. It’s a shame that the one lesson progressives learned from conservatives is to behave more like them.

ANATOMY OF A CAMPAIGN CLAIM: Reading a flyer from Uber and Lyft in support of Proposition 22, the biggest-spending campaign in California history, even I couldn’t help but notice the front-page headline: “The vast majority of app-based drivers say yes on 22.” Out of curiosity and unrelenting political geekhood, I dove into the Yes on 22 website to find the source of this statement. In there, I also saw this: “A new independent survey released this week found that 60% of California app-based drivers support Prop 22, while only 23.6% oppose.” All I could find was some information from a blogger named Rideshare Guy, who asked his readers to respond to a survey on Prop. 22. The result was the information cited in the flyer. What the flyer doesn’t tell you is that Rideshare Guy got 619 responses. The Yes on 22 website says there are 116,000 app-based drivers statewide.

A group of approximately 100 Stanford faculty members are holding firm in their convictions criticizing White House Coronavirus Task Force senior adviser Dr. Scott Atlas’ controversial views on the pandemic, despite recent legal threats from Dr. Atlas’ lawyer.

Dr. Atlas, the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford Medical Center and a Hoover Institution senior fellow, was appointed a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and senior advisor to President Trump in August. On the heels of an Aug. 31 report by the Washington Post that he embraced a controversial herd immunity strategy to combat the pandemic, Dr. Atlas drew intense criticism from colleagues.

Dr. Atlas denies recommending herd immunity as an option to the task force or the president, per a report in The Stanford Daily. Nonetheless, the same report said he has repeatedly upheld the strategy as one of the best ways to “eradicate the threat of the virus” in Hoover Institution virtual policy briefings, in an April op-ed in The Hill and in his remarks in May to a U.S. Senate committee.

In their initial letter addressed to colleagues and dated Sept. 9, the Stanford faculty member collective stated in regards to Dr. Atlas that “many of his opinions and statements run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy.” The letter went on to provide five statements, drawing upon global data, offering their collective guidance on effective public health policy regarding COVID-19.

On Sept. 23, a new letter, signed by an even larger group of 105 doctors, scientists and health experts, reiterated their concern in the wake of receiving a letter threatening legal action from Dr. Atlas’ attorney. The letter demanded the Stanford collective issue a press release retracting their statements, claiming they falsely portrayed Dr. Atlas’ views and were defamatory. Despite the alleged threat, however, the growing group of medical experts say they will remain resolute in their collective criticism of Dr. Atlas.

1/ We are 105 doctors, scientists, and public health experts and faculty members at Stanford University who expressed our serious concerns about statements made by Scott Atlas. pic.twitter.com/PvYfOIdTeD

— Michael Fischbach (@mfgrp) September 24, 2020

“We believe that his statements and the advice he has been giving fosters misunderstandings of established science and risks undermining critical public health efforts,” the group said in the Sept. 23 letter. “Today, we stand by our Sept. 9 letter and reaffirm our concerns. In addition, we are deeply troubled by the legal threats that Dr. Atlas has made against us in an attempt to intimidate and silence us in the midst of a pandemic, as we speak out on important public health issues.”

The group added, “We stand together and we reiterate clearly and with great affirmation that public health policy must be guided by established scientific principles and not opinions, especially ones that could harm individuals and the health of our nation.”

Photo credit: White House

The following is the second of four columns covering the November election for City Council of Redwood City. The second installment reports on the District 1 race. The previous installment, on the District 4 election, is here.

—

When the Redwood City Council last year drew up the new districts that would govern the 2020 election cycle, most attention was focused, understandably, on ensuring the creation of at least two minority-majority districts.

But there was an intense and successful effort, if lower profile, to ensure that the Redwood Shores area of the city would have its own district. That would mean a single councilmember devoted to a neighborhood that is closer to Belmont City Hall, and whose residents long have felt neglected and overlooked by the denizens of Redwood City Hall.

Now, there is a Shores district, and the first election there has drawn two of the city’s longest-serving public officials, but whose tenure in the Shores stands in marked contrast.

Jeff Gee has lived in Redwood Shores for 25 years, which includes nine years he served on the City Council. Nancy Radcliffe has lived in the Shores less than two years, having moved there upon her retirement, but she has served on the Planning Commission for 19 years.

Gee says his own longevity means “I understand our Redwood Shores neighborhood.” Radcliffe says she will bring “a fresh and honest voice” to representing the area. She said the use of the word “honest” carries with it no implications and just one of any number of words she could have chosen to characterize her candidacy.

The district encompasses the entirety of Redwood Shores, bounded at its southern edge by Redwood Shores Parkway. Half the district residents are White, and 39 percent are Asian-American, the highest concentration of any district by a factor of four. Residents also are the wealthiest in the city, with 45 percent reporting a household income of $75,000-$200,000 and 32 percent reporting a household income over $200,000.

Gee announced for re-election in 2018, but dropped out, a decision spurred, at least in part, by an activist group of residents who saw him as the embodiment of the changes to Redwood City they found objectionable. Now, with a district seemingly carved out for him, Gee acknowledges “There is a lot that has happened in two years.” Those things include district elections, campaign donation limits and a voluntary fundraising limit adopted by the council, he said.

“The biggest reason is that I didn’t know we were going to have the public health pandemic and that has really changed the dynamics of who we are as a community and where we’re headed,” Gee said.

Given her length of service on the Planning Commission, Radcliffe has been urged to run for the council on more than one occasion, most recently four years ago. “But we had a lot of great candidates,” she said. “Why dilute the votes for any one of those people who could have done a fabulous job?”

Now, after the city adopted term limits for its boards and commissions, Radcliffe will be leaving the Planning Commission, and “I want to stay involved in the city. The city has great bones and I want to keep making great choices.”

Regardless of the issues council candidates may raise, the council that is seated at the end of this year will have to deal with the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, which not only devastated local retail, commercial and development interests, but has left the city with a substantial budget shortfall due to losses in sales tax revenues.

“We have to be really careful with the Parks Department and the Library. Both of these serve everyone,” Radcliffe said. Filling the funding gaps that are likely to occur may require more foundations, similar to the non-profit organizations that support the library system. Those efforts also can do much to address the digital divide, an issue only made worse by the economic downturn. And she said the city has to be open to looking at city employee salaries, as the full scope of the economic downturn is understood.

Gee said he served on the council during the Great Recession of 2008-09 and that means “I know what it’s going to take to make the hard decisions. … We’re going to have to cut,” he said, and that will include “engaging our labor partners” who “were able to give back in ’08-09.” The adjustments include deferring compensation and leaving unfilled city staff vacancies. “They’ll have to share in the pain. … It’s not exclusive to Redwood City. This is going to hit everybody across the board. There is no way I can see we can tax our way out of the situation, or cut our way out of the situation.”

One budget area that might be the target of cuts is the Police Department, which is the object of a grassroots effort to redirect current funds to social services. Both Gee and Radcliffe said they were open to discussing such a change and relieving the police of responding to matters that might fall more directly to community service agencies, whether city-based or managed by San Mateo County.

Both said they were open to discussing other police reforms being proposed, including a citizens police oversight commission and greater transparency in the disclosure of complaints filed against individual officers for excessive use of force. Of a commission, Gee said, “It’s all in the details, so I don’t know what that means. Radcliffe said, “It seems reasonable, like a Peninsula Conflict Resolution type of organization and that feels very open and transparent to me and both sides could benefit from it. … It’s all in the implementation.”

As for the fundamental message of change embodied in the Black Lives Matter movement, Gee noted that he has been an active leader in the Asian-Pacific Islander (API) movement to expand the reach of those communities into government. The key is a city council that is “more inclusive” when filling city boards and commissions, which commonly are a starting point for future city council candidates. He noted Redwood City is a least 40 percent White and 12 percent API, but the boards and commissions are “over 70 percent white, and have been for years.” These bodies “need to look more like the people who live in Redwood City.”

The Black Lives Matter movement was an eye-opener for Radcliffe, who said, “I had thought we had come further in our understanding of each other, and it seems I was mistaken. … I guess I was naïve in thinking a lot of the civil unrest issues were in other parts of the country but, apparently, it’s not as good as I had hoped.” She added, “We’re all in this together and it’s really important to keep everyone safer and communicating.”

Whatever might be the issue of the day, however, development, growth and housing will be perennial issues facing any city council in any year.

The housing shortage is on the minds of every candidate running for council. “I’m not sure we’ve come up with an answer,” Radcliffe said. “While I’m pro-development, I’m also pro-neighborhood. We don’t live in a one-size-fits-all community.” She said the city needs a wide mixture of housing types covering a variety of income levels.

Gee said the city needs to be ready to build more housing “Where there is land available to do it, and we’re going to have to work really hard to find land that’s available. The pandemic has shone a bright light on the absolute need for more housing.” Gee said he is encouraged by efforts at the state level and private-sector interest in partnerships that are likely to make more funding available for housing and to speed up the process of approval and the cost of construction.

One primary site for a high-rise, high-density commercial and residential development is at Sequoia Station, located, quite literally, at the city’s crossroads of El Camino Real and Jefferson Avenue. An initial proposal raised the prospect of a 17-story building on the site.

“Seventeen stories makes all of us pause,” said Radcliffe, who lamented that the current site wasn’t built with greater density and height 30 years ago. “I don’t think Redwood City has the appetite for that height at this point. I’m definitely comfortable with the 8-story range, maybe 10. It’s absolutely the perfect location for transit-oriented development.”

As for greater levels height and density, Gee said, “I think we need to take a look at it. … It’s a great place to put jobs, housing and transit together and to be able to put that together in density.” He wants a community effort to develop a consensus for what should go at the site. “There’s room for a lot of ideas.”

Contact Mark Simon at mark.simon24@yahoo.com.

*The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Climate Online.

San Mateo voters can get to know candidates running for their City Council in the November election at a virtual candidate forum set for Wednesday, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m.

Access the meeting by clicking this Zoom link.

Three candidates are vying for two seats on the City Council in the Nov. 3, 2020 Presidential Election: Amourence Lee, Lisa Diaz Nash and Diane Papan. To learn more about the candidates, click here.

The forum is hosted by the League of Women Voters. Questions can be asked during the live event, or emailed in advance to lwvncsmc.questions@gmail.com with “City of San Mateo Council Race” in the subject line.

Join the meeting via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84932018420?pwd=QVBJZjlLcGs3amRpL3FvVkVNRE13UT09

Or join by phone: (408) 638-0968, Webinar ID: 849 3201 8420