It is important that we have elections at the local level. Candidates, incumbents and challengers alike, need to have the forum and walking around time to make their case to the public and for the public to provide input in a way that doesn't happen as much in non-election periods. So challenger Mike Dunham is to be commended for throwing his hat in the ring against two strong incumbents–Donna Colson and Emily Beach. He had to know it would be an uphill climb from the start, but as far as I can see he has mounted a credible campaign knocking on doors, doing debates and getting his points of view known. While this race isn't as crowded as in the past as Russ noted here, it's still a race.
I have had one-on-one interviews with all three candidates and took copious notes at the Candidates' Night on Sept. 18th. I discussed one issue that had a difference of opinion between the incumbents and challengers – pot dispensaries in town here. But clearly the big area of difference is housing in town — how much, how "affordable", how soon and where it should be built. Ten of the twenty questions at the Candidates' Night were housing related. If I boil it all down, the difference is that the incumbents believe they have enacted enough change via the General Plan update setting guidelines for 3,000 new units, the Lot F&N project, and developer fees to grow our housing stock as fast as is feasible. The challenger, Mike Dunham, believes not enough is being done (e.g. "cities have failed to do their jobs") and the job:housing ratio is way out of balance; he believes it should be 1.5:1. He said he would be fine with us not building anything on the Bayfront, but now that the General Plan has opened Pandora's Bayfront box we should also be adding housing on the Bayfront.
No regular Voice reader will be surprised to hear that I'm less enamored with adding housing than even the two incumbents. I foresee issues with school classroom capacity, police and fire responsiveness, traffic congestion, and water supply reliability. There are probably other deleterious impacts, but that is enough for now. Mike Dunham has some positions that could ameliorate the problems– adding a "head tax" on large employers adding more employees, building dense mixed-use projects downtown that he believes millennials like better, rent control, and making more street parking subject to residential parking permits. He also suggested acknowledging that sea-level rise on the Bayfront is inevitable so we should just plan on abandoning some of that property in forty years since defending the turf will be too expensive. In my opinion, some of these would work better than others and some are just plain counter-productive, but the issue is whether any will ever really happen?
I have to balance all of that with the incumbents' track records. The city is pretty well run fiscally, decisions are transparent (which was not always the case 20+ years ago on the city council) and Colson and Beach are certainly approachable, available and energetic. They also comport themselves in a professional manner. One of the reasons I wait to make my recommendations is to see if other information becomes available, and a commenter on the first election post brought to our attention a May 2018 post by Mike Dunham that fails the professionalism criteria in my opinion. Mike chose to have "no comment" on it when I asked him about it which is his prerogative, but when in office a politician has to own his or her actions.
When all is said and done, I will be voting for the two incumbents. We collectively know a lot more about them than we did four years ago and both Donna and Emily have demonstrated commendable skills and energy in office. I'm very glad we have had a wide-ranging debate over the last several months to reinforce my perspective. You have two more weeks to register your opinion at the ballot box.
Leave a Reply