 Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, we want to bring everything to order if we can. We've got a lot to do and not much time to do it. My name is John Davis, welcome to our candidates forum. We have here all those citizens who are willing to do a lot of work for not any money. So we appreciate all of you being here and we know you know what you're getting into. We have just a few rules we want to go over very quickly. I do want to go over just very briefly. We've gotten the questions that we're going to ask tonight from things that you've submitted to us. We've distilled those down to only eight questions. Actually, there's a kind of a ninth if we want if we have time. Some of those, some of these questions then will be exactly as you submitted them. Others will be kind of distilled down into something that sort of characterizes what the question was in general. But they do fall on fairly straightforward themes. To that extent then, we'll ask all of the potential, all the candidates what the questions are. This is purely for your entertainment, so you have to sit back and be happy. But we want to thank you again too. You're here and you're not at home on the couch. We appreciate you coming out. What we'll do tonight, candidates, is each of you will have a two-minute period where we want you to just introduce yourself and there's anything you want to say as an introductory remarks. You have two minutes to do it. Let me at this moment introduce our mean timer, Michael Bethke. He won't tolerate. Yes, thank you. They clap now. They clap now. Otherwise, we'll give you two minutes to give you just a brief introduction of yourselves. And then I have the questions that I'll introduce. We have eight questions, so I'll pick one to go first and then everybody will get to go first on one question. They don't know what any of these questions are. These are all impromptu. They'll have to think. So, say we got smart people here. One minute for each one of those answers and then at the end of all of those questions, you'll have another two minutes when you can finally address the crap one more time. With that, any questions from anybody? If not, then, oh, there's one thing I need to say to my girls back home. Look, dad's on TV. I want to send out a little love to home. With that, then let me start off with our, we're just going to be passing this microphone around, so forgive our clumsiness tonight. To get these two minutes introduction started, Cynthia, can I just start with you? And when you're done, just hand it right on down the line. Thanks. Well, my name's Cynthia Matthews, candidate for city council. I want to thank the Santa Cruz neighbors for putting this on. I do have a long record of service to the city of Santa Cruz as a council member and as an involved community member with nonprofits, with community groups, education programs, environmental groups. And I hope to give you some sense of my background, but also a sense of why I'm running. Like every single person along here, I love Santa Cruz. And I don't have a single issue, a single agenda. I see the community as a complex organism and we want this community to be healthy and there are many, many threads to that. And in the course of my public service career, I've been involved in a great number of those threads. One of the things that I like about Santa Cruz that keeps me coming back for public service is I think we do have a strong body of shared values. This is a beautiful environment. It's what's brought many of us here. So we want to protect that and enjoy it. We want to support families. We want this to be a good place to raise kids. We want a strong local economy, one that creates jobs that gives people a sense of optimism that they can start a business here, grow their business. We want a safe community. We want people to feel safe in their homes, their neighborhoods, in their place of business, in our parks and schools. These are all areas that I worked on for decades. And these are areas where I'll continue to work. But it's not just the shared values. This is a community that's engaged. You're here tonight. No matter what subject you pick, people are ready to get involved. They want to get involved. They want to be part of solutions and making good things happen. And that's a third thing I like about Santa Cruz. We really do have here a culture of partnerships of people working together from the private sector, from the public sector, the nonprofit sector, all working together. And we do more in combination than we do alone. There again, that's an area where I've had real experience and I think real accomplishments. So these partnerships have been the hallmark of career and it's how I've approached my council service in the past and how I'll approach it in the future. Hi, how are you guys doing? Thanks for having me tonight. Thanks for putting this on. And thank you, concerned citizens, to come out and let us all up here, have a chance to voice our concerns about the community and see where we can all kind of meet and see what we're concerned about the same issues, maybe. I'm Jake Fasari, first time candidate. I've lived in Santa Cruz my whole life, 28 years old. And I just have a few big concerns about Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz has a big crime problem. It has a gang problem. It has a drug problem. It has a homeless problem. And as most of you guys know in here, these problems need to be fixed in order for us to move on and move forward. We need to revitalize our economy to provide the city with the funds it needs to fix these problems. And I understand that sleeping is not a crime, but sometimes it can be if you're sleeping in the wrong spot. Anyways, back to the issues at hand, I think Santa Cruz has a huge problem with our environment that needs to be fixed. Santa Cruz is known throughout the world for our beaches. And our beaches rank among the most polluted in the state, which is unacceptable. If I'm elected to city council, I want to revitalize the economy through responsible growth and development. And I'd like to revitalize the environment. And I'd like the streets to be a little safer. So that's it. Thanks. Thanks, Jake. Hi, my name is Pamela Comstock. And I'm running for Santa Cruz City Council to ensure a safe and vibrant community for my young family and for future generations to come. For the past several years, I've been involved in many community groups and organizations. I currently serve on the city commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women. I am a founding board member of Take Back Santa Cruz. I've served as secretary of the local Rotary Club for the past three years. I've also recently reestablished PFLAG Santa Cruz, which is our local chapter of Friends of Gays, Lesbian, and Transgendered People. I also owned and operated a business in downtown Santa Cruz called Lollipops. It was a children's furniture and clothing store. So I know what it's like to run a business in the city. I currently balance a very active family life. My husband and I are raising our eight-year-old son here. He attends public schools. And I have a full-time career as an operations manager at a local software company. Through my work with Take Back Santa Cruz, I've had the opportunity to work with Santa Cruz neighbors. And together, we have done things like drug den cleanups. We've cleaned up Evergreen Cemetery. We've marched to honor crime victims. And recently, we've established Court Watch Santa Cruz together. And it's my pledge while on council to give a voice to community groups like ours. When I look around Santa Cruz, I see a lot of opportunity. And my goal is to maximize our potential. And I'll do that three ways. One, by building a stronger economy. Two, creating a safer city. And three, fostering community involvement. Our economic vitality depends on job creation. For us to have job growth, we need our existing businesses to thrive. So we need to work with our merchants to make sure they're successful. That's the only way we're going to attract new businesses here and grow our economy. And our economy is closely connected with public safety. Because if we don't have a re... Oh my gosh. Wow. My final thing was community involvement. And one of the things I wanted to say about that is that I'll promote community involvement and give people more opportunities for volunteerism. Because when people are given the opportunity to participate in the solution they show up, just like all of you have shown up tonight. So thank you. And my name is Cece Pinero. And I'm running for Santa Cruz City Council. I am endorsed by the spirit of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who never got to live to see the day that I got the right to vote, that we as women got the right to vote, and we as women are able to serve. So this is an honor to sit here before you. I'm a lifelong resident of Santa Cruz. I was born here. I believe the old ways aren't working. And that I bring a new, fresh, diverse voice. And I've always led with integrity and humility and vision, and I promise to continue that vision when elected to the city council. I worked for the Santa Cruz City Schools as a classified employee for 15 years. And I served as a union president. So I sat on that side of the bargaining table. I got the food service workers an 8% raise when I was a union president. And I went on from there to become the assistant director of community television. And as the assistant director of community television, I was able to then run for school board and ran a campaign and was elected to the school board and served in 2002 to 2005 on the school board. And I sat on that side of the bargaining table. I bring that perspective of walking a mile in both of those shoes. And there is nothing like that. So I bring that to the city council. I also went to, before that, I went to Santa Cruz High School. And I took American government. And it was my favorite class. I took that with Mr. Listener. And he inspired generations of people. I was in the class with Daniel Dodge Sr. And he and I sat next to each other and said, one day, we're going to run this town. And he went out to Watsonville. And he is now on the city council of Watsonville. And I am making good on my word. And I am running for Santa Cruz City Council. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, it is the mirror, that person in the mirror, that I am accountable to. So thank you very much. I think we're stuck. Thank you. Hi. Good evening. My name is Rachelle Naroyan. I'm running for Santa Cruz City Council for a variety of reasons. But mainly because I'm passionate about my community. I'm passionate about public service. I believe the more of us that get involved and the people who we elect to office make a difference in how our communities work and run. I love solving problems and challenges. And I believe that we have some to address here in Santa Cruz. We need to address our economy. Because we need to have a tax base. That supports the type of services that we want in Santa Cruz. We need to continue to support our economic development team that the city has, even without redevelopment funds. We need to make sure that they're funded and that they do their job. We have a crime issue to address. We are off the charts in Santa Cruz. Our crime is way above the state average when it comes to property and violent crime. And that ties back to economic development. Because we have a police force that's only 50% of the national per capita average. So that's an area that I would like to work on for Santa Cruz. I'm a lifelong resident. I have a diverse work background. I've worked in the high tech industry, as well as state government and public policy. So I know how government works. But I also understand the needs of the business community. I've been on the Public Works and Transportation Commission for the city of Santa Cruz for the past four years. And have learned that we have almost, I believe it may even be more, a $30 million infrastructure deficit in the city in terms of taking care of our roads and our bridges. And that's something that I'd like to address if I'm elected to the council. I've been endorsed by the Democratic Women's Club, the Democratic Party of Santa Cruz County, the GLBT Alliance, Labor Unions, Bay Mech, which is also an LGBT rights organization in the Bay Area, which I'm really happy to have the two groups in town that are working on civil rights heavily to have their endorsement. There are other reasons why I'm running. We'll go ahead and get to that. But I'm interested in hearing what your concerns are as well. Thank you. My name is Micah Posner. I'm running for city council so that can be your advocate on the council and in the city. I've been a very successful advocate for a group of people that are concerned about energy and transportation for the last 20 years. We've gotten bicycle lanes and paths, neighborhood traffic calming, pedestrian improvements. We improved the city's climate action plan. And we have a countywide rail trail, which is now in the design phase. So those are the issues I've been working on. But I care about a lot of things other than bicycling. And I want to expand and work on a range of issues that are really important besides transportation. So making housing affordable, stimulating economy, having sustainable planning, and having better social contracts and respect downtown are all things I want to work on. I live in the east side in the lower ocean neighborhood with my wife and two little kids. I'm one of the owners of a small downtown business, Santa Cruz Petty Cab. We're part of the Downtown Association. One thing I want to point out is that I've agreed to the voluntary expenditure limit. So I will not be spending more than $26,000 on this campaign. I think it's plenty of money. If you go on the city's website, you can see which of us has agreed to and which hasn't. I haven't checked it out because I don't want to know exactly. But I want you guys to know, so effect your vote. I was just walking precincts in my neighborhood because I'm holding a little party at my house for my neighbors. If you're in my neighborhood, you're invited on Sunday. And I'm really honored that I ran into JD Sotelo, who's the head of Neighbors of Lower Ocean. And he's been really active in Santa Cruz neighbors. And he just endorsed me because he and I both feel like our neighborhood needs representation on this council. It's a very different neighborhood. It's a working class neighborhood. It's multiracial. It has serious issues with poverty and homelessness and drug abuse. And it's just different. What can I say? And so if you're out there thinking about your neighborhood, I want to ask you to stretch a little bit and also think about mine. You get four votes. Think about giving one of your votes to the neighborhood of Lower Ocean, which is not usually represented on the council. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Don Lane. I have the honor of serving you as mayor of the city of Santa Cruz this year. And I've been on the city council the last four years. I also have a background as a restaurant owner in Santa Cruz for 15 years and have also worked professionally in the nonprofit sector. What I want to do in my little bit of time here is not talk so much about issues as talk about the work that I've done. I remember there used to be an ad for some car that talked about the relentless pursuit of perfection. And I think that is obviously not appropriate for an elected official to talk about. But I have really considered myself relentlessly in pursuit of collaboration. I think in the end, we can talk about our stands on the issues. But what really makes a difference is how we collaborate and how city leaders participate in that collaboration with the community. Some of you are very aware of the Warriors basketball project that's been going on. I've been working on that very hard for the last many months. But most recently, my collaboration has been with the Beach Hill neighbors. They had legitimate concerns that came up during this process. I spent a lot of time with them. I spent a lot of time at the council meeting working on addressing their concerns. Not saying we've addressed everything perfectly, but it was that collaboration that got the city council to be able to approve that project unanimously. When the neighbors on Crystal Terrace had a really troubled drug nuisance house, I worked with them and the city staff to abate that nuisance. I was invited to participate in the city's gang intervention program, police department's gang intervention program called the Pride program. I volunteered for 10 weeks as a mentor and worked with many other volunteers in the community on that program. I worked with the district attorney and the superintendent of schools to restart the criminal justice council so we'd have collaboration county-wide to address our youth violence and gang violence problems. I could tell you many more things. I have a whole list, my with list, I call it not my wish list, my with list of many collaborative projects that I've worked on. And I look forward to continuing to do that for the next four years. If you don't mind if I stand up so people in back can see me. I am Steve Plage, and some of you may know me from the successful effort to reopen Harvey West Pool this summer, which we did get accomplished. The festival Del Nopal, which we put on downtown, drew several thousand people to a truly community-building event downtown. Or the Friends of Thanksgiving community dinners, which we put on at the civics the last couple years with Don. And we're hoping to put that on again this year until the vets get back into their hall and they can take that over again. What you may not know is that I was one of the members of the right to vote on desal coalition. And this spring we raised more than 8,800 signatures to put Measure P on the ballot, which gives you the citizens the right to vote on the construction of a desalination plan. I'm also a member of the board of directors of the Santa Cruz ACLU, where I serve proudly with Ron Pomerance and with Mike Rotkin. I am the board member at large, the Latino Democrats of Santa Cruz County, where I serve with the pleasure of our board president, Tony Madrigal. And also I serve on the steering committee with Don Lane and Catherine Byers for the Association of Faith Communities. That's a group of about 40 churches in the city and county of Santa Cruz who are working on solutions for satellite shelter programs and transitional options for our homeless community. These are just a few of the examples of the community involvement that I think has prepared me for service on city council. I'm hoping that you will agree and that the voters in November will agree as well. While I have an extra minute, let me mention something that I think is important. This evening you'll hear all the candidates talking about the very important issues that face our city, economic development, job creation, affordable housing, a better partnership with UCSC, public safety. But were we having that discussion, let's not forget about another very, very important issue and that's public education. Like many of you here, I support INJ in June. We get the funding for our public schools to make them the best public schools that we possibly can. We owe a duty to our children to give them the best possible preparation for their future. And so as we move forward into this campaign, let's not forget to have that discussion as well because public education is just as important as any of the other issues that we'll be discussing throughout the campaign. Thank you very much. I'll come to you. This will be a lot easier for me just to kind of get a little exercise anyway. Can we fine tune just a little bit? Thank you all by the way for your two minutes and for staying close to the time. Michael, do you mind giving them a 15 second, they've got one minute to respond to these. There you go, there you go. So when you see him start to twitch, you know you gotta, okay. So Steve, I'm gonna give you the honor of the first question here and let me just ask this. I will repeat this anytime you guys want to, but again, these are all turned in by the folks here in the audience previously. Please name one thing that you feel is working for Santa Cruz and one thing that's not. One thing that's working for Santa Cruz and one thing that's not. Just hand it right down. Well, I think the one thing that's working for Santa Cruz is probably community volunteerism. I think this is such an engaged community that when we have problems and concerns, people are willing to go out like this evening, they're willing to volunteer for the volunteers in policing that keeps our neighborhoods safer, they're willing to go out in any number of areas and really put themselves on a line to say, this concerns me, this is my town, I wanna make it better. What's not in my mind working is our partnership with UCSC. We're not getting any of the technology or economy or any kind of reciprocal relationship that we can. We're not drawing into their purchasing power, we're not drawing into their technical power. Those are the kinds of things that aren't working and that really is a first priority for me to strengthen and make it a mutually beneficial relationship between ourselves and USC because we're both partners in the future and we really cannot thrive without that partnership. Oh, I'm sorry, don't. So when it gets passed. Thanks. So the thing that comes to mind for me that's working well as a city council member is our city financial situation. We, when I got elected to office, things really went down. The recession hit us hard, the state budget hit us hard. We were reeling and through again, a collaboration among city council members, among our employee bargaining units, our city staff and you, the voters, the business community, we've gotten our economy in better shape and our revenue situation in better shape for the city, demonstrated most profoundly by the fact that an independent rating agency who rates our bonds just gave us a double A plus rating. In other words, they've scrutinized our finances very carefully and they see that we're really on sound financial footing. And I think that's really an important accomplishment in these economic times. On the what's not working so well, it's hard for me not to mention homelessness as an issue that we just wrestle with and wrestle with and wrestle with. We try different things, but we haven't got it figured out and we really need to work all together to make more progress on that issue. One thing that's working ours is our green belt system. Santa Cruz is really beautiful and it's partly because we've protected it like that. A year ago, my little kids and I and my wife walked from our house along a beautiful path along the river up to the very top of the mountains up at Castle Rock and we're able to do that. I mean, where else can you do that? Where else can you walk out of your house into a beautiful natural place? On the economy side, something that is working is we have twice the national average of entrepreneurship so people figure out how to make it work here. We're very creative, we're out of the box thinkers, we make it work. On the other hand, often what people are able to make here and the cost of housing just doesn't match, especially rental housing, ownership of house, I own a house and our houses have gone down in value a little bit, but rents have not and so we need to address this disparity so that people who work here can afford to live here and that's something I really wanna work on if I'm elected to city council. I would say the thing that's working really well through my eyes is our downtown. You're seeing a lot more people going downtown, you're seeing the wonderful First Friday event in which we take our arts community and our business community and bring them together for one night out of the month. That's just, in my opinion, magical downtown between the street musicians and the people that are going to the different venues and so that's something that I hope continues to thrive. I also think that we have addressed some of the antisocial behavior downtown and have been very effective at doing that and I hope that once again we continue to be vigilant about behavior downtown. I think something that's not working is the fact that 25,000 people commute over the hill every day to find work. I think we can maybe keep some more of those folks on this side of the hill. We need to improve our infrastructure so we have access to broadband which is essential for people who work in the tech community to stay in this side of the hill. Cruzio has adopted broadband in their building and they're almost 95% full in terms of vacancy so that's something I'd like to see improved. What's working? Our creativity is working. What's not working? The old ways are not working. What's working? UCSE as an educational institution is working. The boardwalk as an employer of our youth is working. That is the one place where our teens, our youth can get a job. What's not working? Affordable housing is not working. We do not have affordable housing. Also what's not working? Job growth. We need job growth. What is working? Our beautiful green belt. I'm wearing green today because I am all about the green and our green belt is working. We are where the mountains meet the ocean. This is an amazing place to live. This is a beautiful place and what is not working are the people with behavioral problems. Thank you. Well this is kind of a long list on both sides here so I'm not sure where I want to start or what I want to pick with but since the economy is such a hot topic I'll go there. What's working is that Santa Cruz has a way above the national average of income. We have a lot of people with money in this town money to spend but what's not working is they're spending it in other communities. They're driving to Capitola. They're driving to San Jose. We have what's called leakage so we're losing a tax base. So we're losing tax dollars that could help with crime prevention with social services with things that our community needs. So it'll be my goal to help attract new businesses so that people will spend their money locally rather than in other cities. That's not it. So what's working is you guys and is all of us up here. It's that Santa Cruz has a community that cares about its community. All of us here are here because we're concerned with where Santa Cruz is today and where it's gonna be tomorrow. We wanna be able to tell our children that you're gonna be able to grow up here and be safe here and have a family here and buy a house here and be here for your whole life. And so what's not working is is that we right now can't really tell our children that. You know, nobody can really tell me right now you're gonna have a job. You're 28 years old. There's gonna be a job for you. You're gonna be able to buy a house. Well, right now I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to buy a house. But what is working is that all of us are here together to try to fix the problems that we face today. And that's why we're gonna move forward and we're gonna prosper. Well, all of the above. One thing that I'll just highlight that others haven't mentioned that I think really works well in Santa Cruz is the role of our nonprofits. People tend to talk about the public sector, the private sector, but the nonprofits are really such an important sector in general, but specifically here in Santa Cruz. And what's unique about nonprofits is that these are mission-driven organizations. And they bring both the passion and the long-term commitment to tackle issues that some of these other sectors don't focus on in the same way. So when we talk about our arts organizations, our social service organizations, our environmental organizations, housing programs, all of these are significantly bolstered and aided by the involvement of our local nonprofits. And some of the things that aren't working well, I would say the situation of families and individuals that are suffering and on the edge economically, it ties to our economy, the fact that this is such an expensive town to live in. And here again, we depend on those nonprofits to help us with healthcare, with education, with the safety net to help those families survive in a very tough environment. Thank you all, you're a well-behaved group. But you don't want to get on the bad side again in my timer over there. Don, you're next and here's the question. Again, I will repeat this if you'd like. Santa Cruz boasts a substantial number of entrepreneurs who are trying to get business going locally, as you pointed out, Micah, you're very, very right. Some fault city policies for keeping jobs out. Do you believe that there is a role for non-local, bigger businesses to play in our regaining of our economic health? Why, why not? Please explain, right? Do you believe that there is a role for non-local, bigger businesses to play in our economic health? The short answer is yes, I do. I think a really, the easiest example to talk about in the present is Forever 21. Now I'm not, that's not a store that is of particular interest to me personally, but I know that, I know from a lot of business folks downtown who are local business people, they know that that store is helping them because a lot of people who aren't necessarily looking to the local boutique type store so they had not been coming downtown, now they have a reason to come downtown and then they keep walking. They go out to eat, they go to other shops, and it really helps downtown. So there's that part that's really important. The other piece that I think we all know, I think it's not, we kind of have taken it for granted now. Costco is a big outside company, but in addition to the products they sell, they are the number one tax generator, sales tax generator in this community. It's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to our general fund and we need that. Well I thought there was a little mini question there about making it easy for people to have businesses in Santa Cruz before you went to the other one and I want to say something about that real quick. I just helped start a pedicab service in Santa Cruz and the person in charge of our permit was the head of the traffic division for the police and she was great, but she had a lot of other things to do, I mean she was the head of the traffic division so I think that both for small and larger businesses we can streamline the permit processes for people trying to open businesses here. It shouldn't take months and months. The applicant shouldn't be the one to run around to all the different departments. There should be a single point of entry for businesses and that person should talk to the various departments and it should be the same for big businesses. I mean obviously no one including me wants to live in some bubble. We're part of the national economy. We need to interact with these big businesses like Don said, you know with Costco that not only has provided jobs, but where a lot of local people buy stuff. So I live right downtown, I shop right downtown but clearly we need to make it easier and more efficient for people to start businesses here of any size. I do too also think that there is a role for some of the big national chains in Santa Cruz. I believe they can fulfill a need that maybe isn't being met right now for people who want to shop in Santa Cruz. I think it needs to be tempered though and balanced. Make sure that we don't create a downtown where rents are so high that local mom and pop businesses cannot get established in that downtown area. I don't think anybody in this room would ever want to see that. So I think we need to look at things at a case by case basis as they come before the city council. I don't think we should reject something out of hand because it's a big business but I don't think we should also approve something because just that you know because it's there and the dollar signs look great for our tax base it needs to be something that's compatible with Santa Cruz and fulfills a need that isn't already being taken care of. My number one question for any business large or small but particularly large business is what is your philanthropic giving plan? And that's what I look at first. And along those same lines, Santa Cruz Bikes which is a bike company that makes its bikes in Asia is opening their assembly factory here in Santa Cruz at the old Wrigley's building. Now many of you might remember Wrigley's and Lipton's those were big businesses and those provided a lot of jobs for a lot of people and I certainly would like to see something like that again. And I am not opposed to some of the businesses if depending on like I said what their philanthropic giving plan is what they bring like Don said Costco is the number one tax benefactor here. That's an important thing. I have friends who work there and it's a great place to work. So there we go. I can speak from firsthand experience having owned a small business located next to a national retailer that every time they had a large sale where they were paying for commercials and putting out mailers my business increased by at least 50%. So there's a huge benefit to the small merchants to have a combination of anchor stores. So I think we need to be welcoming to both but yeah, we don't wanna lose our character and charm but there's definitely room for both and we can have balance. I think it's our responsibility to support local businesses first. I don't wanna see Pacific Avenue look like the Gilroy outlets where you don't know the owner you can't walk in and you can't say hi to the guy that's been doing that for years but with that said, I absolutely feel that the Forever 21s and the Costco's have a place in Santa Cruz and we need more businesses like that in the future because like all these other candidates have said they bring dollars to the local businesses also and we need them to survive and the amount of tax revenue they bring in we can't say no to and we have to kind of broaden our minds of the businesses we're gonna allow in Santa Cruz because they're gonna help us in the future. So I absolutely think that there's a space for them. The drift of this response for most people has focused on retail and maybe that's what you intended but the question is actually bigger than that. I actually supported Costco when that came before the council quite a few years ago but I've also worked very closely with our local businesses in downtown Santa Cruz and throughout the city but think of some of the other big businesses that we have in Santa Cruz Plantronics a global company, an incredible employer and part of our identity. We have some global businesses that are homegrown, NHS, O'Neill. We're really proud of those. That's part of our diversity. Another concept of kind of the evolution in emerging business that's both local and becoming bigger is next space and Cruz IO, the co-working idea for the new way of doing business. And we also see how the economy and business opportunities evolved. I think the primary example of that is the tannery and old business. We used to tan hides and junk up the river. Now it's been recreated as an incredible center for the arts and I think that's part of our future, the creative future of Santa Cruz. Yeah, I'm not necessarily a big fan of outside local big box stores, frankly. I think that we can grow locally. I think everybody's made excellent points here about developing our own local entrepreneurs through next space through Santa Cruz next. I've been an advocate of that for many, many years and I think that's the way that we really have to grow a new local economy. I will say though that there is a place for outside large businesses if we can partner with them and the example that I would use is this new Warriors project. I'll have to say that I was initially against this project from the beginning and yet now the city council has approved it. We're all hoping for the best but that's an example of somebody coming in and partnering with the city, a larger corporation, a subsidiary of the Warriors who are a very large corporation but coming in and partnering and generating a tax base for us that we would not have otherwise if we tried to get a team like that in here so that's one way that I think it does work in terms of the large companies coming in I think you really do have to examine it on a case by case basis as was stated but for me I think partnerships with the local, businesses with the larger groups coming in may be a way to develop a tax base. Thank you Stephen, thank you all. The next question then we'll go Micah to you first. In recent years the downtown area has been greatly improved from being overrun with trangents, panhandlers and drug dealers. What are you going to do to continue the efforts of so many to keep our towns safe and free of trash, litter and folks who prey on our community? Well I think the reason that our social contracts have improved a little bit downtown is because we put so much attention to it. With just as individual community members and I know there's some of the leaders of Santa Cruz neighbors that walked the levee and pick up trash in my neighborhood and we've become more aware of this issue. We have increased the police force and the downtown hosts but I'm also concerned that the situation downtown, I'm on the lease for building downtown just south of Laurel and I live just over the river. I'm concerned that if the situation looks better that it could become or is becoming slightly more desperate and so I think we need to keep having that attention but I think we need to refocus it a little bit, try to have more interaction and improve social contracts with the poor and the homeless downtown. My model for that is the bike church, hopefully people have been there. The bike church accepts everyone, it has very strong boundaries, it offers respect and it offers used bike parts in exchange for work and we rarely have to call the police so I'm glad we're focusing on the problem. I'd like to get a little deeper and start addressing some of the root causes including Dawn's proposal to house the most vulnerable of the homeless people. So I think we need to remain vigilant about enforcing the downtown ordinances that have been passed in recent years. I think it's important because people then get a message as to what type of behavior is acceptable and not acceptable so we need to continue to send a consistent message on what our expectations are for behavior in that area. I also believe that maybe more festivals, more street fairs downtown is also another way to keep downtown vibrant and interesting to people. I think it attracts folks to come down and maybe shop and look at shops they normally wouldn't see on their regular errands during the day. I also think it's great that we have a social worker downtown full time, we need to keep that during my police ride along that I had a few weeks ago, police officer expressed that that person is extremely helpful in terms of addressing some of the issues downtown. Social workers also know where to find services for people that need help, as opposed to other folks working downtown. Well, first of all, the mental health case workers downtown, I would like to add more of them. We need more of them downtown doing assessments, specific assessments on anybody that looks like they need help or is causing, or is having a behavioral problem. They will be addressed by a case worker that will do an assessment, particularly to find out number one, is there a mental health issue? Is there a substance abuse issue? Is there a behavior issue? What specifically is it? And then address those specific things. And if we have more of that, I think we can make it even better than it is now. That's for sure. And there's still a lot to be done. And I have to certainly give a shout out to the Hope Services people who are diligently cleaning up our streets every day. And I'd like to see more of that happen as well. So in our Hope Services population are the developmentally disabled people who are always downtown in the morning cleaning up. And there's plenty of more of them that would love to do that and need jobs. Thank you. Well, let's see, I have a couple of ideas. But one, I really like where we're going with the downtown host and the first alarm. I think they're providing tremendous improvements. I recently met with the director of the library and she walked me through and explained to me what a difference the first alarm has made at the library because now they have somebody to patrol, if behavior's out of hand, they're able to ask that person to leave, they're able to get a restraining order. And I think that the same thing should be true of downtown. If you have so many incidents of bad behavior, well, maybe downtown's not the place for you. Because downtown's a place of commerce, we rely on it for its tax base and we need to protect that if we're going to continue to provide things like social services to this group of people. And also I think it would be cool if we could come up with a program where we gave some sort of incentives to the business owners for really cleaning the sidewalks in front of their street instead of constantly relying on city services. I think that's another option we could look into. Sorry. So yeah, as it says in the question, you know, it is getting better down there, but what I would do on city council to even improve upon that is to work with organizations like Santa Cruz neighbors and take back Santa Cruz and to be accessible to people, to say, you know, suggest what we could do as council members to keep it cleaner and safer down there. And I'd like to point out the farmer's market, how they eliminated the drum circle. As one week it was there and people weren't excited about trying to go down and do business with the farmers. And the next week, sorry, it's gone. And you can't do it here. You were not going to accept that and that's how we need to be. And that's what they did down there and it worked. There is no more drum circle at the farmer's market for better or for worse, but it's not there. I'm really delighted to hear that Santa Cruz neighbors feels that downtown is improving because this group has really held the council's feet to the fire on that one over the past. So good for you. And it's an area in which I've worked for honestly all the time that I've been on the council. And I want to just quickly run through some of the things we've done and state from the very beginning that it's never done. Downtown's always take work and we just have to keep at it. Right after the earthquake, we had some consultants come, national consultants, and they said, in order to rebuild your downtown and have it be successful, it needs three things. Clean, safe, and friendly. And that's our job. So what have we done? Continue to refine the ordinances. Continue to work with the courts to enforce the ordinances, to support the outreach worker, the social worker that others have mentioned, to support the safety net services that the social worker can refer to, to work with the Downtown Association, the Downtown Management Corporation, the host programs. These are the entities supported by the businesses and the property owners. Experiment with first alarm and new technology to work smarter. Provide public restrooms. We've improved them and we've provided a stipend to businesses. Improve the trash collection, the street sweeping, graffiti removal. Do you see graffiti downtown? No, it's gone in 24 hours. It's all those things together. Very good. Well, I won't mention the Downtown social worker, but that's dealing Don's thunder, although I am very much in favor of that. What I think we should do really is I'm in favor of turning the downtown into a walking mall one weekend a month. I think Downtown is a neighborhood. Like all other neighborhoods, you'd have people who are the neighbors that live down there contribute to keeping it clean, keeping it safe. The hospitality folks do a great job of addressing behavioral problems at a non-law enforcement level, which I think is wonderful. But we all need to create a neighborhood Downtown. One way to do that, at least on a trial basis, is have a true Downtown walking mall for a weekend a month, get the Downtown businesses to sponsor kind of a workforce thing. There's a lot of idle hands Downtown who would love to be able to clean up and get some sense of pride and involvement and accomplishment being down there. But let's turn Downtown into a true neighborhood. And I think that you'll find that a lot of the problems with dirt or transience or antisocial behavior will fall away because they'll all be integrated into what is truly one of our wonderful neighborhoods. Thanks. I would really start by just really seconding Cynthia's list. I think she was instrumental in a lot of that work. I've worked with her and other council members to move in that direction. I think that's a really good description of kind of the overall effort. The one thing that I highlight, people have referred to the Downtown Outreach Social Worker, one of the things you may not know is when the state took away redevelopment, the funding for that went away. And that was a real challenge for the council. So we actually collaborated with the County of Santa Cruz. We got them to put a little money on the table to help us out and we dug a little deeper because our budget situation is getting a little better. And even though we didn't have redevelopment funding anymore, we managed to restore that position. It had gone, it was about to go away and we saved it. And then what I just had a chance to do in the last week is start meeting with some of the bigger Downtown businesses to say, you know, one is really good, it's good we have one, we really could use two. And I've actually got one of the Downtown business owners to commit a substantial amount of money to contribute to the next, the second person. So that's a work in progress, but that's something I'm working on right now. If we can, if you guys can hear me, I'm just gonna belt this out and let you just hold the microphone out. Again, I will repeat this anytime you guys need. Oh, but see, you need the mic. You need the mic. I can't hear you. I was already urging the first time. No, I take instructions actually pretty well. The next question then is, Rachelle, it's for you. And this neighbor says, Bravo, for the recent development of housing opportunities like granny units in the Tannery Arts Center, although the Tannery is now in a rather isolated location. Also, the UCSC campus could use another entrance. Would you be willing to re-enter a dialogue about completing these developments with an Eastern entrance to UCSC? So the question you first asked about granny units in 80 years? No, no, I didn't ask. They're just bringing up, there's two different things that are going on in that part of town. One is the isolation of the Tannery over there and the other is the need for an entrance to UCSC on the East Side. So the question then is, would you be willing to re-enter a dialogue about complimenting these two developments with an Eastern entrance to UCSC? Okay. Sorry. Thank you for the clarification. I would be willing to hear ideas for different ways to access, especially the area around Harvey West Park and how that could possibly be linked up to UC Santa Cruz. I know that's extremely controversial because the idea is that it would maybe go through PogoNIP but I think there's maybe other ideas that we can think about that wouldn't affect the environment quite so much in PogoNIP. I worked in that area at SCO for many years and there was an accident and we were caught. There wasn't a way for us to get out. We could walk out through the path that runs along Highway One or Mission Street but it was quite dangerous and people couldn't get home to their kids and so it does create a huge problem to not have a way for that area to access the rest of the city when there's an accident or road work. So I would be willing to listen to ideas about that and look at it case by case basis but anything that would be harmful to PogoNIP might have a difficult time supporting. Yes, I'd be willing to enter into a dialogue with UCSC regarding this and many other ideas and proposals. I'm a big proponent of UCSC Human Genome Project Institute being housed at UCSC and I'd love to enter a dialogue regarding that among many other projects. Right now UCSC is in a good position to potentially get that institute here. MIT and John Hopkins and other larger university institutions are vying for that position being that UCSC was the place where the human genome was mapped, coded, whatever it's called, that we are in a position that we could possibly have that institute here and if we got that institute that would bring in scientists from all over the world which leads to our economic base. So entering a dialogue with UCSC is something that I really am interested in doing. Yeah, absolutely. We have an issue with traffic and need an Eastern access. Maybe at some point, it's something that would probably be a very long term plan so it's pretty far off. So right now maybe we can look at some other alternatives for mass transit to get more people up to campus without taking so many cars. One idea that I've kicked around is taking that trolley that's used in the summertime and maybe there's a way we can come up with a deal where UCSC can use it during the school year, during the off time when they're busy. So I think that there's some other options on the table that we should explore before we come up with any grand expensive ideas that might harm our environment but it's all worth talking about. I've always been interested in the Eastern access idea. Having lived near Bay Street and Mission Street, I know what the traffic can look like at five o'clock in the afternoon and also I feel that down the Harvey West areas kind of has to bottleneck back through River Street and I do think it's pretty dangerous. There's only one way out unless you wanna go up nine towards Mount Herman and if there was a fire you couldn't use that option and it would be basically pretty chaotic. So the Eastern access which I believe was part of UCSC's original plan when they came here. I'm absolutely supportive of that but like Pamela said we have to keep the environment in mind too. Well another thing that was part of the university's plan in the mid sixties was to grow to 25,000 and that's not happening. The original question was about the Eastern access but I think before seriously exploring that we should really focus on alternatives for the campus transit and in fact the rides of single occupancy vehicles are less now onto campus and off than they have been in the past and that's a result of a very aggressive transportation management program on the part of the campus and that in turn is partly due to the comprehensive settlement agreement between the city and the university that tackled a lot of these big issues impacting neighbors and Santa Cruz neighbors knows this as well as anybody housing water transportation so as a result of that comprehensive settlement agreement we've made real progress on alternative transportation reducing trips to campus and that's the direction we should go. I do also wanna add in terms of the highway one nine intersection and Harvey West that is a dangerous intersection that needs to be improved and we need another access. And of course we should engage in dialogue with UCSC about this and really any other issues that affect us mutually. I know that there are some environmental impact considerations with an Eastern access considering whether or not we can get students back and forth is very important. There's 10,000 car trips a day going back and forth and that's just way too many. That's an environmental impact in itself. If we can somehow satisfy the environmental concerns and at the same time open up that green space to other people in Santa Cruz to be able to use to be able to use the Pogonet to be able to use Harvey Westmore. Those are our green spaces. So if it's a collaboration between the city and UCSC if that's what it takes if it takes to an environmental impact considerations to satisfy some of those questions then I think we should do it but of course dialogue is the only way that we can both mutually agree about what's best for both UCSC and for the city. So I would say I would be open to the discussion but I wanna be honest that it seems very unlikely that that would happen as a car road, an Eastern access car road is just seems there are so many issues to deal with. It would be incredibly expensive. It would actually impact the intersection that we've just been talking about. Think if we had all those cars coming down and coming through Harvey West Park to the Highway 1-9 intersection it's already terrible and if you added all the university traffic through it it would just be untenable even with improvements. So I think we just have to be really careful about ideas that solve one problem and create another one. The one piece that I am, it's a long-term project but I think there really is a possibility for it is an Eastern access not essentially a fixed guideway transportation system of some kind. There's been some work done over the years about a cable car, other kinds of like truck trams, things like that that really would be very popular with students that would be a really great workable thing if something went from downtown up the hill. I don't mind that it would go through the Pogonip because I think the environmental gain would be substantial by that kind of alternative transportation system. First just a clarification about emergencies in Harvey West last year because I was the director of People Power, the city talked to me and as of now if there's another emergency in Harvey West the police will guide people along both bike paths out of the area. So there's at least a fix for those kinds of emergencies and of course the bicycle community was cooperative about that. I must agree with Dawn about the Eastern access. A road through the Pogonip opens up all kinds of other problems in addition to accents, environmental degradation, increased car use which is sort of what you'd be trying to solve when you had access. But a trolley or a tram or a vernicular would be a great amendment to our town. I've spoken to our Greenbelt champions who have formed the Pogonip and they're open to that idea as well. So it's one of those situations where we've had this struggle Eastern road, not Eastern road, Eastern road, not Eastern road and instead of continuing to have that argument we can think out of the box and we can say how do we provide access in a way that it does not degrade the environment and does not make more vehicle miles traveled and the answer is some kind of trolley, tram or overhead guided system. Thank you all. You guys are being good. Little disappointing on that. Anyway, Cece you're next. And this is an easy one for all of you and try to keep it to a minute. What achievement as a citizen are you most proud of that has benefited our community? Well besides serving on the Santa Cruz City School Board I'm most proud of my work in my nonprofit organization Spin which is the special parents information network. I started working there eight years ago as a result of what I learned from being on the Santa Cruz City School Board and we began, there were 12 organizations like ours in the state when I started and now there's 14 and our goal is to have 32. We serve parents who have kids with disabilities and wherever there is a family empowerment center on disabilities of which Spin is one, those families get served and when those families are being served there is less lawsuits, less litigation and more happy people and happy children and happy parents and that makes for a better society so I'm very proud of that and I am working tirelessly to continue to do this and when we have 32 in the state we'll be able to change public education forever for the better. I'm most proud of my work with Take Back Santa Cruz as one of the founding board members. I've had an opportunity to inspire a lot of people but also provide comfort to people who were maybe recently had a family member that was a victim of crime. We've brought community members together and they've been able to express their feelings. We've really served as a group that has stepped up and addressed our community in a time of tragedy and people have come to us when they're affected by crime they look to us for answers. So for the last four years we've been community leaders in a sense and we've also been in contact with people in other cities who have heard about us and said we wanna start this in our city what did you do, how did you do it? And we were just a bunch of people at home complaining on our couches and we decided not to do that anymore and to get up and start making a real difference and I'm thankful every day that Annalisa Cube formed Take Back Santa Cruz. Well, I'm most proud of being a husband and a father and being an example to my family and other young members of the community that you get up in the morning and you put your boots on and you work really hard and even though it's expensive to live here and sometimes it doesn't even seem like it's worth it because you can't pay your bills at the end of the month but you work hard and you do it anyway and you know that one day you may have the opportunity to buy a house but you're gonna be an example to your family and to the community and hey, one day you might even be a city council member. I'd have to say that the single involvement that has made me proud over my time in Santa Cruz has been my role with Planned Parenthood. I was one of the founding volunteers and the first executive director for this agency which was founded in the early 70s and has grown to become one of the essential safety net clinics here in Santa Cruz as well as part of of course a national and international network of essential both medical care providers and educators and advocates for reproductive choice and access to affordable healthcare. So starting in my kitchen with a phone on the counter that was the first office that has grown to now serve in Santa Cruz County over 25,000 people annually. Not just women's healthcare now but basic primary care for families, children, people of all ages and as I say, it's really part of our healthcare safety net here in Santa Cruz County. Thank you, it's an impressive group. What's your story, Steve? All right. Well, aside from working to put Measure P on the ballot which was more of a collaborative effort I'll have to say that personally my most satisfying project was restoring Harvey West Pool to full operation. A couple of years back, Kevin Moon and Jim Booth and I decided that Harvey West Pool had been closed since 2005, we say we have to restore this to the community, what can we do? So we formed a corporation, we raised some money, we weren't successful in doing it last year but this year with the city's contribution we were able to get it open and we're gonna be working toward having it open longer for next year but what is more important about that is it was a public-private partnership. That is, you took some private folks who wanted to raise some money, wanted to restore something to the community and a public facility like Harvey West Pool and together, working together, the private and the partners, we were able to do that and I think that's the ear that we're going into. A lot of things can't be done privately and they can't be done publicly but in those collaborations, public and private you can really get a lot of things done so that's the thing that I'm most proud of just as an example of what can happen. I think I would have to pick a project that I did in the mid-1990s. I had been just off the city council for a couple years still wanting to serve the community and I was working as a volunteer high school teacher in an alternative school and I learned of the need for job training for teens especially high-risk teens, it's still a huge need. So I took my experience in the restaurant business and kind of put those two concerns together with the employment need and I started a non-profit organization called Youth Opportunities that opened an ice cream shop downtown and that ice cream shop functioned to the public as a regular business but it actually employed at any given time of 12 to 15 teens from very troubled backgrounds in homeless teens, teens who had been in the criminal justice system, school dropouts and we gave them their first job, gave them training, helped them move into a second job and unfortunately the program ran out of funding after four years but it was a great run. I've played some part in almost every bicycle or pedestrian improvement you see in the city, the bike lanes, the better sidewalks, the crosswalks and I'm really proud of all of those projects. The one I'm most excited about is the rail trail, the train and path, train and trail project. Someday we will have a trail and a train that runs through the entire city and the entire county all the way to Watsonville and I think if we work together, I'm on the board of Friends of the Rail Trail, if we work together, we'll have some of those segments in the city of Santa Cruz. By the time my daughter will graduate elementary school, she's in kindergarten because we can get these segments built in the city of Santa Cruz. The escrow with the county is closer than it's ever been. The design for the rail trail is going forward, the scoping documents already planned so we can build that trail and by the time my daughter graduates high school, we can have some kind of functional trolley train, tram system throughout this county that connects us to the rest of the country in a way that is green and which is unique to Santa Cruz, which is rail. As a citizen, I think one of the things I'm most proud of is my participation in the Santa Cruz County Democratic Party and the hours and hours I've spent walking precincts to see that good people get elected to office. It's essential that people are in these positions so when issues come up, we know we have their support for supporting our infrastructure, the services that we need, the economic development that we need to support to raise our tax base. And there are times when I was really active in the Democratic Party and I would be on the officer's board of the state party and people would say we've never had somebody from Santa Cruz be on the officer's board before or just recognize that at the time I was doing these things, I was only 25 years old, 27 years old and I love it when I'm in downtown Santa Cruz and someone will stop me and say, you registered me to vote and I wouldn't have had that opportunity but you were standing in front of Kmart screaming at people, telling them to stop and how important it was for them to be involved. As chair of the Democratic Party too, I created different events, different ways for people to be involved and civically engaged and I'm really proud of that because I think that's essential for a community to thrive. Thank you all, very impressive. Of course, nobody's surprised what an impressive group this is. Pamela, you're next. One of the neighbors asks or says, many if not all of the candidates in this election seem to be advocates of a favorite and important issue. How can you persuade us that your advocacy will not dominate your understanding of what's best for our community as a whole? That's a good question. Is that clear? Yeah, sure. Okay, as I understand the question, the concern is that my primary concern does not necessarily reflect the concern of the community. Clouds are coming. Yeah, well, actually what I have been doing for a long time has been attending these community events and listening to people and never has that been more true than walking precincts. I've been walking precincts and knocking on doors and I'm hearing people tell me what's wrong with our city. So my agenda doesn't mean much because I keep hearing the same things over and over. So it's what I focus on, on city council will be a direct reflection of what the people of our city are requesting. And right now it's a lot of public safety and planning department problems based on the feedback of the 400 doors I knocked on. Well, I feel that my priorities should be consistent in the first place with the priorities of the community because I want to represent the community on city council. I want to be their voice. I'm not... I'm 28 years old. I just come to you guys with an open mind saying I want to do what's best and I have youth and energy and I want to represent you and do my best job to be available to you and hear what you have to say and the concerns that you face and that you feel face the whole community. So I want everything I do to be what you guys want me to do. Well, as I said in the beginning, I actually don't associate myself with any single agenda. I see myself as a generalist in terms of supporting the wellbeing of the community and that's how I've served in the past and that's how I would intend to serve in the future. I will say a couple of things. Many people and I think it's just inadvertently when we talk, we talk about the problems of Santa Cruz but I think also we should look at a wellness model because we have so many assets here and so many things that are going right that that's something for us to focus on. So some issues that come the city council's way are rather predictable. We know that all of us will be dealing with public safety and economic development. Some things just come at you at a left field whether it's an earthquake or the warriors or what. So I think it's important that you understand the basic values that underlie a candidate, their ability to work with others to get things done and that is in fact what I see as my strength. Well, I think this is a very good question and it can be a problem. I'm known as a homeless advocate and I have been for some time. Two years ago when I ran for city council it was difficult for me to persuade people on other issues because they only saw me as a homeless advocate and perhaps I focused too much of my time and energy on being a homeless advocate and I'm no less passionate now but I'm able to integrate that with other issues because I think it's part of a larger question that we're all asking ourselves about the welfare of the city, about wellness, about social contracts and so I think that I'm able to address that question from a knowledgeable standpoint but yet able to persuade people that I am knowledgeable enough and informed enough on other issues and they are integrated with that enough so that I can be persuasive so I'm hoping not to be seen as a single issue candidate. I don't believe that I am. I think I'm broad enough based to be seen as something else to be comprehensive about your approaches to all the problems and issues in the city and I think I'm doing that. I think I'm gonna refer a little bit back to what I mentioned at the beginning about this list of projects that I've worked, collaborative projects I've worked on in the community because I'm sure different people in the room might have some assumptions about what are the issues that are of greatest personal interest to me but the reality is I work on those more on my own time and when I'm working as a city council member and as a mayor, I take on the issues that are clearly the most important for the community so economic development has been really the greatest focus of my time over the past four years and related to that, inextricably related to that is the wellness of the city's financial situation. It is really the foundation. We can talk about all the other things the city we wish could or couldn't do but if we're not focused on that large picture of does the city have the resources to meet its fundamental obligations in terms of public safety and streets and parks and recreation. If we're not doing that, we're not doing our job. Well, I left People Power and decided to run for city council because I really wanna work on other issues. I gotta tell you, bicycling's important but there's so many other things that are, you know, I'll say at least as important but often more important and I did leave People Power which means I will have the time to devote myself to the job on city council. I know that's often a real challenge for people, especially people with children but I'm gonna have that time to vote it where I can be a good council member and represent a broad amount of issues. I have this unique experience where I've been a really successful advocate for an issue that really stands on its own. I mean, whether people ride bikes or not doesn't affect public safety that much. It doesn't affect economic development that much. I mean, it helps a little bit with economic development but, you know, you can count that I'm still gonna be a bike advocate on the council but that's really not gonna affect a lot of other issues and I do have the care and interest in time to work on those issues with all of you. I wanna be your advocate, you know, presuming that you don't ride a bike, I wanna be your advocate, not just the people that get around on bicycles. I do have particular goals that I'd like to accomplish as a council member but really no single issue is going to cloud my judgment because it's very clear to me that all sectors of Santa Cruz are interdependent on one another. It's really a balancing act. I mean, a vibrant economy is needed to create a tax base that supports infrastructure, that supports public safety, that supports parks and rec which involves our youth and hopefully keeps them out of the need for public safety services. So I see the big picture, it's really important. I usually have a great ability to see the big picture as well as a small detail and so while I have particular goals, I will keep in mind that those goals are so connected to how healthy everything else is in our community. I don't have an agenda. I believe the glass is half full and that's how I come to all of the different processes that will come before me. I support and will work tirelessly for the health and well-being of our city. I've always led with integrity. I represent you guys. My track record is proof. I get things done. I did so on the school board. I know how to make the difficult decisions and sit with that and be with that and process that and I understand fully what this volunteer job entails because I did it on the school board and I'm a community servant and I've always been a community servant. So thank you. Thank you all again, well-fielded. All right, Jake, it's your turn here, all right? And I quote, it seems we are always focused on political, environmental and every other kind of correct cause. What would you do to support those who actually live here but do not occupy a newsworthy cause like raising a family, for example, in quote? Is that clear? Yeah. Good man, I set him up, you knock him down. Well, it seems that I am raising a family. I'm familiar with the struggles we face while we're trying to do that and also maintain a good lifestyle in Santa Cruz. Basically the way I want to answer it though is I just want to be available. Obviously there's some things that have dominated the conversation tonight, the environment, the crime problem, all these other things but there's other things that people want to be addressed that aren't as popular and I just want to be as available as I can to anybody with an issue in the community and if I'm on city council, you have my, I gave the Sentinel permission to publish my email address so that's how available I am. Might have been a little bit of a mistake being that I got like 1,800 emails the day after that but hey, I'm trying to go through all of them and read what people have to say and hopefully they're all supportive but I just want to be available. Well I think when you talk about responding to the needs of people who maybe don't have the time or luxury to become politically active at a high level, we're talking about just the sort of situation that I mentioned earlier was just working families here in Santa Cruz. They may be working two jobs, it may be a single parent, the rents are high, et cetera. So some of the things that as a council member we can do is to work for neighborhoods they feel good about for one thing, there's no zip code for that. Everyone wants their own neighborhood to be safe and secure and particularly for many working families that's a priority. They want good schools and the city can be a partner in that. I mentioned earlier the non-profits and the city partners in these things as well. Our non-profits that can help support families who often have are very stretched for resources and I'll mention just a few. The first five healthy kids which provides insurance for kids under 18, the teen center for kids, the literacy programs in the library, these are all great programs that help families just trying to make do and raise a family here and of course the underlying one is the economy and creating jobs. Well, I've been out walking in the neighborhoods for the last couple of months now and the people I see out, there are the people who are raising families, there are the people who don't get the notoriety that we do, they don't have the same political associations that get all the press that maybe we do and some other folks, but they're just people who are as concerned as I am as we all are about what we're gonna do in terms of public safety, in terms of wellness, in terms of economic development, in terms of affordable housing, they tell me what their concerns are. So I can then convey those concerns to the city council, to the city at large where we're making policies, we're developing programs, but those are the people who may go unnoticed by the press and they may go unnoticed by community TV or KSBW but they don't go unnoticed by me because I wanna know what they say and believe me, they're telling me what they want. I hope I'm not being too disagreeable but I think that I don't really agree with the premise of that question because when I think about this forum tonight, what have I heard? I've heard people talking about basic community services, parks, police protection, fire protection, just having the revenue to support that. I think that's something every resident of this community is interested in. We've talked a lot about economic development jobs, everybody wants a stronger tax base, everybody wants to see more employment in our community. We've talked about environmental issues. I believe this is, up and down the social scale and every neighborhood, there are lots of people who care about what we're doing to protect our environment and stop pollution and address climate issues, climate problems and lots of people are concerned who they wanna be able to come and shop downtown. That's an issue. These are the things that I've heard us talk about the most. They're not narrow agendas, those are the real issues of this community and I appreciate that all of us have been focusing on them. Well in the morning I'm a working dad, taking care of my two daughters and my wife works up at the university at the UCSC farm so I am a working family, part of a working family and in the afternoon if I'm elected to council I'm gonna be representing you. I just wanna say something about the city government form. It has a very strong administrator, it's a management style and the council is weaker than a lot of other cities, weaker than the county government. So for me, the council members should serve as your advocates, the people's advocates on the city and there should be a dynamic tension between the needs of the institution to run itself as a business, which is difficult and the staff are in charge of and the needs of what people need out of their city government. If you've ever seen me lead a ride or seen me on TV talk about bicyclists and you thought, man, he's a ferocious, committed advocate for bikes, I am and I'm gonna be that for all the people in Santa Cruz if you get me on that council. At first I didn't understand the premise of the question but now I do. I think in the past in Santa Cruz there has been a disconnect between some of the folks in city council and what I call the bread and butter or basic issues that people are concerned with but I think that isn't how we're operating today so much. I believe we do have a council that started to address job creation, economic development, housing, safety and recreational activities. While we haven't tackled all of these issues and of course we never will because the nature of politics is you're always trying to improve what you have. That's what's so wonderful about being involved in politics but I think we have started to address these issues. I know I certainly want to. I grew up in a working class family in Santa Cruz and we struggled to stay here and there were some years where we thought we would be moving back to the Central Valley where my family farmed for many years and so I really identified with these issues in a big way. I was gonna mention one of my biggest accomplishments as a citizen was buying a house because I didn't think that was something that would ever happen to somebody in my generation in Santa Cruz. So I think that we are focusing on those issues now and I definitely will. I believe in the past there was more of a disconnect but I think that we are more connected and I'd like to thank community television because I think community television is the voice of the people and one of the ways that the regular ordinary person that can't get involved in politics can watch that. That you can turn your TV on at home. You don't have to come down to city hall to watch the city council meetings or the county board of supervisors. So I believe I am available. I believe that probably the underlying factor of most of the people that I talk to when I'm walking precincts is that affordable housing and good jobs. My dad went to Santa Cruz High. I went to Santa Cruz High. My daughter went to Santa Cruz High. I raised my daughter here as a single lesbian mom and I know about the struggle of trying to rent places, trying to buy places. I can't afford to buy a house here in Santa Cruz. I was just now at 54 years old able to buy a condo, little condo townhouse, one bedroom with a loft. So my daughter can't afford to live here. And there's the stop sign. Thank you. Well, it sounds like the person asking the question is just like, I'm so busy. It's difficult for me to present my agenda to city council, which is where I found myself. My husband and I work full time. We're raising a young son. We're both very busy. But I would encourage whoever asked that question to find ways to get involved. And one of the ways I think the city can do a better job of involving its citizens is maybe by creating a weekly or monthly newsletter so there's more transparency. So instead of you seeking out information about your city, you can see what your city is actually doing because a few times as I've been on this journey running for city council, I've met with people with community leaders and I've said, we should do this. And they say, oh, we are doing that. And I think, well, why didn't I know about it? And so I think there just needs to be more transparency and more of a relationship between the city and the citizens because it's all one team. Thank you. An interesting group of takes on that question. That was a good question and good answers. Cynthia, you're the last one here. Here's another one, and I quote, what are your thoughts for getting the residents of Santa Cruz more involved in their local community? You'd know that this group is gonna ask that. I don't even want to say we tried. And there is a city newsletter. You can sign up for it online. There's no one way. And interestingly enough, I think the decline in newspaper readership, which is well documented, no surprise, is it's a challenge for a community to have kind of shared knowledge and understanding of issues that affect all of us. So I think we're all kind of grasping for how to convey information out to the community, but certainly going out and meeting people in person, in groups, using the online resources that we have, encouraging people to be part of our boards and commissions. And I keep coming back to the nonprofits and I will say business groups too. I think there's a great opportunity to go out and meet people where they are. One year when I was mayor was the year that we had an $8 million shortfall in one year, which was beyond gruesome. And really people didn't believe it was as bad as it was. And one of the things I did was to go out, meet with the city bargaining units and explain completely transparent what we were up against. But also go out to the business community and I'll say Plantronics invited me to come out and speak to their 400 employees. They were fascinated. They wanted to know what the city was facing. So I think we just have to keep looking for those opportunities and take suggestions from the public as well. Question again? What can we do? What would you suggest we do to get people more involved in their community? Well I think it's what I mentioned in the very first question is it's volunteerism. It's a Cynthia Menthins being involved in nonprofits. There's such, I've been involved in nonprofits for a number of years and a number of them around town. There's such a connectivity between the various nonprofits, between the various volunteer groups, between the neighborhood groups. You folks here with Santa Cruz neighbors, with Nolo, with all the great neighborhoods that we have in this city, they're connected to one another. And so if there's really some common theme that runs through this, if there's some way that we can all be closer together and form and really maintain a real community, I think that's where it starts. There's definitely more people can do but I have to start by saying that this community is just off the charts in terms of community involvement in so many different ways. I mean one thing that I just look at as the human race, that event the Volunteer Center puts on and how many different organizations that are volunteer driven are represented there just in our small county. So we're doing well. But I do wanna mention a couple of things that's come to mind for me. One is the city has a volunteer program called CityServe and it has a lot of opportunities for people to help on city oriented issues where we could use some additional help from the community and that's available on the website and I really encourage people to check that out. We have a new, relatively new program in the police department with using a lot more volunteers so that's just another opportunity. The other thing I'd say, because I love mentioning this at a Santa Cruz neighbors event, but in my neighborhood I've helped host the block party that comes up every fall and it's just a fun little thing people can do but it's hugely important because one of the things we can all do is just connect with our neighbors and work with our neighbors on issues right around us. It just does so much to build community and I'd really encourage people to get involved in that. Well I think as a council person, I mean I've been a community activist for 20 years and I could speak to that but as a council person I think the way to keep people involved is to empower them, to make sure that our democratic process is open to the residents of Santa Cruz. I firmly support measure B, I think the citizens have the right to vote on DSAL, which is a $120 million proposal that we all should have a discussion and make a decision about. If my neighbors support low income housing but they want to look at a different project, I want to work with them to have the developers and the staff support different projects. If people want a rail and trail system we're going to make it happen. If they want to see a traffic calming scheme for the upper west side around King Street then the staff need to draw that up and present it to the neighborhood which they were asked to do and haven't done yet. So my experience is as getting people's values to the city council, if I'm on the city council and you come to me and you have a plan or proposal or a vision then it'll be my job to get the staff to work with you to bring it to light and see if it has community support. For five years I worked for a California assembly member and part of my responsibility was organizing ways to have the public be able to engage with the assembly member. And so I've organized many things for instance like community coffees. We would just set up shop for two hours in a coffee house and let people know we'd be there. Any citizen could come by and express concerns that it might have. House parties, block parties. We organized what was called sidewalk office hours at farmers markets, at different community events. We just set up a booth and anyone could walk by and express their opinion or concern. Those were incredibly successful and in fact I saw some pieces of good legislation get created from some of those encounters on the street. So I'm experienced in knowing how to go out and engage the public and we'll do some of these similar things to get out and see what the community is thinking. I also think, and this may sound strange, less people commuting over the hill is going to be more people having time to be able to be engaged in their community. If you're not spending two hours in a car maybe you will come to a community meeting and give input. Well I'm one of those people that believes that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. And I'm one of those 20% of the people so 80% of you don't have to do the work. If you don't have time to get involved then that's what you have your city council to represent you. And if you do want to get involved there's many, many ways and many opportunities to do so. And certainly you can volunteer for my nonprofit organization anytime. And I also am very much in love with the campaign process of knocking on people's doors and when elected I will continue to do that. Because that's what I did on the school board. I continue to meet with people. It gives you the opportunity to do that. And it's really, really important. That's the most important part of it is being with the people and hearing your views, hearing your ideas and be able to take it back and implement those ideas. And listening, you know, being a good listener I have two ears and one mouth for a reason. And I'll leave it at that. Well this goes back a little bit to my previous answer about having a little more transparency and bringing the government to people who don't have an opportunity to get to government. And one of the things I love and I think is so important are town hall meetings because you can have them on the weekend because a lot of people work in the evening and it's difficult to get there and get the kids homework done and bed and bath. It's just challenging to get to a city council meeting at six or seven o'clock at night on a Tuesday. So town hall meetings I think will be essential, especially where we have some big issues like D-Sale coming up where we need to get educated. So that's one thing I'd like to do and get a little more aggressive with social media. We can do that as well. That's how Take Back Santa Cruz really took off within about two weeks. We had 4,800 members on Facebook. So if we as council members can get active in that, we could probably really grow it and share information with the community at large right on their phones. Well, I'm really glad this question was asked because throughout my entire campaign, one of the key elements has always been to get young people involved in city government anyway they can, whether it's just voting or if they wanna do something like run for city council or whatever, but I feel that we're a key demographic that deserves to be represented and I hope me maybe leading by an example will encourage more younger people to get involved in community events and local government. Fantastic, thank you all. That's our last question. You have a two minute last chance to review whatever you can sing, whistle and you don't have to go two minutes either. I will sing and whistle. No, let me leave you with something. Not so much about me, but about us. And I was intrigued by the question about university access and eastern access and one way I think that we could overcome the huge environmental and traffic impact problems of how we get 16,000 students back and forth university is really thinking about a personal rapid transit system. Ed Porter, one of your formal council members has been kind enough to develop my walking list for me and I put on my website his video about a personal rapid transit system. It's a gondola system. So I would urge all of you to take a look at that and consider that as an alternative to transportation, one that's environmentally sound, that's fun and that we really can do. Secondarily, I started off my original remarks by talking about the need to discuss public education and yet we didn't. We really have to think about maintaining our quality public education, public education for our children so that Micah and Jake and Pam, their kids can get the kind of education, can be prepared for the future. We have to do it. We have to support that public education system. So as we move forward, I hope that we'll all talk about a little more, that we can all be engaged on that issue because it is really the foundation of our future. Thank you very much for having me. I'd like to also thank everyone for participating tonight. As was brought up, how do we get more people to participate? Well, this is have a forum and have 50 people from the community come and ask us good questions. That's a great start. I wanna close by really talking, circling back to the issue of our local economy. It really is the foundation on which our community is built and our local government is built. And we can't transform our economy on our own. The national economy is totally influential. What the state is doing has a tremendous impact on us. But there are really important things we can do. And I think Santa Cruz, the city of Santa Cruz in the last few years has really righted our own ship and is really on a good path. And I mentioned, I think that our city budget is in really strong position. We've really done, I mean, things that you all are hearing about. This has been a great year for this community of seeing the economy and new jobs come to this community. That the new hotel paradox, what used to be the holiday and just reopened a couple of weeks ago. It's the biggest hotel in Santa Cruz now. It's really first class place. As someone mentioned before, we have a growing bicycle industry, bicycle manufacturing industry in this community. It's really thriving and there's a great future for that. We have the Warriors Project. I don't need to say anything more about it. I think you all know, but there's a lot of opportunity ahead for this community because of that project. The Tannery Art Center, which is not just an art center. I mean, it's important to see it as a cultural resource, but it's also a place where small businesses are thriving now. Where small arts oriented businesses now have a home of their own. We have the Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center open, not an economic driver in and of itself, but a great attraction to our beach area, really building our local tourist economy. And then lastly, I know I'm almost out of time, but I wanted to just say that Santa Cruz is really innovating to address some of the issues that came up about making it easier for new businesses to start. We're on the cutting edge of essentially an online one-stop shop. So people starting businesses can just have a single point of contact and get things started simply and much more easily. Well, since the campaign started, I've worked really hard to prove myself that I can represent a broad coalition of people. As I said, people that don't just ride bicycles. And we have a great grassroots broad campaign going on. And I've earned the trust of a lot of people and I just want to thank them and recommend them to you environmentalists like Caitlin Gaffney, Michael Levy, and Paul Ellarick. People that care about working families. I've been endorsed by all the unions, the Central Labor Council, the SEIU, and the Building Trades Council. I've been the only candidate endorsed by the Building Trades Council. Local business people, Peter Beckman, who founded Think Local First, and this is from Beckman's Bakery, Steve Prinzepi from Vino Cruz. And as I mentioned, when I started this conversation, I was just one of my most proudest endorsement is of my own neighborhood leader, JD Sotello from Neighbors of Lower Ocean and then also with Santa Cruz Neighbors. And the way that I connected with JD, I'd been trying to email him and going back and forth and he's working full time, actually repairing electrical lines. But I went to his door with an invitation to come to my house on Sunday. And that's how we connected and I think you might be able to make it on Sunday. And that's what my campaign's doing all over the city. So look for one of these little green invitations. We're hosting our sixth neighborhood get together at my house and we have many more scheduled. We're gonna try to do the whole city. I think we'll get close. And we're just bringing neighbors together at leaders in the neighborhood's houses and asking people what's important to you for the city and what do you need in a city council candidate? Because like I said, I have this experience of being an advocate for people, but if I'm on city council, I need to represent a wide variety of people. And a great way to organize people is in neighborhoods. And so I do respect the work Santa Cruz neighborhoods is done. I'm gonna go to my local block party, which is near JD's house. And I'm following up on that by having a neighborhood by neighborhood campaign and really finding out what you guys need. If you want me on city council, tell me how I can best represent you. First of all, I wanna thank all of you too for being here tonight. I know it's probably not the most exciting thing to listen to eight people talk about some of these issues, but it's great that you are here. And I really wanna thank you for the cookies. All the other forms I've been to, we've not received anything like this. So this is very impressive. So I just wanna let you know that I will bring my passion, experience and skills to the council and nothing excites me more than when a group of people get together and they work together to improve their community. That's what attracted me to politics in the first place, that this is something we could actually do, that you didn't need to have an advanced degree, come from a wealthy family, or any of the other things that other places in the world require that you have to be able to be involved. And so that's why I'm excited about possibly being on the Santa Cruz City Council. I will employ a lot of the public outreach tools that I mentioned earlier. I also love town hall meetings and coffees. And throughout my campaign, we've been setting up house coffees and house parties so I can just get together with different groups around town once again, just to understand what's of concern to them. And I have a feeling they're gonna express a lot of the same things that all of you have expressed in this meeting tonight. So thank you again for letting me be here and let's work together to create a better city council. And I'd also like to thank the Santa Cruz neighbors for holding this forum. I'm in the Oceans 11 neighborhood, yay. And I look forward to participating more. I bring the diverse perspectives and we need hotels and we need to protect the environment. We need jobs and we need to take care of our workforce with living wages. We need rent controlled mobile home parks to protect our seniors and we need campaign spending limits. I am a grandma and my grandson, Frankie, went to kindergarten last week and he insisted on wearing a feather with a Native American headband with a feather and he went to school and he said, I am half black and half white like Obama. And he's going to get to see his grandmother's name on the same ballot as Obama. And that's a win for us because he's the future. He is getting an education in, anybody can be a public servant. Anybody can run for office, anybody can serve. And that is how we create a better future. That is how we create a better city is by educating the young people in kindergarten about politics and about how we can all be better people. And back to my diverse perspectives and how the proof of that is I am endorsed by the Santa Cruz Police Association and the LGBT Alliance, which are two diverse populations and I am right there, the bridge builder in the middle. Thank you. So the first step to community revitalization starts with us. We all get to vote and determine the fate of our city. So that's a pretty big responsibility. I represent a new voice and a new vision for Santa Cruz. I'm not a career politician. I'm just like many people who live in Santa Cruz. I work full time. I'm raising a family and I want my hometown to be a safe harbor and a source of pride. Um, while on council, my focus will be on economy, safety, and community involvement. I'd like your support because I know what happens in the next four years will determine what type of place we live in for many years to come. Thank you. Yeah, I want to thank you guys too for coming out and thanking, thank you for letting me kind of give a voice to my grassroots campaign. And I also want to thank my fellow candidates because they've been great throughout this whole thing. We're all kind of in this journey together and it's a learning experience for, for me, I know. And I really want to get elected in November. But more importantly than that, I want to come here and sit in front of you when I'm up for reelection and be able to tell you that what I set out to accomplish in Santa Cruz I actually accomplished. And then I came through on my word and I want to represent you and be a council member and thank you for having me. Thanks. Well, my gratitude also for everyone who helped make this possible. Again, I'm Cynthia Matthews. I have served previously on the city council for four terms and I am eager to serve again. My experience has given me a depth of understanding both of the complexity of the issues that face the city and the breadth of issues that face the city. I think it's really an honor to serve on the city council. It's a responsibility to take on this job and it is a lot of work and I am prepared to do that work. One of the things that makes it rewarding is that we do have so many opportunities to do good things here when we work together. We also face some real challenges, some fiscal challenges. We face some very heart-rending challenges of youth violence. I know those issues have affected all of us but we do have the resources to work together on this. As I mentioned in my opening statement, I think we really do have shared values here. We have shared values about wanting to be a good community to live in and raise families in. We want this to be a healthy economy. We want to protect and enjoy our environment. We want to tap into the creativity that's a part of this community. And I think we make progress on all those things. That's part of our strength and our community identity. My endorsements I think reflect the hard work and the achievements that I've had in a wide range of these areas. I've been endorsed by SAMFAR and 30 other elected officials. I've been endorsed by our police officers association and firefighters and city bargaining units, democratic groups and so forth. The full list is on my website and if you wanna know more, I encourage you to go there. It's www.syntiumathues.com. The long and short of it is, I would love to be one of the four people elected to the city council in November. I will work hard for you and for the whole community. Thank you, candidates, an impressive showing. I will say to the neighbors, if I didn't get your question on here, it's not my fault, we only could get eight but thank you so much for your participation and thank you for getting up off the couch and coming down here tonight. We really appreciate that. Also, that is our show for tonight. Thank these candidates. You guys are working hard and you haven't even got the job yet. Thank you again. You can eat those cookies now.