 Welcome everybody. So happy that you could be here today. This is our 2014 edition of Community Values Forum. I'm Stephen Brewer, the Interim Pastor here at Davis Community Church, and we're very delighted that you're taking this opportunity to meet the candidates face-to-face and learn a little bit more about their positions and the values that are so important to the city of Davis. One of my important functions is to let you know where the restrooms are. If you don't know, there are some couple back in that corner outside the sanctuary, and then if you go up the Colonnade about halfway, there are additional restrooms up in that area. So hope that you'll feel free if you need to, to go ahead and use those restrooms. Now, I wanted to let you know, this is a progressive congregation. We're involved in all kinds of interesting things, and if there is anything you'd like to ask us, Amanda is a member here, and you can certainly speak to me, and we are involved in many social issues in the Davis area. So feel free to ask questions about us later if you would like to. Now, I wanted to introduce Amanda Kimball, who will present our guests and let us know how the evening is going to progress. So, Amanda. Thank you, Pastor Steve, and I just want to reiterate that welcome to everybody. Thank you so much for being here. As the pastor mentioned, my name is Amanda Kimball. I am an elder at Davis Community Church and a 12-year resident of downtown Davis, and I cannot claim to have thought up the idea for this forum. It was the brainchild of our associate pastor, Bill Habect, who is on sabbatical right now. But we did it the first time two years ago with the last City Council election and we thought that it was a success and very much enjoyed by those in attendance and we're excited to do it again. So thank you for being here. I also want to let you know that this forum is generously supported by Davis Media Access, the Community Media Center serving Davis, California and surrounding areas. DMA's mission is to enrich and strengthen the community by providing alternatives to commercial media for local voices, opinions, and creative endeavors. Coverage of local elections and partnerships with other non-partisan organizations are core to carrying out this mission. DMA is proudly celebrating 25 years of community service. Find out more at davismedia.org and see the current election program archive at dctv.davismedia.org slash collections slash election. There are DMA postcards on the tables in the back of the sanctuary, along with a donation basket, and all proceeds from tonight will benefit Davis Media Access and we invite you to give generously to support this event. So for their support of this event, thank you very much. This forum has also benefited from Bob Fung's help, so thank you Bob Fung, and especially as the creators of Voter Prep, a website that will be going live today with information about the Davis City Council election and the candidates. Voter Prep collates issues and viewpoints discussed in a multitude of candidate forums, including this one, and displays them in one easily browsable format, voterprep.org. And now it's my pleasure to introduce to you the candidates for Davis City Council, Sheila Allen, Rob Davis, John Munn, Daniel Pirella, and Rachelle Swanson. So questions that you will hear tonight were based on submissions from community members. Thank you to everyone who submitted a question. Answers will be timed at two minutes. You will be notified with these signs when you have 30 seconds left and 10 seconds left, respectively. We have randomly selected candidates to go first in answering each question. And if you can pick up a microphone and after the first person has answered, please, well, we will have to toggle between passing them to your right, we'll answer the question, I'm sorry, to your left, our right, we'll answer the questions going that way and pick up a mic or put it down as you see fit. So thank you for bearing with us on that issue. So first up is Mr. Pirella. Perfect, he says. And if you would please introduce yourself however you would like and share with us your reasons for running for Davis City Council. Yeah, absolutely. Hi everybody, my name is Daniel Pirella and actually as a brief side note, I actually went to nursery school here. And I remember the time when I made a run for Central Park and they ran me down. I was, and that's kind of a big reason why I'm running for City Council because I want my kids to go here. I want Davis to be a place where young people like me can find jobs and afford to live. I want us to be able to have children here, have them go through all the same schools that I did. I want to be able to find a long-term career here. I want people like myself to be able to retire here and live out the rest of our days here. And I think that the decisions that are gonna be made in the next couple of years are going to decide whether or not Davis is a place where the middle generation can grow up here. Thank you. Hi, I'm Rachelle Swanson. Been here a little over 23 years like many Davisites came here, went to university and stayed. Stayed to raise a family. And like Daniel, I also do worry about those middle-aged groups and what are we gonna do to be open to all people. When I got the question, I was looking about why am I running for council again. It was about really continuing on all the hard work that we've done. And it's also because, what probably a lot of people don't know is that I represent over my 23 years a very diverse look at Davis. Haven't always been the law school graduate and attorney and land use consultant professional. Yeah, I came here as a young parent, married as a student in a community that was very affluent and tough sometimes to get by in. Fell in shelter in the Davis co-op and the love that was there of the lack of judgment. And then of course have two decades of growing and changing and raising my boys here to what is a great community, but not a perfect community. And I think it's really important with all the policies that come before Davis that you have a diverse council and that can be a diverse council that's made up of the people who they are, what their cultural backgrounds are, what their educational backgrounds or business backgrounds, but also just the different viewpoints that they have or have not seen in our community. And I wanna continue to make sure that this is a community that all people feel welcome and a community that really is looking down the road and not just what's in front of us today. And sometimes that's really tough to do because when you're sitting there on a Tuesday night and you might have interest groups there, you might have a community group there, you might have a budget that's in front of you and you really wanna looking in the lens today, the real challenge is to look down the road tomorrow. And so I have decided to run again to continue to move that kind of positive change and do what I can to keep Davis the great place it is. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Allen? Hello, everyone. I'm Sheila Allen and I'm running for Davis City Council. I'm currently on the Davis School Board. I'm completing my second term there, so you may recognize my name and face from that. I'm also, some of those families that come to Davis Community Church twice a year, so maybe on Easter or Christmas, you saw me and my family coming in late and sitting in the front. So why am I running for Davis City Council? It's the same reason why I decided to run for Davis School Board and why I decided to be on first five commission for the children is because I'm someone who likes to jump in and help. And when I started running for school board the first time, people are like, well, that's not really a reason. What's your problem? What do you think is wrong that you wanna fix? And truly what I wanna do is that I wanna help. I wanna be someone who can bring the right people to the table, who can listen to the community, who can be truly a community representative, take in that information, listen to what the administration has to say, listen to the louder and the not as loud voices and then make an important decision. And each one of the decisions that I've made along the way are even from the small ones to the bigger ones, add up to important and the whole picture. So I do bring my years of experience as a public servant, not only on my current gig on school board but in other areas of the community also. I happen to be a nurse, I'm a public health nurse and I started an organization called the YOLO Healthy Aging Alliance. And I would like to bring that same kind of approach to city government where we have two sides of our organization. One is a collaborative organization where we take people, we have the representatives of organizations that provide senior services and make sure everyone is speaking to each other. And the other side is the advocacy where we look at what are the problems, identify them and then you can really hone in on the problems and solve them once you're able to better identify them. So using all those experiences, I hope I can be elected and be a part of the city council. Thank you. Mr. Davis. Yeah, thanks a lot. I've been reflecting recently a fair bit on the difference between campaigning and governing. And I think most of us would probably agree that sometimes there's very little similarity between the two. But one thing I think is common and that we've all been doing and that I think needs to carry over from a campaign into the leadership role is engaging people in our community face-to-face, engaging people where they are at their doors in their homes. I've gained a new vision for the potential of actually having face-to-face relationships with people in our community and learning from them and with them about the challenges of our community, how to confront them, how to move through them and how to find solutions to the challenges. I'd like to bring that experience which has been rich over the past several months into the way of doing business in the city. That means going into living rooms, sitting with people in small groups, engaging in discussion. The issues that we face, take any one of them, there's a certain complexity to them. We live in a complex, even though small town, it's complex town. Our decisions are many and varied. To understand them, to work through solutions to them, we need to be able to talk about them, listen to each other, engage in that dialogue that will further our understanding so that we can work together towards solutions. I've done that. The work that I did in Africa was all about sitting in communities, engaging in dialogue, talking about assets and moving forward to use those assets to solve problems. I want to run so that I can bring those same skills, that same commitment to listening and problem solving so that we together, as a community, can move forward to achieve the things we need to do. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Munn. Well, good evening. My name's John Munn. And I want to thank Amanda for putting this together and I want to thank everyone in the audience for being here. I'm running for the Davis City Council to work for fiscal sustainability so that we can afford to continue to live in Davis. The city needs to get its financial house in order before making decisions about taking on new projects and new expenses. So we actually can continue to afford to support the services, activities and amenities that makes Davis a great place to call home. Now there are five candidates running for two open seats. And if you want to elect somebody who will focus on balancing the city budget while keeping Davis affordable, then one of those votes should be for me. The city's currently admitting to a $5 million deficit, but this doesn't include the full cost of needed street repairs and employee pensions and healthcare that are going to cost many more millions each year in the future. And while not keeping its own fiscal house in order, the city wants more from the rest of us. According to the current council's rate schedule, water costs will more than double for single family residences over the next five years. And we're not finished with water rate increases because the city wants to again double revenue from water service over the next 10 years. This is why you need to vote yes on Measure P. The city also wants to increase charges for storm drainage sewer service, trash pickup and city taxes. These cost increases are not sustainable. This will change our community and hurt many of our neighbors. So I'm running for the city council to help make sensible decisions that bring fiscal sanity and sustainability to Davis so we can truly afford to live here. Thank you. Thank you. And the second question we'll start with Ms. Allen. Please describe for us how your own personal values and or spiritual life motivate your professional life and how these values translate into actions that set you apart from the other candidates. Thank you. And this is helpful now because I've just gotten off an airplane coming back from visiting my family. So I may have a thicker Wisconsin accent. So pardon me. But I grew up in a very small town in rural Wisconsin, 800 people where literally everybody was my family. And that is the kind of place where you knew your neighbors and you took care of your neighbors. And it was just, it was family even if you actually weren't related to them. And even though I've long left that town of Chiakton as I went off to undergraduate and Madison and then graduate school, I keep that in my heart that my neighbors are like my family. And so when I was decided to run for city council and I had my kitchen table discussion and brought together some people and thought what should the theme for my campaign be? Like what we talk together. And a theme in my life is about caring and about neighbors. So that's what the campaign has been about and what my service on the school board and other places has been also. So the other thing that is that I'm a can do kind of person, if there's something that's fallen on the floor, I'll be the one to pick up. If there's somebody who, yeah, if I notice somebody needs some help, I'll help them across the street. I'm just the kind of person who likes to be helpful and will get involved. I was the, when my kids, I didn't go to DCC and us but my kids went to the preschool over there. And so I was the chair over there because I thought, well, they needed to have a chair and no one was stepping forward. I'm like, oh, I could do that. So being involved, truly caring, seeing my neighbors like family, those are the kind of things that I bring to my public service. And that I don't have all the answers and that there are, one thing I found really amazing about Davis is no matter what the subject, there are experts out there. And so it's just a matter of bringing them together so that we can work on answers to end of our problems together. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Yeah, rather than focus on values in general, I think if you'll permit me to focus on a value that I hold very dear and illustrate how I would bring it into the work of city council. A value that's very important to me is a belief, a fundamental belief that we are all gifted in different ways. And that the gifts that we have, we have for the common good. That we have an opportunity to serve and share based on who we are and the gifts that have been given to us. But it's imperative that we give them to one another, that we don't just hold on to them. That's something I value, that's something I believe in. And how that works out in my work around the world and what I hope to achieve on the city council is it begins, if you fundamentally believe we're all gifted, then when you're on a team of five, you begin to seek out the gifts of the others to complete your own gifts. You build trust in the reality that they're going to bring something that you're not going to bring. That they're going to help solve a problem that you don't have the full answer to. So within the council, I look forward to discovering the gifts of the other council members and how we can use them together to move forward. As I think about gifts of our broader community of people that give to our city in commissions and task forces, there again we expand out the number and variety of gifts and talents and experiences that we have. And in that role as a city council member, I can encourage people to bring their gifts to those commissions. I can seek out people with specific gifts and talents that they can bring to bear to solve specific problems. But beyond that, as I think of our broader community, I realize that in the years ahead, the challenges that we face, we're gonna need all our gifts. And what I can do is I can not only encourage each individual to bring theirs, but I can connect people knowing their gifts, knowing their abilities to help solve the problems that we have together. And that's a value I hold dear, and that's the way I would work with the city to bring that value to bear. Thank you. Mr. Mann? Well, I wanna start by being clear that I'm running for city council to work for fiscal sustainability so that we can continue to forward to live here. And there's no other hidden agenda. Primary value I would bring to the city is openness and transparency so that we can all know what's available and what's needed. Getting back to the actual question here, I'd say that my personal values come from my 1950s rural upbringing and are typical of the point, actually to the point of being a stereotype of that time and that place. Characteristics that I value and I hope to possess include honesty, truthfulness, trustworthiness, responsibility, respect, and I suppose the American way. And I share these values with the other candidates, I'm sure, I'm not unique and I hope that I share these values with everyone here. I think a person's true values are reflected in the way they live and conduct themselves. I've tried to live honestly with respect for people around me. But you have to leave that to other people to judge. My values translate into campaign positions favoring fiscal responsibility. As a steward of public resources, I try to put taxpayer money to good use and constituents can trust me to carry out the duties of a city council member in a responsible, prudent, and accountable way. And since I have a couple seconds left, I'll just say that if you want to know more about me, my family, my positions, I have a campaign website at munforecouncil.com. Thank you, Mr. Perrella. My personal values have been heavily influenced by being a byproduct of this town. It was at this nursery school that I learned the value of community. It's to this day, it's still a parent cooperative and parents come in to help out with arts and crafts and mathematics. It's a wonderful way of a child being raised by having a whole bunch of people coming together. It was at Fairfield where I learned the... We had a garden plot at Fairfield Elementary School and that was where I really had a strong bond with the environment. It was driving down Poline Road where I first saw solar panels for the first time. And actually my father and I hopped the fence to go take a look at their workings and it was a big reason why I eventually started my own business in the solar industry. It was at the high school when budget cuts were happening and my favorite teachers were being pink-slipped that we went to the school board actually. Sheila recalls quite fondly, I'm sure. We were protesting the decision made. At the time, we didn't really know what was going on. I understand that now. But it was still powerful for me to realize that a group of people can be more influential than just one person acting by itself. And when I was at Santa Barbara, I stumbled across a program called Solarized Santa Barbara and a big portion of this question was focusing on how your personal values translate into your professional life. The first thing I did when I got back from school was launch a program called Solarized Davis. It was the idea of bringing a whole bunch of people together to collectively go solar rather than going individually, which at times can be very expensive and there can be barriers to entry that prevent people from doing it. And I managed to get 19 people to go solar. And probably the biggest thing that I've learned from being in the city of Davis is that the city of Davis has always tried to tackle problems that a lot of other cities haven't been willing to do. And I'm the kind of guy that dives head first in. When I want to make change, I do it myself. It's the reason why I started my first business when I was 20 years old. It was the reason why I'm running for the Davis City Council at the age of 23 because I want to influence change in this community. And if you want to influence change it's something you've got to be willing to step up to the plate and do it yourself. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Swanson. Thank you. Like all of us, where you come from has a lot to do with what your perspective is. I was raised in Ashland, Oregon. And one of the things that really sticks with me is it's a community that cares about each other and really focuses on being non-judgmental and being open to people of all walks of life. Was there last summer and you're at the farmer's market and you've got somebody there getting into the Range Rover and somebody else walking around barefoot and that is how I grew up and that's the way it is and I'm sure it's not a big then leap to understand why I came to Davis to go to school. I looked around at schools and went down and also Boulevard and I was hooked because it felt like home. As far as my professional life, being raised that family is incredibly important and being able to give back to your community, I purposely carved out a professional life to where I mostly work out of my home. I telecommute a lot and that's been true whether when I was working in San Francisco or Washington or any other state or just across the causeway. So that I could always be volunteering whether it was Rotoract and Rotary or whether it's been community foundations and being around for my kids and volunteering in the classroom. And it hasn't always been easy. I think a lot of people can relate to when you have that kind of flexibility. It's kind of a false sense of flexibility. It means you actually can work 20 hours a day sometimes because you're not punching a clock but it's worth it. It's definitely worth it. I've been lucky enough to have enough work that when a client's own values didn't reflect my own, I've handed work back. I think it's very important to do what you can believe in. I've been a contractor for most of my professional life and just started being an employee because I now work for a company that literally has core values and honesty and integrity is at the top of the list. Talking about honesty and integrity that can sometimes be very tough in a council member because when you look and you see it's easy to be honest and have integrity yourself but looking about transparency and when you find things and having to bring that out it's very important and it takes a lot of strength to do it and it's something that I have been a part of the last four years. So it's not just an ideal it's something that I've had to live and I want to continue to be able to bring that. And I think I have a lot of interesting and diverse experiences being in Davis and I will answer that further in the next question. Thank you. Thank you and the next question we'll start with Mr. Munn. In the absence of complete information about your constituents beliefs and opinions how do you decide how to vote and when might you vote against a strong vocal subset of your constituents? Well I'm gonna start again by stating I'm running for city council to help get the city's financial house in order. I think it's also relevant to this question to repeat that I'm not running with a hidden agenda. Voters are gonna get what I've said and what I appear to be as elected official. My votes would first be based on the positions I've taken as part of this campaign which voters are relying on to decide on who to vote on. And then on principles that I've expressed or that have been implicit in the remarks and conduct that I've taken on during the campaign. I think that who I am and what I stand for is pretty well known and Davis I've been here for a long time and been around and I think my record shows that I'm not dogmatic about solving problems. This makes it less likely that subsets of my constituents are going to think that I actually am voting against them if they don't know what to expect in the first place sometimes. For example I've been clear the city needs to go through a budget review process to identify revenues and spending and holes between them that require a public discussion on the best way to fill those holes whether it's with additional revenue or with cuts. I've been involved with this before as a member of the Davis School Board and I know that trust is necessary in order for anyone involved to be willing to compromise. And in the case of new revenue sources such as economic development I've clearly stated I expect them to pencil out. In each of these cases I expect to work in an open, honest and responsible manner and some of this might seem like a cliche but no one should think that it's only campaign rhetoric because I really do mean it. Thank you. Mr. Pirella. The second part of this question talking about when will you vote against a strong vocal subset? I'm pretty sure it's a trick question because there's always a strong vocal subset in Davis. The first part though was actually I think the best question of them all. I thought that it was basically when do you vote against the majority? That's why I kind of viewed the question now. It's like when do you vote against what the majority of people in Davis would consider the right thing to do? And I thought long and hard about that question and I decided that I was thinking of myself as a swing vote on the council. That there's two against two, four and you can really, it's one of those tough decisions where you can see the sides of both sides of the argument, which way do you vote? And I would say that I'd be willing to vote against the majority if I believed that 50 years from now my decision would make Davis a better place to be. When I'm off the council and decades have passed whether or not that decision that I make that day regardless of the short term consequences if it'll be a place for my grandchildren will, if it will make Davis a place where my grandchildren are better off than they are if I went against that decision then I'd be willing to vote against the majority. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Swanson. Thank you. It is true. There's almost always a vocal, not always opposition. Sometimes it's support, it's very good and a lot of well-meaning people. And the first part of your question I think is trying to look at what's kind of your decision making even if you can't relate. And while that's true, council never knows what's coming before you. People can sort of parent pontificate about what they would do and it's completely different when you're there. And so how someone makes a decision is important and you do have to look beyond the people that are in the audience. I will give an example. Affordable housing is something that is very near and dear to this community and it's part of our ethos. It's part of who we are. But sometimes experience really does matter and so it's beyond empathizing, it's understanding. When I was a student, sat on a wait list for affordable housing, big capital A, and lots of requirements. You know, it's almost impossible if you're a student family to get help. I know what it's like to sit there and watch two thirds of your monthly bills go to rent and hope for food and wonder how you're gonna sit there and feed your kids and stand in line with the WIC coupon at the co-op. Completely humiliated by you sitting for a year on a wait list. And eventually get off the wait list because you start to actually earn money. And that's why my vote, a lot of people questioned, why did you allow for half percent for the ADUs? Because I know that small A, affordable housing is also important. It's important for it to be small and we have well-meaning policies out there that look good and feel good but they don't always translate into people actually having a roof over their head. So that's an example of being able to look beyond the vocal people in the room. And I've had an opportunity to meet with a lot of the people who were speaking in favor of that and when I explained and they see that because we have lost money from the state for redevelopment. We've lost the ability to get supported and we don't have enough to go around and while it looks really great on paper, it's actually not helping those who need help to be able to stay in this community. And so I think it's really important to be able to have that skillset, to be honest, to be able to look beyond what's sitting in the chambers and being able to assess all that's there. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Allen? I've had a few tough decisions on the time on the school board and I was trying to decide which one to talk about. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about the closure of Valley Oak. It's not something that I voted for. I thought it was the wrong school to close because it affected the most, the vulnerable children in our whole school district. And the way that we got to closing Valley Oak is because there was some other schools that could potentially be closed but there was very loud vocal groups of parents who said not our school and nobody wants our school closed. It was a very, very difficult process to go through. And when it came down to the end and when we had to make a vote, it was a three, two vote and I was on the losing side and I knew which direction that we were going but I knew that in my heart I had to take a stand for those kids that I knew were gonna have a harder time getting to school and that had the resources already in one place. It was a mature and great community and then it was lost. So what do you do when you hear some loud vocal voices and you know about a community and you've talked to the quieter voices? Well, once that vote was lost, we still, we can't throw up our hands and say, well, now we lost. So then I worked very hard to make sure that we had, that we looked at where are the crossing guards going to be, that we made sure that we allowed open enrollment for the students that were in Valley Oak so that they could go to the school of their choice and have priority over other children so that it could be a smooth transition for them. So when making tough decisions, sometimes you win and sometimes you don't but the most important thing is to really listen carefully to the community and then also listen to your heart. Sometimes I vote with my mind also but I do listen to my heart and then if it doesn't turn out the way that you would like to have it to make sure that it's the smoothest transition that's possible for the community that's affected. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Yeah, start by saying that making decisions within complete information is the way it always is. I don't think of any major decision I've ever made where I've had absolute clarity and all the evidence I needed. So that's just the way life is, I guess. Three things come to mind in terms of how to deal with this issue. One is the expression of opinions, the expression of positions, even very vocal ones. First thing that my default is to analyze, and this comes from conflict resolution, people hold positions but underlying the positions, our needs, our interests. And so the very first step as an elected official is to first attempt to understand what's the need underlying this? Is the solution on offer even addressing the need or is the need that we're trying to meet, does it have anything to do with the position that's being stated? By listening to the voices, the underlying needs, we can go a long way to resolving disputes and misunderstandings. Second, I will use evidence, and I always have used evidence in decision making. Again, evidence is always limited. Two recent decisions, and I've taken heat for it during this campaign, the Fifth Street redesign and the Downtown Parking Task Force. In both cases, the way I used evidence was to ask what is the end we're trying to achieve? Safety on Fifth Street, better managed parking and free parking spaces in the downtown. And then examine evidence step by step from other cities and the evidence we generate here in order to come up with solutions. It's in the use of evidence in that way that I often find myself at odds with people, not often, at times at odds with people, but I will use that evidence in that way. I just wanna say one final thing. The third thing that comes to my mind is that when a decision is made, I should be prepared to give the rationale and the reason I made the decision. And that I commit to do. If we disagree, I will tell you this was the basis of my decision. Those three things are critical, I think, in dealing with divergence of opinion on specific decisions. Thank you. And here I'll just make a quick note to the audience. You might have picked up on the fact that the questions the candidates have answered so far, they were provided in advance, but that we have reached the end of the questions they were provided in advance. So this next set of questions are new and they'll be speaking off the cuff here. And we will start with Ms. Swanson. The term social justice generally refers to institutions that enable people to lead a fulfilling life and be active contributors to their community. The relevant institutions can include education, healthcare, social security, labor rights, as well as a broader system of public services, progressive taxation and regulation of markets to ensure fair distribution of wealth, equality of opportunity, and lack of gross inequality of outcome. What do you think is the number one social justice issue facing Davis right now? That's a really long question. You have to forgive me. I'm like, I don't know which ones you're hitting, so you'll have to forgive me. I'm hoping I'm answering your question, but there was a lot there. I would say social justice, I respect that you listed a lot of institutions. It's really about people to people. We have a lot of fine institutions in this city, a lot of fine people in this city. I would wager that I'm probably the only person sitting at Bear who's woken to have a racial slur and shaving cream on their front yard, living a block away from our Great Montgomery. A lot of people don't wanna see that that's also part of Davis. And it's a tough part of Davis. People feel good about certain things and they'll come and even at times in public comment say one thing and then pick up the phone and say, can I meet you for coffee? I'm really disturbed about downtown. I'm disturbed about the homeless. I'm disturbed that we let these people do things. That to me is our number one social justice. It's not looking at ourselves and realizing we all are born with biases, we're human. That's what we do. But it's how those actions translate. Talking about losing your negativity and as a candidate you can say lots of really great things that you really believe in. And then you get on council and you see, wow, there's closed session. There are people who will spout one set of values and then do something completely different. I'm sure they've been votes, they've shocked people. Why did that turn out that way? Because it's not easy to live what you believe. It's not easy to actually be able to make some of those hard choices and we can't do everything for everybody. It's true, we are fiscally in the hole. Now probably the reason that we're in the hole is because for the first time, this budget does have a line item that has to do with deferred maintenance on the roads. It's the first time we have changed the way that we pay for our deferred benefit program and for our pensions. We are trying to keep our promises. So those pieces to me, it's about people being honest and realizing about we can't rely on an institution, we can't pass a policy on a Tuesday night or people really fight for that. And then they go off on Thursday and they forget about it. And they see their neighbor having trouble and they don't do anything about it. Words on paper are nothing. Justice only happens when it's actually lived and it's actually put forward. And so I think that to me would be the biggest thing and it's not something a politician can fix. Thank you, Ms. Allen. I'd like to talk a little bit about the right service at the right time. I don't necessarily believe that government is the answers to every individual's ill will. But I do believe that it is part of the solution and that really the solution comes from the community. As elected officials, we should be community leaders and hopefully are working in tandem with the people in the community. But the ability to address whichever social deficit or social need comes before us and I can just, I can't choose a priority but I can tell you homelessness is very important. The sheer lack of drug and alcohol treatment in this county is just horrendous. The nationally, the deficit with care for the mentally ill, those are the first three that come and senior services also is another thing. So we need to grapple with those not necessarily through government only. And I granted we do have budget issues but I would just like to put out there that a budget is a statement of our values. So when we're looking at what the funds that we have and what our core values are, that has to be a part of the budget discussion also. So I do hope going forward that we can look as a community at the city government also making sure that county and state programs come in to serve our people. That's something that I will tell you that I will do on the school board when I got here was the year before I got here is when Head Start left. Head Start pre-school for low income children and I was like what, we need that and the feeling from the county level was Davis doesn't have poor kids. So I can tell you now, Head Start's back and it's because Sheila kept calling the superintendent and the county and saying we need to get this program back here for our children. So I will tell you that I will work with the community to make sure that services get to the people that need them. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Yeah, I think fundamentally injustice is about the way we don't use power appropriately. It's an inappropriate use of power that is detrimental to the health and well-being of people. And I think as elected officials, our power is within the budgeting process. Our power is also in the way we talk about things, challenges in our community and begin to seek solutions together, whether it's a strictly state provided solution or whether it's the state mobilizing resources of volunteer and others to achieve certain ends. To me the greatest injustice we face in this community and many communities that I've been in is the injustice of not valuing the narrative of the most vulnerable in our community. Of not wanting to know the story. Of not either not wanting to be bothered or being fearful of what we might see. Of being afraid of maybe staring into our own brokenness when we look into the brokenness of another person. And so we push down and we push out and we don't wanna hear the stories, I'm guilty. I don't wanna hear the stories of the brokenness of the homeless person who has mental health problems, who faces addictions, who is either abusing or has been abused. These are very challenging things to talk about and think about. But if we're to find solutions, if we're to find solutions the first thing is to overcome the injustice of silence about the challenges. We've got to look those things in the face. We've got to raise to the surface the reality of what homelessness is. It is not the homeless, it is people who are dealing with many broken elements in their lives. And so I think a city council member can do a lot to value the narrative, to raise the story, to raise the reality, and to begin to break down the hidden factor that keeps us from understanding what the problems are so that we can pursue solutions to them. Thank you, Mr. Munn. Well, we've now reached the impromptu part of the program where you're gonna find out that my strength is working to solve problems rather than talking about them. I'm sure we have lots of issues in Davis. I can think of lots of issues in Davis that would qualify as social justice issues. But when I think about how to solve them, what I keep coming back to is once again that I'm running to try to solve the city's fiscal problems. Now, how does that relate to social justice issues? Well, I think a simple statement that ties it together is that a city that's going broke can't provide the safety net programs that we need in order to address social justice problems. So in my view, we need to get our own house in order so that we can reach out and help other people. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Perrella. Most of the time when people mention substance abuse issues and alcoholism and mental health issues, most people will immediately think of homeless people. And I think of the students. I think that we have a massive student populace in town that have a lot of the same issues of the homeless population. And I view them as a single, most pressing social justice issue we have in this town. Either 5,000 or more of them are being added by 2021. We don't really have enough room for them. We don't have the resources to deal with their many needs. And similar to the homeless issue, they have very little political influence. And for the most part, there's a large portion of the Davis population that kind of views them as a nuisance. They get drunk a lot. They urinate in public. They're noisy. And how's the city gonna deal with that? I think that, in particular, when it comes to the social justice issue, and Rochelle had a very touching story before. And I'd like to remind people that there are people just like Rochelle nowadays who are trying to do the same thing. They're trying to pay for tuition. They're trying to afford rent. They're trying to raise children here. And it's incredibly difficult to do. And I view that as a single, most pressing social justice issue facing our city. And how we're gonna deal with a growing student body population when our housing population really isn't growing. And how we're gonna deal with that. Thank you. Thank you. And the next question starts with Mr. Davis. I'm sure you're all aware of the work that local faith communities have done and continue to do in providing for otherwise underserved populations. Please tell us about one group of people or animals that you believe is currently in need of an advocate in our community. And how you propose to address this cause. Well, it might sound like a broken record, but I do think people who have experienced long periods of on and off incarceration many of them with specific mental health issues and broken relationships that have led them down that path. Who may and probably are self-medicating. I think there's a lot we can do, and it's interesting you use the word advocate. There are communities around the nation that are using that word advocate really as in the idea of someone coming alongside. Not someone defending, not an advocate who waves a flag for them, but someone who comes alongside to walk with them. That's the type of advocacy I think we're really on the cusp of being able to develop. We've had churches in this community, this is being one and many others, who for the last five to seven years have been working on the interfaith rotating winter shelter. There's been a great deal of learning about the needs of the people that come through the doors. I think people have been shocked, but I also think they've picked up the challenge. We're ready for the next step, which is providing, and I think it's gonna be through the nonprofit sector with the support of city council saying go for it, but it's gonna be people who will step up and walk with people to enable them to develop a plan for their lives, who will sit with them when they fail, who will not abandon them when they relapse, who will get them to their counseling, who will help them navigate the system to get food stamps, who will help them find housing, who will be their advocate. This is an area when I talk about the giftedness of our town. I know we're ready for this. I know we're ready for this, and the city council, as a city council member, what we can do is say do it. And that's what I wanna say, and I think that we have a great opportunity to create a city of advocates in that way. Thank you, Mr. Munn. The question is, I think, that what group needs an advocate? And if I had to choose one, and this is mainly because we have talked about this before, so it's good to be close to the front of the line because it probably comes to everybody's mind, is homelessness as a problem that we seem to be facing to an increasing degree now in Davis, which may have things to do with the economy, it may have things to do with the way that the prison population has been shifted from state facilities to local facilities and then release. Whatever the reason, we do seem to be having a growing population of homeless people that are in town and we need to figure out a way to be taken care of. So that's the group I'd choose. And to the extent we can help, one of the things that the city needs to avoid is getting in the way. An example of this would be in low income housing where it's been very difficult in some situations to actually construct and operate low income housing facilities in Davis because of roadblocks that the city has put in the way. And I think that's wrong. So my point that I will make in this is simply for the city to help enable the groups that are willing to work with those who need help so that we aren't getting in the way and help can really happen. So thank you. Thank you. Mr. Perilla. The group that I think needs an advocate and one that I would like to be an advocate for are the people who can no longer afford the tuition at UC Davis. I had to take a break from my college education because I couldn't handle the debt anymore and I didn't really want a minimum wage job so I decided to start my own business on it. And that's really how I started my own business because I could no longer afford the tuition at UC Santa Barbara. So I came home to try to make my living here. I think with tuition rising, with rent rising, there's thousands of people in Davis who meet a similar description as my own who can no longer afford the tuition at UC Davis and they have to try to find a job in the job market that usually depends on a college education in order to find a really good job. And I think the solution to that is to focus on the job creation side of things. I really think that there are jobs out there that you don't need a college education for that with specific job training and occupational skills, you can find a job that provides enough revenue for someone to live here and raise their family here. And that's the group that I would like to be an advocate for. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Swanson. Thank you. I think for me it would be mental, mental health. And I think the answer is the Ombudsman. We have an Ombudsman that works with the police department and has been really great. I think that we have a lot of groups in town that could come together. It doesn't need to be necessarily a city funded, I believe, in partnerships. I think there are a lot of great groups around the county and in the city that could help do a partnership to cover that. You know, sometimes I get a criticism, why are you in Sacramento or so? Why are you in D.C.? Why are you here? Why are you there? Because we have a lot of issues that have now come down and left at the local city level. And it's very unfortunate because a lot of these choices that are made at the state and federal level leave it at our hands and they don't give us any funding. I remember years ago, there's not actually that many now that I think about it, coming to council and speaking on behalf of CDBG grants. And sometimes it'd be an education program. I remember advocating for the Bridge Foundation because I really believe it and I'm not gonna take my time now, but Google it, it's amazing. And now, sitting as a council person, CDBG is about feeding elderly people who don't have food and who may not even be served all the way from meals on wheels and other elderly nutrition programs. Very few programs have been left to help children because we're really down to that and that's why I go and I advocate and I get very frustrated. I get frustrated at the county. Where's the help with the mental health? Because we see the impacts on our streets. We see the impacts on our schools. It's not just homeless that are dealing with mental health issues and substance abuse. It is students. It is children that are sitting in our classrooms that no longer have funding through their IEPs anymore because all those things are cut but it's left to the city and people want us to be able to do programs. And we can't because it's true. We have a core set of things that infrastructure we're responsible for and staying with going to the state. Don't make these changes if you're not gonna support it. It's unfair to the local communities. And then again, even in DC being able to, while it's fun to go there and talk about economic development or talk about rail safety or some of these issues. I always remember to also talk about the funding programs. You are leaving communities high and dry without the funding for the programs. And I think there's a lot of issues that we have and they all tie back to a lack of support for mental health issues and well-being. Thank you. Salon? I think I'm gonna talk about older adults as they like to be called and not seniors. There are some, and I think that the question was related to what can the faith community do and us as a whole community, not just city government, correct? How would you address the issue? Yeah. So I have some ideas regarding older adult services that I'm hoping that organizations like the faith community or other ones can help. I would like to see a adopt a grandparent program. There are a lot of, my children's grandparents live across the country, so they don't have anyone. So when Herb Bauer was alive, we adopted him and had him over for dinner and he was our local grandparent. So I'd like to see if there'd be a way for us to, that helps both young children to see older people and the wise information and the wonderfulness of grandparents and then also it helps with what can be sometimes a socially isolating time if an older adult is here by themselves. Another thing I'm interested in for seniors is to have perhaps some place in, maybe it could be at one of the churches, but there's an adult daycare that's over in Woodland that is fabulous. I love YOLO Adult Daycare, they do a great job. But if you look at the Silver Tsunami, which is the number of older people that are coming through the system, we're gonna need to have another site and we need to have one in Davis and I think it would be fabulous to have it co-located with a preschool and an adult services. There are some really great models related to that. Another area that your church here does is caregiver support groups. That's something that just people being able to come together to talk about how difficult it is to be a caregiver and someone to talk with and also your visitation programs that could happen. So there are many ways that we could all work together for senior services. Thank you. Well, the next segment is what I think of as rapid fire questions, but this is in the spirit of James Lipton, who for 10 years hosted a cable show on Bravo called Inside the Actors Studio in which he interviewed actors and actresses and at the end of each show, he asked the guests the same 10 off-the-wall questions. So these are short answer questions. One word or phrase is fine and we'll just do five of them. And for this section, I think we'll just start with Ms. Allen and go down the line each time if that's okay. And there's no grand design here. Just say whatever comes to your mind and have fun with it. The first one is what is your favorite word? Happy. Intentional. Gee. I guess that's it. Juxtapose. Puppernickle. What is your least favorite word? You know me. Can't. I know, it's supposed to be quick. I don't know, diaper came to mind. Well, I think it's one that I learned very early. No. Tuberculosis. Hate. Hate. What sound or noise do you love? Young children laughing. Wind in the trees. That was mine. Kansas. Laughter. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? A singer, but I'm not very good. I'd like to sing a duet with Sheila. I'd like to be better at math. Deep sea explorer. I'm boring, sorry, professional philanthropist. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? Oh, here's your dad. You were faithful. Enter. This is heaven, not hell. Just to be clear. Laughter. Thank you so much for an entertaining and educational forum. That is the end of our program tonight. Thank you to the candidates for being here and to the audience as well. And thank you again to Davis Media Access. Please enjoy some refreshments in the back. And while you're there, please support DMA. There's a basket on the refreshments table and all proceeds go to DMA. Thank you very much.