San Leandro wants measured and well-informed leaders to work via the monetary challenges and police staffing points that confront the town.
Within the Nov. 8 election, one of the best decisions are Lee Thomas for mayor and Kenneth Pon and Monique Tate for Metropolis Council.
Town’s cautious budgeting with stable reserves has helped them climate the pandemic, however the long-range forecast exhibits years of spending exceeding revenues. Compounding the issue, funds on the town’s $397 million pension debt are siphoning off funds, plus there’s a mounting record of unfunded wanted capital bills.
On the identical time, the town, like most within the East Bay, struggles to assist the homeless inhabitants and fill key jobs all through the town. That’s very true within the Police Division, the place, due to extreme understaffing, officers are usually working obligatory additional time. It’s the results of a confluence of occasions.
Town, which had been traditionally supportive of its police, divided when an officer in 2020 fatally shot 33-year-old Steven Taylor inside a Walmart retailer across the identical time that the nationwide police defunding motion was accelerating. Town turned one of many first to trim police funding.
The Alameda County District Legal professional’s Workplace later charged the officer, Jason Fletcher, who resigned from the power, with manslaughter, making him the primary officer in Alameda County in additional than a decade to be charged in a deadly police taking pictures. And the Metropolis Council this 12 months established a Group Police Assessment Board.
The problem for brand new members of the Metropolis Council shall be in rebuilding group belief of the Police Division whereas shoring up its staffing inside the budgetary constraints the town faces.
The problem for voters shall be navigating the town’s voting system. Like some Bay Space cities, San Leandro makes use of ranked-choice voting through which voters quantity their high preferences fairly than selecting only one candidate. However San Leandro provides an uncommon twist: Metropolis Council candidates run in district elections based mostly on their residency, however voters citywide vote in all of the district elections, not simply the one they reside in.
Mayor – Lee Thomas
Thomas, who served on the Metropolis Council from 2014-18, is a faculty supervisor for the Oakland district. He brings a mix of human sensitivity and an understanding of the town’s coverage points.
He speaks from his expertise in his personal San Leandro neighborhood and dealing in East Oakland when he talks of the necessity to bolster the staffing of the Police Division and the necessity for East Bay cities to unite to offer regional companies for the homeless, fairly than watching unhoused individuals migrate from one metropolis to the following.
Below the town’s ranked-choice system on this four-person race, Juan Gonzalez is a stable second alternative. He’s an economist who makes a speciality of statistical and financial evaluation on the world KPMG accounting and professional companies agency. He needs to construct a tradition of cooperation between the council and law enforcement officials.
Bryan Azevedo, a sheet-metal foreman, was unfocused regardless of serving practically two years on the Metropolis Council. Christopher Bammer didn't reply to invites to take part.
District 1 – Kenneth Pon
Pon, an expert accountant, former college board member and present member of the Planning Fee, is the standout candidate on this race.
He has a deep understanding of San Leandro’s funds and desires the town to give attention to public security and fundamental companies, comparable to highway repairs. He’s rightly involved concerning the short-staffed Police Division. And he well needs to get forward of the town’s pension debt through the use of an unbiased actuary fairly than counting on the state pension techniques’ delayed accounting and unrealistic funding assumptions.
In distinction, Celina Reynes, a former highschool trainer and present regulation college scholar, doesn’t acknowledge the worth in Pon’s strategy to the town pension debt and says that that is no time for the town to apply austerity. Briefly, she doesn’t grasp the basics of San Leandro’s present monetary state of affairs.
As an alternative, our suggestion for a No. 2 vote beneath the town’s ranked-choice system is David Anderson, an Oakland college board trustee from 1987-92 who has lived in San Leandro for 19 years and is at the moment a member of the town’s Senior Fee. Anderson understands the seriousness of the town’s underfunded pension fund and helps growing the variety of the town’s law enforcement officials whereas reforming division practices to protect in opposition to abuses.
District 5 – Monique Tate
This race options two weak candidates, each of whom have to be taught much more about metropolis funds and the problems the council will face within the years forward.
Their expertise getting ready them for a Metropolis Council seat comes primarily from the varsity district. Tate is a member of the San Leandro college board, the place, amongst different issues, she permitted inserting the district’s Measure N bond measure on the March 2020 poll. Bowen is on the district’s bond oversight committee.
Sadly, neither appeared to know how the tax charges for these bonds are decided, a lot much less the very massive tax burden the district’s sequence of measures has positioned on householders.
We suggest Tate due to her elective workplace expertise and her recognition of the necessity to rebuild group help for the Police Division.