San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
OCEANSIDE’S CITY COUNCIL ELECTION WILL COMPLETE SWITCH TO DISTRICTS
Like so much else in politics this year, the Oceanside City Council race is a little unusual.
One reason is that the mayor is running for a City Council seat, something that doesn’t happen often. Also this year, all the council candidates are competing for newly created district seats.
Oceanside is in the second phase of a two-part transition begun in 2018, and this year the second two district seats are open. The city is changing its traditional at-large council elections, in which the entire city voted for the mayor and all four council positions, to a district system, in which residents can only vote for a council member who lives in their district. The mayor will continue to be elected by the entire city.
Incumbent Mayor Peter Weiss, appointed by the City Council to the job in January 2018, is a candidate for the District 4 council position instead of a full four-year term as mayor. Also candidates for the District 4 seat are Michelle Gomez, Jane Marshall and Morgan Mccray.
Weiss, 61, started on the Oceanside city staff as an entry-level engineer in 1986 and rose through the ranks to become city manager, the top municipal employee, for seven years before retiring in 2013. He continued to work as a consultant for the city until he was appointed to take the place of former Mayor Jim Wood, who retired early because of ill health.
“We need to maintain core serv
ices and manage our budget appropriately,” Weiss said, in response to questions The San Diego Union-tribune sent to all the candidates. “The retail, office and commercial environment will never return to PRECOVID normal. Business, government, civic organizations and citizens are all going to need to work together to overcome some big challenges.”
Additional housing is badly needed, especially for workforce members and entry-level buyers, so people can avoid long commutes. That includes “reasonable and planned development” of the South Morro Hills area, he said. Homelessness is the city’s other big challenge, and it requires “full community engagement” to match the homeless with the services they need.
Mccray, 26, is a musician and a professional tennis player and coach. An Oceanside resident for 20 years, she plans to “focus intensively on jobs and contract opportunities for local, Oceanside workers, builders, developers and contractors” and to advocate for free or low-cost COVID-19 testing for all residents.
“A big part of my platform is to bring a larger variety of musical and cultural events to Oceanside,” she said. “Music unites people, and that’s what so many of us need. I am thinking of a time past COVID, as well as establishing safe events during COVID, with seating separations and mask requirements.”
She’d also like to see the city get a world-class tennis facility with jobs for coaches, trainers and vendors, bring running water and other services to the Alex Road Skatepark, and address urban blight in areas of the city that need cleanup and beautification projects.
Gomez, who declined to state her age, listed her occupation as “compliance and ethics professional/policy specialist/legislative analyst.” She’s lived in Oceanside for 13 years, and she ran unsuccessfully for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors in 2018.
“Oceanside’s local government was slow to respond to COVID-19 overall, especially in comparison to other local municipalities,” Gomez said. “Our City Council approved a plan to provide grants of $1,000 to $5,000 to eligible businesses nearly five months after our lives drastically changed and businesses were shuttered.”
The $1,000 is at best “a temporary Band-aid,” she said. The city must do more, such as larger grants or “nointerest, forgivable loans ranging between $10,000 and $20,000.” She also wants to improve public safety and address homelessness by working collaboratively with all levels of government, the private sector and nonprofits.
Marshall, 61, is a 30-year Oceanside resident, semiretired and a former corporate president responsible for operation, fiscal and ethics compliance.
It’s critical for the city to monitor the economic shortfall from declines in sales and hotel room tax revenue, and freeze costs for things such as training, travel, overtime and new hires. She praised city staffers for doing that during the crisis so far.
“But a viable, long-term plan needs to be created to help our local economy recover,” Marshall said. “So many businesses have failed with this unexpected crisis, it will take years to resume ‘business as usual’ and for people to begin to trust traveling and recover from the personal financial impacts that this pandemic caused.”
Marshall has been active in community nonprofits and service groups, and she occasionally speaks at City Council meetings on issues under discussion. She was part of the group that placed Measure L, the North River Farms referendum, on the Nov. 3 ballot, and in the past she worked successfully to stop large digital billboards from being installed along state Routes 76 and 78 and to keep the Oceanside city clerk and city treasurer positions elected and not appointed.
District 3 voters will see six names for the City Council on their ballot.
One of them is incumbent Councilman Ryan Keim, who was appointed by the council in January 2019 to fill the remaining two years in the at-large seat of Esther Sanchez after she won the newly created District 1 seat in 2018. Other candidates for the District 3 spot are Bill Batchelor, Kellie Davis, Shari Mackin, Amber Newman and David Ian Zernik.
Keim, 38, has lived in Oceanside for 36 years and is a former police officer. He said the city has responded quickly and effectively so far to the COVID-19 crisis without cutting core services.
“Going forward, the clearest path to our recovery ... will be to continue what we were doing prior to the pandemic — supporting our businesses by removing red tape, listening to their concerns and ensuring the city actually works for them,” Keim said.
He’s formed an economic recovery task force to connect with business leaders and identify the ever-changing challenges they face, and will continue to advocate for small businesses to ensure they have the same abilities to operate as big-box stores during the crisis, he said.
Eroding beaches along with homelessness also are important issues facing the city, Keim said.
“It is critical we implement a long-term and viable solution to put sand back on our beaches and keep it there,” he said, and he’s working to identify a project by next spring to get funded and finished.
Mackin, 63, is a retired Oceanside teacher and a 40year resident. She served one term on the City Council after winning a special election to fill a vacant seat in 2005.
“Small business is the backbone of all business, and we must support them during these unstable times,” Mackin said. “I would expect at a minimum to hear from the (city’s) departments on trends — both jobs and revenues that the departments are seeing. Upon hearing the report, interventions can be adjusted ... within the city’s capabilities such as possible rent eviction relief and expedited permitting.”
Managed growth and environmental protections are important issues for Mackin.
“My focus is putting neighborhoods first, so it protects the character of each neighborhood, and not putting special interests like the Building Industry Association above residents,” she said. “Developers and the building industry have played a large role in who is elected in Oceanside, and that is reflected in continued votes to change the land use, density and character of Oceanside leading to the traffic density we see today.”
The city also needs to adopt short- and long-term solutions for adapting to climate change and sea-level rise, she said, adding, “Putting sand on a beach that is no longer there just won’t work.”
Davis, 51, is a businesswoman, producer and writer who’s lived in Oceanside since 2014. She is the former outreach coordinator for the Oceanside Cultural Arts Foundation and has worked five years at nonprofit Oceanside television station KOCT.
The best way for Oceanside to recover economically from the pandemic is to support the businesses that are open and to encourage people to shop locally and hire locally, Davis said. Also, the city should support entrepreneurship, ingenuity and new industries.
“One of my top priorities for City Council is to serve and represent all the citizens of Oceanside, no matter socioeconomic status, party affiliation, national origin, race or creed,” she said. “My presence on the City Council will help bring the much-needed social equity and a broader perspective when creating and voting on policies. I would be the first Black woman council member.”
Newman, 50, is a business development director and a 15-year Oceanside resident. She’s been a frequent presence at City Council meetings, where she often comments on issues under discussion.
“We need a proactive and creative business development team that focuses on bringing businesses to Oceanside rather than just approving whatever happens to show up,” Newman said. “We need to monitor for available spaces and seek companies we feel would be a good fit for those spaces ... and encourage local entrepreneurs to set up shop.”
The pandemic has shown that many jobs can be done from home, and so the city should encourage more opportunities for livework spaces in new or existing buildings, she said.
Homelessness and development also are issues the city needs to work on, Newman said.
Newman is a member of the Oceanside Charitable Foundation and an advocate for the North County LGBTQ Resource Center, and sponsors events for the Oceanside Museum of Art and the city’s MLK Scholarship Fund.
District 3 candidates Batchelor, a businessman, and Zernik, a civil engineer, did not respond to the Union-tribune’s request for information.