All-woman class of candidates face off

SANTA CRUZ >> In back-to-back virtual candidate forums this week, eight out of nine women seeking four Santa Cruz City Council seats in the November election were quizzed on neighborhood, housing and local business issues.

Incumbents Sandy Brown and Martine Watkins joined first-time candidates Sonja Brunner, Maria Cadenas, Elizabeth Conlan, Kelsy Hill, Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson and Kayla Kumar for each event. Candidate Alicia Kuhl did not participate in either forum.

For the Santa Cruz Neighbors forum, touching on diverse issues such as homelessness, candidates’ ideal day off, budget cut proposals and favored and disfavored recent council actions, attendance exceeded the group’s 100-person Zoom account capacity Wednesday. Nearly 70 attendees at a time tuned in the next night for a forum focused primarily on economic recovery and growth issues, co-sponsored by the Santa Cruz County Business Council and the Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce, with event moderators from the Sentinel and Santa Cruz Local.

Though neither forum focused specifically on housing supply issues, most of the candidates made a point to stress their perspective on the issue during one or both of the forums.

Asked what steps she would take to build new housing for all income levels, Brown said that supply would never meet the

need for such a desirable location to live. She said the city would need to develop city-owned lots, leverage outside partnerships’ funding, smaller units at high density, city regulations and developer incentives. Brown, however, took issue with the premise that the council needed to focus on supporting the addition of all housing types. She said the city’s affordable housing crisis has been her primary area of focus during her first term in office.

“I just don’t believe that the supply-demand curve bends toward affordability in a community like this,” Brown said. “Affordable housing does not just happen through additional supply.”

Kumar shared support for creating community land trusts, using city land to build 100% subsidized housing developments and owner vacancy fees, among other ideas. Brunner said the city should look toward its existing Affordable Housing Trust Fund, grants and supporting ongoing city efforts such as the mixed-use library project easing owners’ efforts to rehabilitate existing housing. To fund very low- and lowincome housing opportunities to Santa Cruz, Cadenas said the city needed strong advocacy for funding from state and federal sources and strong protections for existing renters and affordable housing. Hill said she would back the creation of a new council affordable housing task force to investigate housing development funding sources and locations, reducing red tape, enticing affordable housing developers and defining preferred development characteristics, among other ideas. Kalantari-Johnson stressed the importance of keeping young people from becoming homeless in the first place. Watkins, who served on the council’s previous Housing Blueprint Subcommittee — a planning document with ideas “ready to go,” said she has voted to approve housing development projects during her first term, because she supports a diverse housing stock.

Elizabeth Conlan, who describes herself as a “leader of Santa Cruz YIMBY,” an advocacy group that endorses the creation of a high volume of housing for all income levels, said the housing discussion was her main motivator for getting into the council race. Her approach differed from Brown’s, in that she said she backed both “deed-restricted affordable housing and middle-income housing.” Conlan said she supports use of city land for housing developments, tall downtown housing projects and allowing more small-housing projects as “in-fill” between existing commercial and residential buildings both downtown and throughout the city.

“I’d really like to see Santa Cruz pursuing the sort of progressive, inclusive, affordable policies that Portland (Oregon) recently adopted,” Conlan said.

Asked Wednesday about where in the budget they would cut first, as decreased revenues dictated, candidates offered a variety of solutions:

• Brown: Administrative salaries and consultants, reworking the police budget.

• Kalantari-Johnson: Capital expenditures and city project postponements.

• Brunner: Use city reserves, seek state funding help.

• Conlan: Seeking federal fiscal assistance

• Kumar: Question will require more study.

• Hill: Consultant fees, operational “bloat,” projects that are no longer economically viable.

• Cadenas: Re-imagine city operations as a whole.

• Watkins: Salary merit freezes, hiring freeze, postponing programming not in use during the pandemic.