Meet the candidates: Tami Ritter
Note: Today we begin a look at the five people on the ballot for the two Butte County Board of Supervisors’ seats that will be decided in the June 7 election. CHICO » Since she began her first term, District 3 Supervisor Tami Ritter has worked under some form of public disaster.
Just under two months prior to Ritter being sworn in as a supervisor, the Camp Fire destroyed a large portion of Butte County including the town of Paradise.
Since then, another major fire destroyed Berry Creek, and the COVID-19 pandemic sent people indoors for most of 2020 and well into 2021. Ritter said this is part of why she is running for a second term.
“So really, I haven’t served at any time when we haven’t been in response mode to disaster,” said Ritter, who previously served on the Chico City Council. “And I feel like it was kind of a crash course. I got more experiences, some desirable, but somewhere we really had to figure out what we were doing on the fly.”
Ritter said she wants to continue her time on the board as it changes directions away from crisis response. “I want to continue my work on the board because
I feel like the focus that our board has had over the last couple of years has been a pretty dramatic shift in terms of seeing the ways in which our typically polarized topics were really brought together and braided together in a way that I don’t think anybody could deny anymore,” Ritter said. “I’ve always had a focus on social services. It is what my education, my training and my background are in.”
Ritter added that social services strongly came into play after the Camp Fire when thousands of people needed aid after losing their homes.
The issues
The Camp Fire pointed a spotlight at the county’s need for housing, which Ritter said is one of her top concerns as a supervisor as well as a candidate.
“We have a really unique situation in Butte County in that we did not have enough housing stock prior to the Camp Fire,” Ritter said. “And we lost thousands of structures, particularly thousands of structures in an area that served an older population, as well as lower-income folks.”
Ritter said solutions for the housing crisis must come from a joint effort between the county and its cities and towns as well as local organizations.
“This is something we have to do together,” Ritter said. “And it’s something we have to do with community partners. So we need to be working with the Community Action Agency and we need to be working with (The Community Housing Improvement Program) and Habitat for Humanity and all of these other non-government organizations because this is not something only we are going to solve by saying ‘that’s so and so’s a responsibility.’ We have to step up to the plate together.”
Other topics Ritter expressed an interest in are behavioral health and substance abuse, both of which Ritter said are closely tied to housing.
“We really need to be looking at a regional approach to substance abuse treatment,” Ritter said. “We are so behind the eight ball on this one. We have known for a long time that this was needed but we need to be looking regionally because I don’t think it’s something that we’re going to be able to solve as an individual county. This is a medical condition. Addiction is a medical condition and so if someone has a substance use disorder, we need to be treating it as such and there need to be treatment options.”
Ritter said substance abuse issues are directly tied to law enforcement as those addicted often get arrested and taken to the Butte County Jail which has limited space and resources to help.
Supervisor Ritter is running for reelection for her District 3 position, which will be on the June 7 ballot. She’s opposed by Mary Murphy-Waldorf.