Housing is top concern in council race
One incumbent, six challengers vying for three open seats
Redwood City’s development boom will see officials wrestling next year with how to ramp up housing while improving traffic flow along the city’s major streets.
All seven candidates in the race for three open seats on the City Council agree that housing and transportation are the top issues, but differ in how to address them.
Candidates include Vice Mayor Diane Howard, community activist Diana Reddy, former planning and parks commissioner Rick Hunter, Planning Commissioner Giselle Hale, Complete Streets vice chair Jason Galisatus, Planning Commission vice chair Ernie Schmidt and local business owner Christina Umhofer. Councilmen Jeffrey Gee and John Seybert, whose terms are expiring, did not seek re- election.
Galisatus, the youngest candidate at age 25, said he would like the city to consider rezoning the Veterans Boulevard corridor to allow for denser housing and new retail spaces.
“I’d love to see the entire stretch reviewed like a precise plan,” he said. “It’s the gateway to Redwood City.”
He also said he has the unique perspective among candidates of being a renter.
“I’m a renter in Redwood City, live through the challenges every single day,” Galisatus said. “It’s affecting our ability to attract and retain employees in the public sector and in the private sector (and) it’s displacing long-term residents.”
Reddy, who has worked with Faith in Action and helped launch HEART of San Mateo County, considers herself a housing advocate and plans to focus on creating housing for people living at the lowest income levels. She plans to address what she calls social inequities in the community.
“For me, the lack of affordable housing is the most desperate challenge,” she said. “I’m a spokesman for the underserved. … In our community, that means people who are immigrants, communities of color, the disabled, low income. Those are the people that feel they have not been heard by our City Council.”
Lone incumbent-Howard said her first order of business if re- elected will be to help the new council transition smoothly because of her experience. The outcome of a half- cent sales tax measure on the ballot, which if passed would generate roughly $8 million a year toward paying down unfunded pension liabilities, is her biggest concern in the near term.
“Being an incumbent is going to be crucial in the transition,” she said. “I have a reputation of being calm under pressure.”
When it comes to housing, Howard said she wants to explore a partnership with the city’s elementary school and high school districts to create teacher housing.
Hunter said the city should consider incentives to slow office growth while working to address the jobs/housing gap.
“There is tremendous pressure from higher-paid office workers on workingclass families,” he said. “I’m not against offices ( but) the way it is right now is out of whack and that is actually slowing down the economy. … We may need to trade off some office for housing (and) I’m hoping to do that without caps but through incentives.”
Hale said she will continue seeking new ways to deal with housing and traffic in the same way she championed below-market-unit policies as a planning commissioner. She said she’d like to explore allowing housing units atop a grocery center at Sequoia Station, as well as discuss the development of housing on land Caltrain owns near downtown.
Hale said she wants to reduce commuter traffic through fewer parking spaces in developments and wants to see the city shift transit discounts from larger to smaller employers.
“We talk about affordable housing, butwe also need to talk about affordable transit,” she said.
Galisatus wants to explore the idea of a selfdriving shuttle connecting the east and west side of the city that would link up with a rebuilt YMCA/senior center and, like Howard, he wants to explore teacher housing.
“Our schools have a $10 million budget deficit in the next two years and I want the city to play a role in partnering to cushion this,” he said.
Hunter said he wants to protect part of the city’s waterfront for light industrial businesses, and also has a “long-term dream” of turning a city-owned waterfront parcel slated for a park into a river walk with entertainment and restaurants.
“One of the things we’ve lost over the years is family entertainment venues,” he said. “Nothing has come up to replace them, but I hope we can.”
The Bay Area News Group was unable to immediately reach Schmidt and Umhofer for comment.