Capitola Chamber of Commerce. On my right is Carrie Arnone, the Executive Director of the Capitola Chamber of Commerce. My name is Mike Termini, and I'll be your moderator tonight. This Capitola City Council is composed of five council members, all of whom are directly elected by registered voters and reside within the seat limits of Capitola. Council members serve a four-year term and can only be re-elected once before terming out. The council elects a mayor and vice mayor annually. There are three seats open. The seats are currently filled by Sam Storey, who is not running again, much to my sadness, and he's in the back there. Vett Brooks, who's our incumbent, who is sitting for re-election, and Jacques Bertrand, who has served two consecutive terms therefore cannot run again. Tonight we'll be hearing from the candidates on questions posted via email to the Chamber's account. We have a runner in the audience to take questions which, if time allows, we will ask the candidates. There will be no public comment during the forum, so please present your written comments to the runner and please turn your cell phones off. We have seated the candidates by random draw and we'll alternate the sequence of candidates answering questions throughout the night. Please note that we have determined some questions submitted as either duplicates or inappropriate for this forum. We'll give the candidates two minutes to introduce themselves and then two minutes each to answer the questions presented. Candidates, please mind the time clock here and watch for the 10-second warning when the amber light goes on. Also please do not feel you need to use every second of your two minutes. Brevity can be a fine and praiseworthy trait in any city council member, should remember that. I believe we have a kind, gentle, and respectful forum of politics here in Capitola. Let's strive to keep it that way. Please be respectful of all candidates, refrain from any cheering, standing ovations, rapturous applause, catcalls, or jeering. I will now start with, and by the way, I have checked with the candidates and in keeping with the way I like Capitola to be, I will be addressing them by their first name and it's not a sign of disrespect, it's just the way Capitola is. So we'll start with Alexander. You have two minutes, just introduce yourselves. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here tonight. I'd like to start off by thanking the chamber for hosting this event. Mike Tramini for moderating and everybody that's here tonight and watching online. My name. Get a little closer. You may have to hug the mic a little bit. Is it? Oh, you're wrong. I adjust it. No, I wish there was, but there's no real adjustment. It's just kind of getting up close and personal to the mic. Okay. My name is Alexander Peterson. I'm a small business owner and a business advisor with the Santa Cruz County Small Business Development Center. I'm very happy and feel very fortunate to call Capitola my home. I'm running for city council because I want to serve this community and I want to put in the work to make sure that we continue to have good jobs, a clean and safe environment, and enough housing to support our teachers, police, city employees, and the rest of our workforce. Over the past two years, I've had the privilege of working with the city of Capitola and other local government agencies to distribute over $800,000 in emergency COVID relief grants through the Santa Cruz County Small Business Development Center. That's one of the big reasons that I'm running for city council is to continue this work in supporting our small business community and working to make sure that they have everything they need to thrive in this post-COVID economy. I have a longstanding history of working with nonprofit and community organizations including serving currently as a board member for the Second Harvest Food Bank and as a member on the city of Capitola Financial Advisory Committee where we review city budget and make financial recommendations to the current city council. The second reason that I'm running is because as a renter and as someone who's in the early stages of the career, I'd like to see more housing options available to our workforce. And I'm honored to be here today. Thank you. Thank you, Alexander Enrique. Hello. I'm honored to be here today. My name is Enrique Domo, Jr., better known in the community as Mr. Domo. I currently work in the community at the best middle school in the county, New Bright Middle School, since 2014. I work as the athletic director, campus supervisor, bus driver, and I'm even the classified union president. Yes, I wear several hats. I have lived in Capitola since 2010 along with my beautiful wife, Ashley Domo, who is a teacher at Soka Elementary School and our two beautiful kids, Blaze and Cruz, who are 10 and 8. I stand for working to provide housing for our central workers, example teachers and firefighters in service, fostering a family-friendly environment by creating programs to support kids and their parents, implementing smart traffic solutions and focusing on making Capitola a more walkable community, leading important community conversations and securing funding to address the climate issues. My priorities are youth, public safety, and the mall. Youth, I feel the youth today need to put down their phones and tablets. We need to fix, we need to find something constructive for them to do. Public safety, 100% on increasing their pay and benefits so they do not have to travel to another city. They should be able to live where they work. The mall, I would like to see some movement at the mall as far as production of some sort. Example, maybe we can get a hotel or even a youth center there with an indoor soccer or batting cages, something for our youth to do. Thank you. Thank you, Enrique. Jerry. Thank you. Good evening, and I wanted to thank everyone for being here tonight and Mike in the Chamber for hosting. My family, I have lived in Capitola since 2013. I received endorsements from all Active City Council member planning commissioners that are not running for office. Also from the Capitola Police Officers Association and the local AFL-CIO. I've been endorsed by nine previous leaders, including city manager, city treasurer, council, planning commissioners, multiple other businesses and community members. And I'm proud that all my endorsements are 100% from Capitola. My previous work experience has been in the education sector in facilities. I was a union president and chief negotiator. I was promoted to a director level position where I was responsible for 100 direct reports and the operations department where I oversaw transportation of students to and from school. I was also director of construction where I oversaw multimillion dollar construction projects. I worked hand in hand with community and youth programs as we built neighborhood gardens, community centers, and multiple sports fields. I now own a successful construction company that specializes in education, retail, commercial, and private sectors. I previously was reserve deputy sheriff and I successfully completed the Capitola Leadership Academy in 2020. My campaign is founded on the principles of ABC, A for accessibility, B for business, and C for community. During my campaign, I've had many meet and greets with over 50 meet and greets. I have listened more than I have talked. What I have learned is that everyone living in Capitola here understand big changes are coming with a new potential wall and new housing. With my background in facilities, construction, and working in the community with boards, I know I can provide additional leadership to the city as your next city council member. I look forward to our discussions tonight. Thank you, Jerry. Yvette. Good evening. My name is Yvette Brooks and it has been my honor to serve you as mayor and member of the Capitola City Council for the last four years. We have accomplished a lot, but much more work remains. That's why I'm running for reelection to continue working on our community's biggest challenges. My priority has been to ensure Capitola's sustainable, safe, and family friendly. Beyond my service on the council, I've spent my adult life advocating for quality education, advising on childcare, and serving on several commissions such as the Central Coast Community Energy Policy Board and the Children's Network. As a mother of a young daughter in Capitola, my top priority will always be working hard to ensure future generations like hers can live, work, and grow in this amazing community. My education at UCSC, work experience at the county office of education, leadership as the executive director of a local nonprofit, plus years of community involvement in Capitola, have taught me that investing early in children and families, supporting community service, building public safety programs, and protecting our environment is fundamental to sustaining a healthy community. Thank you for the opportunity tonight to share more about me. Thank you, Evette. Joe. Thank you, Mike. Hi, it's nice to see everybody here. My name is Joe Clark.  I've had the pleasure of living in the Capitola community for the past 30 years. I've raised three children here and spent the same 30 years serving my community in law enforcement. While working at the sheriff's office, I've had several assignments that have prepared me to work for the city of Capitola as a city council member, such as manager of the sheriff's office, search and rescue team, director of public services for Cabrillo College, community policing as a sergeant for the Live Oak area, hostage negotiator, squat team member, canine handler, and school resource office. I've also had the distinct pleasure of serving in the United States Coast Guard for eight years. Four of the years was active duty and four years as a reservist. Most recently, I've been serving on the Capitola Foundation as a board member for about the last six years. One of the things that I love doing the most in our community, though, is coaching the youth. I have coached at the middle school level, the high school level, volunteer for operation surf, and was the past president for the sheriff's office activity league. So just to wrap it up, I think you have to encompass all, and I'm grateful to do it here in Capitola. It's a great place, and that's why I'm ready for city council. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. And I wish I had hostage negotiator training when I was on the council. I always think that's, somehow I never thought of that, but it's a great thing. We'll go to the first question, and we'll start with Alexander. And if you want me to repeat the question during the responses, please feel free to ask. What ideas, uniquely yours, will you bring to the council that you will work to have the council adopt? Well, to be honest, I'm not sure that I have any ideas that are going to be completely unique to all of the candidates here. What I'd like to focus on mostly is housing, as supporting small businesses. I think we're all probably give or take on the same page with those. I think the mall is a top priority of mine, as it should be with every candidate here. One thing that I haven't heard is an option for creating more housing and meeting our arena goals of 1,300 units within the next eight years is to incentivize some of the apartment owners by increasing their floor area ratio limits and height limits to increase density in some of the apartments on top of building more units at the mall. I think there's a lot that we can do in economic development. I've been working with the Santa Cruz County Small Business Development Center, as I mentioned. And I think there's a lot of potentials for the city to collaborate more with the SBDC and with other economic development agencies throughout the county, specific programs. I think there's a lot of interesting economic development programs that we could be partnering on specifically. The SBDC is currently offering an e-commerce incubator program. There's other startup incubators throughout the county that would be interesting to partner with the city on. I hope that we can definitely fill some of the vacant units throughout 41st Avenue and in the mall and hopefully in the redeveloped mall. Thank you. Great, thank you. Enrique. Can you please repeat the question? Certainly. What idea is uniquely yours? Will you bring to the council that you will work to have the council adopt? Thank you. I truly believe the future of Capitola starts with our youth. With that being said, we have nowhere for the kids to play soccer in the city of Capitola. The fields that we use right now have a lot of go for holes and we're not able to use them. Jade Street Park, New Brighton Middle School, and Monterey Park, the field's not big enough to have an official field. I would like to invent something or talk with the community about possibly getting some kind of a turf field similar to the one Mission Hill has or Brandt's Authority and Shoreline. Get together with the community and figure out how we can get that to go. I know there's bonds, I know that if we work together that's something that we can come together as collectively as a community. Also, the mall, I believe that we can get some kind of a youth center in that mall. And what I mean by that is Sears. It's a great opportunity for us to possibly put some kind of youth activities in there as far as maybe batting cages, indoor soccer, maybe an indoor basketball court, something for our youth to do so they're not just riding their bikes after school, unsupervised, possibly doing stuff they shouldn't be doing. And that's my opinion. Thank you. Thank you. Jerry. Thank you. So I've been out on many meet and greets walking around meeting with people and like I said before, my approach has been from like an ABC standpoint about accessibility and business and community. Some of my ideas around that under accessibility would be having the community have better input and exposure to different committees and stuff like that. And so I would like to propose like internally what I was going to do if I was elected was divide the city into six different sections and I'd have a liaison at each different neighborhood. So I can reach out to those community members easier on smaller issues on issues before they become a bigger issue. I don't know if that'd be adopted because I'd be districting. That'd be something that I would think that maybe we should look at to make sure that everybody's treated fairly and equitably across the whole entire city. Also another thing that I'd probably bring back to the council would be how we can identify because one of the top three things I've heard meeting with everybody is about traffic and bike safety. And so how can we bring back a like a better refined traffic pattern plan with enhanced with bike safety on how we can provide better transportation through the community. Just got to hear this every single meet and greet I go to it's identified. I know our traffic committee was reassembled again and they were talking about the issues. I'm waiting to see what their final recommendations would be coming back out. But I think enhancing those two things would be a huge thing. So just to recap again having representation across the city would be important to me. And then making sure that vehicle and bike safety is identified to a different level. Great. Thank you Jerry. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Some of the ideas that I'm looking forward to bringing to capitol in the next four years include partnering with our local nonprofits and our local agencies like Kaiser and Sutter and Cabrillo to help build out and continue and to finalize the capitol mall project. We really want to see this project complete. And I believe that partnering with agencies like those can really see this project come to fruition. So that's something I'd like to continue to move forward and with as well as really finalizing while we finalize our climate action plan but really making it happen. It's time to start doing the work and my work on three C.E. The Central Coast Community Policy Board allows me to do that kind of work. And so they have funding that could support capitol like updating all of our police cars to be green. I just was able to get funding for capitol over $250,000 for green street sweepers something a city no other city has seen done before. So I'd like to really focus on our climate action plan and really move that forward so that we can meet all of our new standards. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. Joe. Thank you. Well, one of the things I think we need to work on and strive to do is work on our beaches and the quality of the water. We are historically year in and year out one of the dirtiest beaches in California. I know there's a lot of things behind that such as the birds and everything else but I don't know if the city's ever studied ways to deal with that. And I think it's time that we take a look at that and try to make our beach one of the better beaches because it certainly is one of the most beautiful beaches in California. And like Enrique was talking about working with our children and our youth we definitely need to have better facilities for them. Maybe we could partner with the school district and put turf in at Jade Street Park. They did it over at Shoreline Middle School and it was a huge success and kids play there 24-7. Jade Street is played 24-7 and it looks like it. So we really need to see what we can do to make our facilities better for our kids here in Capitola. Housing is an issue. Diving into Capitola Mall in the 41st Avenue corridor has a lot to do with the developers but what we need to do as the city council is to work with them with zoning laws and try to make it attractive for them to come back to actually wanna do a project. So that's definitely something we're gonna have to work on. And here's a good one maybe nobody thinks about how about police pay. Capitola's police department is probably one of the better departments in our county but they're probably the worst paid in our county. We need to see about bringing it up equal with other agencies in Santa Cruz County. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. All great ideas. Thank you all. Enrique, we'll start with you. And this is sort of a two-parter. First of all, what is your number one goal? Look forward and it's a year since you've been elected to the council. What do you want to have to have achieved number one in that year? And as part of that question, do you believe city residents only should serve on committees, boards, and commissions and why? What is my number one goal? Of course, we're going back to my initial is youth. Public safety and the mall. My three top priorities. Do I believe that the council members need to be on different boards within the county? I believe was the second part of the question. The second part is, do you believe that citizens who do not live, frame it a different way, citizens who do not live in Capitola should be allowed to serve on our local boards and commissions, planning commission, traffic and safety and like appointed positions? That's a difficult question. I would probably say I would always want the residents of Capitola and our community to get the job opportunities first. Now, if that job opening opens up and no one applies, we can't have that position unfilled. So we might have to outsource and go out of the county or the city. So I hope I answered that question the way you want. It feels like it's a kind of a question that you can't say yes or no to. But again, I would like it to be sent out to our community first and if they can't fill the position within our city or our county, then we need to source it outwards. Thank you. Thank you. Jerry. Could you read that one more time? Yes. What's your number one goal after a year being on the city council that you will have achieved or hope to achieve? And do you believe that city residents only should be appointed to boards and commissions? Thank you. So my number one goal would be is to take my extracurricular leadership abilities I have from working in local government and having them all project move forward. I think our city and our council could let's say probably be more active in trying to go to the investors so that they know that our city is willing and looking at trying to develop them all and that we're user friendly if you want to call it. Ways that cities become user friendly are we could go to the investors and show them that we have a streamlined process for permitting or how inspectors and things like that go. So I'd be my number one thing with the mall being number one goal I think there's some other things we have to make sure in that community is heard and is involved in that. The neighborhood around that is the mall area is gonna be heavily impacted and we need to make sure we have a direct communication with them for impacts that they're gonna have and make sure that the vision of the mall that we see on one side of town with this right in their backyard is definitely heard. A follow up on people outside of Capitola serving on committees. It's a mixed feeling I think it has to be defined down to what areas we're talking about. Obviously city council members have to be have residents in Capitola but there are different committees that sometimes the city council person or the council completely might maybe not have the ability to attract people with the professional knowledge for the certain areas. So I think sometimes we can look at the severe influence very local and just expand outside the same limits a little bit to see if we can obtain that. I wouldn't see that going over the hill for example but I think we can be able to pick that up in our surrounding areas in our neighborhoods so that can be incorporated and that we all keep Capitola with a great vision. Thank you. Thank you. A vet. Yeah thank you. So one of the projects or one of my goals I'd like to complete is the wharf project and we know it's been a very, very long time in repairing and fixing our wharf and I've had the privilege of working with both state and federal level in trying to find funding and we are almost there and why it's a goal of mine is that if we receive funding at the federal level we've requested actually an earmark of over $3 million that if we get this funding it will open up $3 million in our budget to do a lot of these projects that my counterparts here are talking about. So I'd really love to see that be accomplished. We have our public works person who's retiring who also wants to see the STEM it would be really something special. In regards to our, if it would be okay for folks who don't live here we currently have lots of volunteers from all throughout the county and the city and in the sphere of influence and so I think that each situation is different and we're always looking for the best people to serve Capitola. Thank you. Joe. Thank you. I don't know if it's good or bad going last because I'm going to echo a lot of things. You're not last Alexander is, but that's good. But when we talk about things that I'd like to see done please everyone stay closer to the microphone. Things that I would like to see done after the first year would getting back to some normalcy, you know after this two years of the pandemic has been kind of hard that council meetings that zoom in and not having people in public. I really hope we get back to that soon. Of course the mall project, the wharf project all these things have just kind of been on hold while we've been all in the limbo for two years. So let's get back to some normalcy. Some really good things out there that we're doing the Brisbane mansion. I know we're just starting on the small phases of doing the landscaping but I'd love to see the old building get taken care of at least get something going. So we have something to look forward to with that. As far as people from the outside sitting on our commissions, I don't agree with it. You know, people say, oh, but we might need expertise or you might need this and there might not be enough people. There are several people that want to be involved in our city and there are several people that have the expertise to sit on all the boards. So I think you should definitely be from the city to be in any of the commissions. Thank you, Joe. Alexander. Thank you. My top priority is the Capitola Mall. I think that's the most important thing we can do for our local economy, the fiscal health of the city itself and for housing. I hope that we can incentivize the owners to make faster progress in a reasonable amount of time at this point. I'd love to see a hotel on the mall site. I think that would be a great thing for the city and our community. I'd like to see a more bike and pedestrian centric design implemented in the redesign of the mall. And I'd like to see more businesses thriving in the mall. So I really hope that we can have a large impact as a city council moving that project forward because I truly believe it's one of the most important things we can work on for Capitola. To answer the second question, that's a tough question that I have not honestly considered for now. I would say ideally anybody sitting on a board should be from the city. But again, on an individual basis, there may be not enough interest in the city or there may be a combination of lack of interest and lack of qualified people. So I think on a case-by-case basis with the ideal being that anybody serving on a board should be living within the city limits. Thank you. Thank you, Alexander. Many residents are concerned about the impact of affordable housing units imposed by the state in our community. It's already been mentioned that over 1,300 units in the coming years are gonna be required. Now, what is your opinion on the 400 unit development included in the new mall redevelopment project as well as project home key along Park Avenue? And we'll start with Jerry. Thank you. Yes, so we're all aware of the mandate of being 1,336 units that are being planned for. The mall, the previous plan, the 2019 that was looked at, I think the housing number, I thought it was a little bit closer more to 600, but I can be incorrect. We're gonna have to obviously re-look at that whole entire mall development with the change in the new numbers. How does that gonna happen? Obviously the council with city recommendations is gonna have to change for zoning. But I don't think we should focus all that being right on the mall area. There's other projects and other opportunities of areas that can come into play that we can look at to address the density. Again, I'll say many times about community involvement and making sure the community is aware of areas that we're talking about and we're addressing. In your follow-up to the home key project that's located up on Soquel and Park Avenue, that project is obviously outside of the city limits at Capitola. I do not agree with the project because of its nature and the way it was classified. It didn't need any EIR to have it reviewed. And I think even though it's outside the city of Capitola, our services are going to be needed and it'll be some impact because it is relatively close to our city limits. So I wish there was a way that our city could have been a little more forceful and trying to impact to have a little more involvement, but I understand it's not in our city, so we couldn't. But when I was out walking around neighborhoods, it is a concern that they felt that they didn't really have a voice and some of the concerns haven't been addressed on just from a public safety standpoint, from that standpoint. So thank you. Thank you, Jerry. The vet. Can you repeat the question, please? Yes. Many residents are concerned about the impact of affordable housing units imposed by the state in our community. What is your opinion of the 400 unit development included in the new mall redevelopment project and also comment on project home key near Park Avenue and Soquel? Okay. In 2019, with the long side, my fellow council members at the time unanimously approved the conceptual design for the mall project, which included these apartments, if you will, and mixed use. So that I am in total, I was in total support with or of. Moving forward, we need to look at what's realistic though for the rest of the city of Capitola. As we look at the need for housing, we are in a unique situation because we are only a two mile radius of a community. We only have so many opportunities to build more dense housing. And so my hope is that we are not just thinking about the development that need, that the requirements of these development projects, but the impacts that'll have on our water, our city, all of these things that really have a long-term impact. So as a advocate for affordable housing, I also am mindful about the long-term effects on what 1300 units could possibly, how it would possibly affect our community. And in regards to project home key, I think moving forward, I'd like to see a more transparent process and more community input, especially with the neighboring cities. And so that's something we didn't see with this project early on. And I'd like to see that if there's any other projects coming over from the county because that's where the funding comes from. I'd like to see the county participate and partner with us joining cities to get our input as well. Thank you. Thank you. Joe. Thank you. When you look at the numbers, it really doesn't make sense for Capitola because we have no land. There's not really anywhere to build any of these housing, especially affordable housing. And to take the 41st Avenue quarter or the mall and to put all those units up there, it just isn't feasible. When I was out speaking to a lot of people in the community, everybody is for doing something like that, like the 400 units that was proposed earlier, but not much more. I think people are coming to a point where they're saying, you know, enough is enough. I know the state is mandating these things, but it's not practical for Capitola. We really need to take the time to think about everything that's gonna impact the services for law enforcement and for the city itself. Is it gonna bring in enough money to sustain it? Those are questions we need to look at and think about. And when I try to talk to people about the other things going on just outside in the county, I don't think a lot of people are aware of it. And they wonder, what's it gonna do for Capitola? What's Capitola gonna have to do for the county? So I think there's a lot that we need to talk about. And again, not just to throw everything on the 41st Avenue quarter, because I live kind of out that way. It's kind of an area that people feel like we've been neglected. So we need to stop and listen to the people that live and work in that area and see what'll be best for us. Wonderful, thank you. Alexander. Thank you. So yeah, I believe that the Capitola Mall is one of the very best locations in Capitola for additional housing. I think, given the new Rena numbers that we should increase the number of units in the Capitola Mall. I live right behind the Capitola Mall, so I know as good as anybody else, the traffic situation there is already not great, especially on 41st, leading up to Highway One. But the fact is that we need more housing in Capitola. If we don't create the plan to have more housing, we risk losing the ability to choose where it goes. And I think the mall is probably one of the best places where we can really get some significant number of units in there. I hope that we can see some of the traffic issues mitigated by smart use of better bicycle infrastructure and better public transportation. But yeah, that's something that we're gonna have to work through. So yeah, in short, I would like to see more units in the new Mall redevelopment plan. And the second question was Project Homekey. Yeah, that's definitely gonna use up more city services. There's no doubt about that. It's right on the border. It's a big project. But we're just gonna have to come together as a city and work it out, I guess. I mean, there's not much we can do about it now. Thank you. Thanks. Enrique. Yes, thank you. I think that we obviously need to do some more research on the mall. I'm all for affordable housing, as long as our teachers, our educators, firefighters, police department, the people that work in our community, work in our town of Capitola, our city of Capitola would get first dibs. I'm all for that. I would love to see people who work here be able to live here, I mean, live here as well, as far as public works. Regarding the home play, I apologize. I haven't done much research on that, so I can't really give my advice or an opinion on that as of now, but I will definitely look into that and we'll get back to anybody who has a, would like to talk to me about that. And I apologize for that. That's okay. Thank you, Enrique. Okay, we'll start off with a vet. A vet, many of the streets and sidewalks in Capitola are in great disrepair. The city used to spend 500,000 to a million of general fund monies to repair them on a regular basis. What is your plan to address this? Yes, so we've actually allocated a lot more money than that over the last four years, but just most recently in our current budget, we have plans to address the worst areas of 41st Avenue this fall. The intersection at Clairs and 41st Avenue will be repaved as part of a larger project. So this is something that council has already prioritized and has really been thoughtful about. We've also have allocated over $100,000 in bike and pedestrian safety. So on Park Avenue, we've just released a study or just asked staff to look into creating safer biking pathways, the green ones that you see on Park Avenue. And so we know that streets are a challenge. I remember four years, well, four years ago, knocking on doors on Clairs Avenue when people saying this needs to get fixed and it's taken four years to finally happen. And so I'm hoping that next year, as I hope to continue to serve on your behalf, that we continue to be mindful and that we continue to allocate those dollars towards our future projects. There's a plan that the city council has adopted on the streets most in need and we actually have a projection over the next several years on how we're going to address those. If there's any community member who wants to know if their street is on that list, you can always reach out to our staff at any time to see where we are on all those projects. Thank you. And by the way, that the Clairs Street project was first presented 20 years ago. Oh my gosh, so. So I just want to put that in perspective. It's the parade. Thank you for that. No, we've got it done. Joe? Thank you. I know that because I've been off of Clairs for over 25 years. So I know that the issues with Clairs is horrible. The bottom line is we need to do a better job. We've been talking about money we've allocated and it's in the works. Those all sound great, but we really need to do a better job. If you talk to most folks in Capitola roads, it's a big issue. So are we failing? I don't know. We definitely need to do a better job. I didn't care about our roads in Capitola. Bike safety is huge, especially with electric bikes now. They're all over the place. They go twice as fast. More bike lanes, more marked bike lanes. But all in all, I don't think we're doing a very good job for bike safety or working on a road. So I'd love to see us in the city council and do more. Thank you. Thank you. Alexander? Thank you. I believe it's important to allocate the appropriate amount of funds for maintenance of streets and sidewalks. I'd love to see more significant of pedestrian and bike friendly infrastructure going up. I think it's definitely a high priority that we fix some of these more significantly damaged streets and sidewalks. And I think it's really important that we provide adequate maintenance because that's the most cost effective thing we can do as a city rather than waiting to the point that they're at now and then having to redo the whole project. So yeah, I also hope that we can increase the city revenue by working on economic development and creating a larger sales tax base and use some of that money to work on the roads because the capital city budget is not very significant and you definitely have to pick and choose what to do at which point. So if we can work on our tax base that will also trickle down into the roads and sidewalks. Thank you. Thank you. Enrique? Yes. I'm sure you all know they did a wonderful job or their city has done a wonderful job on Bay Avenue. Their street looks, I would live off of that street. It felt like it only took them a couple of days but they did a really good job. They've also, I've noticed the intersection by Knob Hill they painted a red. I think they've done a fabulous job there as well. I'm hoping that that can be done other places in our community too, down in the village by the New Brighton Middle School they could put some red paint down in the crosswalk so that it's safer for our children to walk across the street and not get hit by a moving vehicle. I also do agree with we do need new bike paths and walkways for our children and for our adults as well that ride their bikes in the community. I think we need to move forward and make our streets safe. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Enrique. Jerry. Can you just repeat the question one more time for me? Yes, if I can find the question, I'll get it for you. Many streets in Capitola are in great disrepair. The city used to spend $500,000 to a million dollars of general fund monies to repair them. What's your plan to address this? Okay, thank you. So I've taken some time and during my campaign and I've gone out and met with different director heads and department heads. I spent some time with Steve Jesper who is our public works director who is leaving and we'll definitely miss him. But, and he's done an amazing job with the amount of funding that he's been able to be issued. But, you know, funding is everything. I have had experience probably 100, 200,000 square feet of paving myself in working with schools and educational facilities. The city uses a PCI matrix approach at the June 9th city council meeting the last time that the city council looked at this. It was noted at that time that 54.1% of the streets in Capitola were in fair to poor condition. I would advocate for more funding. It's definitely an investment tool. If you look at that matrix report and you read the report that was issued to the city council, it talks about how much the cost goes up for every time the road moves down to a different level. You know, pretty soon you have to tear up the whole road compared to if you just had maintenance. So, funding is everything. So, you know, a value of repairs today is offset more of the cost in the future. The one thing in that I would advocate for is that if you look through that whole list, we look at, there's five streets or 10 streets. But if you look at the top or the bottom five streets in Capitola, you know, they're not even making the list because they say they cost too much to repair those. And I definitely know those are gonna cost a lot of money. But I have a hard time telling, sitting as a city council member, telling a person, sorry, you have the worst street in Capitola, and guess what? Next year you'll have the worst street again. And so I would look at, advocate for that. The city at least identifies one of the worst streets every single time they do it, if there's funding, and they would identify that one road so that we don't look at a citizen, tell them that we're sorry, you're on the bottom of the list. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Okay. As everyone knows, property and crime theft does exist in the city of Capitola and throughout some of the neighborhoods. What are ways you would help reduce the amount of property, crime, and theft taking place and overall police policy and safety in the city of Capitola? And we'll start with Joe. Thank you. Well, Capitola does have a crime problem, property crime problem, automobile, theft, all of the above. What we need to do is make sure our police are well-funded, they're well-trained, and they get a competitive wage. Like I said earlier, in this county, Capitola Police Department is well-respected and they do a great job, but they do that only because of the type of men and women they are and not because of the pay. We really have to look at their pay and make sure that Capitola Police Department is adequately paid and then in return, it'll help out with all the things that we need to talk about how our senior citizens feel and if they feel safe or not. Most do thank goodness, but there's some out there that think that the police should do more and by having officers out there and doing what they need to be doing, it's very important. I was just talking to the chief and for the first time in quite a while, we were up to staff, so we need to make sure we keep these folks and the way we do that again, and I'll say it again, is competitive pay. We don't wanna become a department where we get these great officers in, we train them and then they go work over the hill. We need to take care of our men and women in our police department and by paying them well. I think that's the best way to go. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Alexander. Thank you. Can you read the question again, please? Yes. We all agree that there's property, crime, and theft in Capitola throughout the neighborhoods. What are ways you would help reduce the amount of property, crime, and theft taking place in the overall safety in our city? Right, thank you. So I think the number one way to reduce crime and theft is to ensure that our police department has the funding and training that they need to do their job. I think they do a fantastic job as it is, but we need to give them what they need to do that. Other options that we could look into is more of a neighborhood watch type programs. I think that's pretty effective at deterring crime. There's also could be brought into the digital age with apps like Nextdoor, well, which facilitates communication between neighbors. I think that's a really valuable resource to keep an eye on the neighborhood, see what's going on, more signage. I mean, I think nearly at least half of the houses these days have security cameras on them, like Ring. If there was more signage, just stating that, I think it would definitely deter crime and I think probably most of the crime here is opportunistic, not, you know, I don't think there's a lot of organized crime going on in Capitola, luckily. So yeah, I think just working together as a community and making sure our police department is funded and utilizing any digital tools that we have available. Thank you. Wonderful, thank you. Enrique. Thank you. Public safety. We cannot put a value on our safety. If we don't, as Joe, Mr. Clark says, if we don't pay the best well, then we're not gonna be able to keep the best. And just like Mr. Clark said, a lot of people, officers, they may come here, get trained to get their experience and then they're gonna go to another city where they pay more. So to be safe, you need to feel safe. I'm 100% on increasing their pay and benefits. Thank you. Thank you, Enrique. Jerry. Thank you. So I had a great opportunity when I thought about running for city council. I've been out on two ride-alongs. I've been out on a ride-along with Officer Qualis and also Officer Courier. Went out and saw firsthand what they deal with. Of course, it was only two nights. But in my past, like I noted earlier, I was a reserve deputy sheriff. Didn't do quite as much time as Joe. But I understand what it's like to be out on the street, but I saw what they do firsthand. Just information for the community. Last year our police department responded to 13,771 calls. And the response time, if they weren't on another call, was under three minutes, which I thought was pretty impressive. I have talked to Chief Dali and also Captain Ryan, who I think both are doing an amazing job in restructuring the department. But this is the first time, I think Joe alluded to it, that they've been fully staffed. So as we look at that, we say our police department is doing a great job with those sorts of numbers and being the first time being fully staffed in over seven-year periods, pretty amazing. With that being said, there are issues that percolate up. And the Cliffwood Heights, I'm on the next door. I see a Cliffwood Heights, they have issues. Over on 38, there's some issues and stuff like that and bounce up. But we do have a whole entire support group that supports our police officers. The community officers, the parking tenants, the volunteers and police, which allow our police officers to have more time to identify bigger crime or bigger things that are going on. So with those things that are going on, I think it's very beneficial. I would like to see our city invest more into technology, as Alexander kind of talked about, a better reporting system so that people in the community and can see how much crime is going on exactly in the neighborhood, what type of crime is going on in the neighborhood, and so they might be able to be more aware of it and they can identify and be more of assistance and maybe if there's somebody stealing bikes, they can be more sensitive to those sorts of things. Thank you. Yvette. I couldn't agree any more with everyone here. We must continue to fund our police adequately. I've had the, I've been able to be in negotiations in support of our police department and as everyone said here, this is the first time that we've had the opportunity to fully hire and support them. So I'm really proud of that and I'm proud of receiving their endorsement from the Capitola Police Officers Association during this cycle, as well as our Monterey Bay Labor Council because they know that I'm an advocate for fair wages and competitive wages and really being thoughtful about how we strategically get everyone to the average median income. We have to think about what that costs for the city and how we can get there as soon as possible and I've been able to have those conversations with our police officers, with their department and with our staff. So I'm in agreement, they are the best, I think, not just in the county, but all around and I've really had a great time working with all of them. Great, thank you Yvette. This next one's a long one and we're gonna start off with Alexander. Briefly describe the qualifications you possess that make you feel you would be a good choice to serve on council. And please describe any investment you've made in our city and can you project future involvement after your term is over, should you be elected? Can you read the last sentence again please? Describe investment you've made in our city and can you project future involvement after your term is over, should you be elected? I know that's pushing pretty far out into the future but we're looking for a long-term life goal in Capitola. Okay, thank you very much. So the qualifications, well for the past eight years, or sorry, for the past four years, I've been a small business owner. I think a lot of the same skill sets that go into operating a business, go into operating a city. I've been very involved in the Santa Cruz County community and the Capitola community in different organizations, including as I mentioned, being on the board of directors for the Second Harvest Food Bank, being on the Financial Advisory Committee for the city of Capitola. I am involved in financial advisory boards for two other nonprofits. I founded a nonprofit in Capitola to advocate for living wage jobs. My business is run in Capitola. So I think between all of that, I have a lot of experience working with groups, serving on boards, working in our community and for a lot of these issues that are related to what the city council works on and does here. So yeah, those are some of my qualifications, projected future involvement. Well, I hope someday that I'll be able to buy a house here in Capitola. It's a wonderful place to live. I love it here. It's an amazing place. And right now that honestly seems pretty unlikely. So that's part of the reason why I'm working to run for city council is because I'd like to see more people like me, more working-class, young families have that option available to them to live in such a wonderful place. Thank you. Thank you. Enrique. Can you repeat the first question, please? Certainly. Briefly describe the qualifications you possess that make you feel you would be a good choice to serve on council. Thank you. I believe my qualifications for me to serve on this council is my communication with our community. I love speaking with our community. I started this campaign about 45 days late paperwork. I got the paperwork on a Wednesday, turned it in on a Friday. And since then, I've met so many members or so many of our fellow community residents and talked with a lot of them. And just going out there from door to door, I started about 430 and I ended at 730. And just listening to all their ideas just is so embracing and I listened to them. And I'm like, wow, I never thought of that. I never thought of that. And that's what I am bringing because I listen to what the community wants. I don't give them my opinion. I just listen and then I choose what side I wanna go on. As far as my future endeavor in Capitola, I wanna be, I would like to, the events that we have already now, the worth to worth, we don't make that much money is from what I've told because they pay their regular fees, just like anybody else that wants to rent the streets and close off streets and pay for the police. But the Art and Wine Festival, I'd like to be more part of that, make that a little bit more powerful even though it's a wonderful event. I love going to it every year. We can have something else as well along with that. And I would love to be a part of that in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Jerry? I'm not gonna make you repeat it, Mike. Is that? I won't make you repeat the question. Oh, no, I can repeat it. No, it's fine. First of all, qualifications from my previous experience of working in a union leadership role, also owning my own company as a small business owner and working in communities, I think is gonna be very beneficial if I was elected to be on city council. When I was working for government agencies, I worked on three successful, well, three bond measures. One was not successful, two were, which are very hard to pass bond measures because you need to have two thirds of the community's support for those. In working and living here in Capitola, I've been involved in many community beach cleanups, many activities around the town to help support seniors. I've also been an active member at the chamber and I'm presently a chamber board member. Looking long term, my family and I plan to retire here, live here for many more years, we hope. And with that, if I was elected to city council, I won't make the announcement today, but I'll run for second term. So I plan on not going to anywhere and I plan on staying here in our community and fulfilling my four year pledge I'll make if I was elected now and continue being a role model citizen and volunteering as much as possible. Thank you, way to be positive, is that? Well, there's nothing like earning experience through actually doing the work and there's nothing like gaining experience during a worldwide pandemic as your mayor. And so I will say that that absolutely has helped me pave the way in terms of qualifications. But in addition to that, I've had in the last four years, two years, being able to serve on the criminal justice committee on the Capitola financial advisory committee. I was just appointed as vice president to the California League of Cities, Monterey Bay division where I get to actually work on policy and focus on the economic vitality of our city. As I mentioned, I'm also the board member on the policy committee for the central coast community energy program. This is where we get our energy, our green energy. And lastly on Lafko as the vice chair. So after all that, I also am, I work full time. So I'm also the executive director for an organization called Your Futures or Business. So the second part of that question is what would I do after? And just a quick, less than one minute story, our job is to connect students to career opportunities in the community. And we just brought on in the nonprofit, a local just down the street, Capitola high school student to gain these work experiences through SoCal Creek Water District. So that's the work we'll continue to do to really bridge that divide between unawareness with our youth and bringing them to the forefront so they can know that there's opportunity here in Capitola for them to live and work here. And so that's what I see my future and continuing to do all of that, that great work for our community. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. Joe. Thank you. Well, Alexander, I remember being your age, living here in Capitola as a renter and wondering if I was ever going to be able to afford to live here. Well, you will be able to. You just have to keep working hard. I remember thinking as a public servant, how am I going to be able to live here? It's really expensive. And with hard work, I was able to buy a house. And at one point I was in my career and I thought I should go over the hill to work. I can make more money. I can take care of the family better. But I decided, no, it's important for me to live and work in the same area. So with that, I stayed with the sheriff's office, I did my 30 plus years, had several different jobs that will help with making decisions that the city council is going to have to make. That's probably my biggest qualification is just my life's job. As far as working four years after being elected as city council member, I don't know, maybe I won't be a city council member after four years, but I will stay involved. I will be part of the foundation because I truly believe in the foundation and what it does for the police department and other junior lifeguards, operation surf, things that go on in the community that need the help. So yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to doing. Thank you, Joe. Candidates, I have good news and bad news. We're halfway through. Okay, hope we're all doing well. Here we go. In past years, Capitol has funded services provided by nonprofit agencies to the tune of $230,000 a year. These are very important services to the city. Are you familiar with these programs and will you support continuing the city's support at this level and we'll start with Enrique? No, I'm not familiar with the $230,000 that was awarded to the community. It's granted out every year by the city. No, I am not. I don't have any information on that and I cannot speak on that. It's okay, thank you. Jerry. Yeah, I think there's a balance that our city council would have to take in looking at those. I know there's been a change in the way they're looking at giving out grants and stuff like that and there's like a three year duration. And so I think there's gonna be a counterbalance to right now, like I said, I've been out meeting with different departments and I've talked to Jim Wohlberg and right now the city is in relatively decent financial shape but I think we all know from a personal feeling what's going on, we might be going into a recession or maybe some of us might be into a recession. And so we'll have to look at what does that look like to the city long term. If the funding starts to affect us from a tax revenue standpoint, we might not have funds like that to be used to provide some services out to other people. I think we've all talked about funding for different levels of police and employees and stuff like that, which would be very important. But with that being said, some of the nonprofit things that we fund are essential to seniors and youth and so it's very important. So it's gonna be a counterbalance, again, reach out to the community for input and when we have to make those tough decisions and then as a city council member, I look at my vote when we representing the voice of the people and that I make decisions based on input from them. Wonderful, thank you, Jerry, for that. Thank you, yes, Jerry's correct. We have recently updated our community grants process, which also took a long time to do, but it's something that we've achieved and meaning that before we would just allocate dollars from our general fund today, we have a more robust process and that focuses on our cities, just our city's most critical needs. So that includes housing and environment and food, I believe that's food. But there's, what we did took a long time to do that. Now, to answer the question directly, do I support the programs or funding our community grants programs? Absolutely, it is essential that we continue to support community programming because those funds support our most vulnerable population. So that's our seniors, our rental assistance programs, our kids, all of that. What I will share also though is something that I think the entire council and previous council, because we had a changeover in 2018, we increased the TOT tax. And a part of that tax actually goes directly to businesses and directly to a dedicated children's fund. So if we were to cut our community grants funding, those two pockets, those two pockets of funding would not go away because those are restricted dollars for our community. And that's something really to be proud of because that's something that the voters voted on here in Capitola to support. And so, you know, as we look forward, we are financially stable for the city of Capitola and we can be creative moving forward as we look through processes like the TOT increase. Thank you, Revet. Joe. Thank you. Well, I think first we have to look at what is it doing for Capitola? If we're just giving money away to organizations because it's politically correct or people think it's the end thing to do, I think we really have to be thoughtful, step back, think about what's gonna happen down the road. Are we gonna be able to sustain this and continue to give to certain organizations? But it just goes back to the process, slowing it down and making sure we're doing the right thing for everybody here in Capitola. Thank you. Alexander. Thank you. I wholeheartedly agree with and would advocate for continuing the community grant program. I think investing in local nonprofits is one of the best returns you can get on your money as a city because I believe that nonprofits are typically run by people and staffed by people who are incredibly passionate and hardworking for what they do. They provide such essential services to some of our most vulnerable citizens, as Yvette said. And yeah, I think it's a great program. I think that not every nonprofit will get a grant. It's up to the review board, however that specifically works. So I think that it's fair to say that the community is responsibly investing its money to have the most bang for its buck. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. An old favorite. Please give us your views on the proposed rail trail, how you feel it would either negatively impact or benefit our community, and we will start with Jerry. Yeah, so this was quite a measure that came forward that has been very much very well discussed this for a nice way in our community. You know, I'm a big supporter of going out and reaching out to the community for input. With that, we looked at the city and the county astro-input, and it was very apparent with the vote that came in that it was to have rail and trail together. If the citizens have spoken, then they have spoken, and that's what it was. If we look at how the vote turnout came out from across the county, it was approximately 75, 25, and capitol is about 60, 40 split. So with the communities that have spoken on that it's gonna be rail and trail, my understanding now is that they're involved with a $17 million study to study what the impacts of and how the rail and trail are gonna happen and come together. Once that is done, there's gonna establish what that cost will be, and then they'll be going back to, I'm quite sure, to the community on how they're gonna fund that. And so, you know, as a council member, I think, again, going back to listening to what the community is speaking from and what part they want to support, and making sure you lead by example and listen to your constituents on how they would like you to vote or take action from it. Thank you. Thank you. Can you repeat the question? Oh, I guess. Would you give us your views on the proposed rail trail and how you feel it would either negatively impact or benefit our community? Yeah, so, you know, there's nothing, no time like the present to move forward after such a really difficult time for our voters and our community. You know, with the outcome of the study, it'll be really interesting to see what comes out of that. What I hope to see, though, come out of that study are realistic, reasonable, state-of-the-art ways to alleviate traffic in our community. We're talking about housing. We're talking about the impacts. We have to think about really solutions to solving those things. And so, when we talk about rail, what does a state-of-the-art rail transportation look like for the city and how will that impact Capitola? We are very attuned to the fact that there is a trestle that cannot even hold a bike right now up safely. So, those are things we will get to discuss. And knowing, though, and this is for all of you watching, that we have two representatives at the table, at the RTC, listening, reporting back to us and keeping us involved, and any council member that gets voted on in November will be replacing those members.  Thank you, Abed. Joe. Thank you. I look forward to getting elected because I would love to have my input on that trail rail. People have spoken. I was surprised with the arguments that were out there that people still want the trail and the rail. But currently, my understanding is there is no plan to have the trail go through Capitola. And I guess one of the biggest issues is the trestle. The trestle is like a big white elephant, I guess.  Capitola doesn't own it. It's gonna be a problem, even when they wanna put trains or some other type of rail system on there. But in the meantime, I really hope that we do work on the trail portion of it. It is gonna take some time for them to get the rail portion going. There's so many issues with the tracks from the South County to the North County. But it would be awesome to at least get the trail going and including Capitola on that part of the trail. Thank you. Alexander. Thank you. Yeah, I'm a huge supporter of the trail. I would love to see that go up as soon as possible. I think that would be an incredible asset to our community. And I hope that even has the potential in the trail itself to alleviate some of the traffic we're seeing. I'm also very interested to see what the RTC will come up with in regards to possible train. Anything that we can do to alleviate traffic in a financially responsible way is good with me. So I'm excited to see what they come up with. Thank you. Thank you. And Ricky. Yes, a lot of energy has been put into the topic of the rail trail. I think if they said they would put in a trail, it'd be 20 years. And I think I'd be probably almost seven years old. And I kind of want to see something now. I don't want to wait 20 years. The measure D did not pass. So we need to look at other solutions. It's unsafe to walk as Ms. Lopez Brooks has stated. It's unsafe to walk up there. I've walked on it before. And it's a little scary at some point. So I haven't done it in about eight years because I won't do it again. But we definitely need to find the solution for that. I would love to see a trail on there to make it more safe and to alleviate some of the traffic that we have down in the village. Thank you. Great, thank you very much. And we'll start with a vet on this next question. We have heard promises about the Rispin Mansion Gardens for many, many, many years. And yet little progress is made. What would you do to move this project along? So good news to the person that asked that question. It's happening. So we will, the grant was received and we are moving forward with the gardens there in front of the mansion. And you should see that as soon as they, as soon as possible is the right way, any development project. But we, so we're moving forward with that. And we're really excited. We receive a lot of great community input. Previous council members participated in that, in those conversations. And there it looks beautiful. And so I'm really excited to see that through. And to hopefully be at that ribbon cutting and along with all of the hundreds of people who've participated in that design. Thank you for that. Joe. Thank you. Yeah, I walk through the Rispin Mansion daily. I cannot believe how long it has taken for us to even get to the point about talking about redoing the landscaping. The plans look awesome. Really looking forward to them getting that going. Because as of now, it's just turned into kind of an eyesore. It's kind of problematic with a large well. So the plans that they have for it are quite nice. With getting the lighting in there, it'll be safer so people can walk back and forth from Nob Hill to the library. I just think that we need to, just like our roads, we need to work harder, get our plans going a little sooner than later. And see that these things happen and just not talk about them forever and ever and ever again. But grateful that we have the Rispin Mansion. It's a beautiful piece of property. It's really important and can't wait to see this project come together. Thank you. Thank you. Alexander. Can you read the question again, please? Certainly. We have heard promises about the Rispin Mansion gardens for years now. And yet little progress has been made. What would you do to move these along? Well, it sounds like the Rispin Mansion project is moving along on its own. So I'm glad to hear that. I think that's an awesome opportunity. I would do everything I could to move it along as fast as possible. I know it's sometimes things take a long time when you're dealing with the city or bureaucratic processes. But I think you put in the work and things will get done in a reasonable manner. Really looking forward to that as a newest park and public asset. Thank you. Ricky. Yes. I've walked past the mansion several times in the last 12 years that I've been here and I've seen the roof put on. I've seen it get painted and then it gets stalled. And you wonder like, what's going on? What's going on? But it looks like we're moving forward. I would love to see that into an open so we can view it. And I can stop hearing all the stories of colleagues that used to hang out in there. I would like to see what's inside. I haven't had a chance to see inside. I'm looking forward to moving forward. I'm looking forward in the mansion to be renovated and able for us all to enjoy its memories in there. Thank you. Thank you. Jerry. Thank you. So the project that you're talking about is the park and the grounds in front of it. That project is going, if it's not out to bid, it's out to bid right now and it's going to come in. I think it's important to understand what that project is. That project right now is solely owning the grounds. It includes the reflection garden. It's not going to have water in it, but it's going to have maybe some art or something like that. It's also going to have a blockade ball court. There's going to be a small amphitheater and there's going to be some additional pathways. We're going to, they're also looking at cutting down the wall that separates between Warf Road and the park. So when that wall coming down, that would help better viewing into that for our police officers. And so for community safety. So I think that's key to have that. The start date on that project, last time I heard is that there might be an underlying issue with the start date with grading. There might be a grading moratorium. And so it might not be able to start until April 15th, which as a builder, those are very important dates for April 15th. So there might be some work that we might be able to see start early. And so without grading, so maybe areas around the reflection pond or maybe some of the development for the blockade ball court, but the excavation for the amphitheater is really going to be this touchy one. And so now it has to be addressed. And so looking forward to it, hopefully after April 15th that project offer rolling and it'll be a great benefit for our community. Thank you. Thank you. We'll start this national with Joe. Joe, what are your suggestions on ways to reduce the amount of traffic in Capitola Village? What is your plan to curb speeding along Park Avenue? And how will you improve intersections for safety, blind, low vision, pedestrians, and the removal of some utility poles from sidewalks which make them impassable for people in wheelchairs? Well, that's a lot. You have four years to do it, so go. Okay. Well, how do we deal with traffic? Well, traffic is a result of too many people in a small little space, and that pretty much describes Capitola. So how are we going to do that? Try to get more people out of their cars, walking on their bikes. As far as the traffic in the Capitola Village, maybe we can start doing a valet project where they have people come in and we run valet and run the cars back up in the back when people go shop because a lot of people don't even come here to shop because the traffic and there's no parking. As far as the utilities go and removing the wires and the poles to the underground, well, that's gonna be a lot harder than making and our roads better. So that's something we have to deal with the utilities. But it is important, these are all things that we have to look at, look at the big picture as a city council member and find out the things that we can do to keep everybody safe and try to do it in a reasonable amount of time. If we sit and do too many studies, that could be problematic, but quite a bit work to do. Capitola, the city of Capitola Police Department does a great job of doing their enforcement with traffic with motorcycles. I know they've sent a few of their officers to school recently, so they're gonna probably bolster the number of traffic units they have again. I truly believe that that is probably the number one way to reduce speeding, especially out there on Park Avenue. If you see an officer with a radar gun, what do you do? You slow down.  Thank you. Alexander? Thank you. Can you read that again? Certainly. What are your suggestions on ways to reduce the amount of traffic in Capitola? What do you plan to do to curb speeding along Park Avenue? And how will you improve, how will you improve intersections for safety of blind and low vision pedestrians, as well as the removal of utility poles from sidewalks preventing citizens in wheelchairs from passing? So to reduce traffic specifically in the village, but also throughout Capitola, we can have better public transportation. We can have more shuttle services to Capitola from different locations, including the mall. We can have better walking pass sidewalks, protected bike lanes. I think all of those will help considerably with traffic throughout our city. In regards to speeding, there are a handful of ways that we can decrease speeding throughout our streets, including narrowing our lanes, which makes cars go slower. We can do this by increasing the width of bike lanes, which is a really win-win situation in my mind. We can have the speed detection signs that tell people how fast they're going. In my experience, anytime I see one of those, I immediately go the speed limit. So I think they're pretty effective. For intersections, I've heard a couple concerns when I'm canvassing from people about intersections and protecting pedestrians there. I think the flashing lights for pedestrian crossing are very effective. I'd like to see those at any high traffic intersection that doesn't currently have those. I know a couple locations that would be great is on the right cross from the senior center. They don't have flashing lights right now, and there's a lot of high-speed traffic going on to Highway 1. As far as removing utility poles, I mean, I think it's very important to have public property in general be accessible to all people, including those with different types of handicaps. So I would definitely be in favor of spending the money to make sure our society is equitable. Thank you. Thank you. Ricky. Yes, thank you. Regarding speeding on Park Avenue, I like your idea of posting up the speed as you're driving by. I also think that speed bumps would definitely slow down some of the people coming into our town. Excuse me. Smart lights are another way to control traffic congestion. I'm not sure if you know how they work, but lights will stay green until the traffic lightens, and then it'll turn red, and then allow another green light to come on the other side of the opposite of the, I'm sorry, it would be a four-way stop instead of that would be a traffic light, excuse me, I lost my train of thought. It would be a smart traffic light, and it basically detects what the traffic is, and when it lightens up, then it changes the direction of the light, if that makes sense. Regarding the electrical pole, that's something that we definitely have to talk with public works, that's public works, that's definitely something not as easy as people would think to remove a pole with all the electrical lines, but it can be done. I know they had some issues during the library with electrical. It was done, took a little bit of time, but that's definitely something that we can look into. Flashing lights, and I believe in the crosswalks, like I have stated earlier, red paint in the crosswalks and flashing lights, I think would be exceptional in all our crosswalks where there's a lot of traffic, which is definitely in the village and coming out onto Monterey Road. Thank you. Thank you, Enrique. Jerry. Thank you. So a couple of different parts of that question that need to come for discussion. So one would be, how do we prevent traffic? I too have been out canvassing it and I had a nice senior call me into the house and show me a picture of Capitola up on the wall from I think 1930, and he says, see what's in that picture? And I said, what was that? And he said, traffic. So there's always been traffic here. So how can we get around that? We're gonna have to improve local transportation. We're gonna have to meet people of believer in local transportation and make sure that it's dependable. It runs on a frequent enough basis and so that people understand they can't get from one side town to another. I think the city's right now looking at a bike ride share program. I'm encouraging that. I think that'd be a great way to get people out of the cars if it was easier for somebody to use transportation around bicycles. Yes, there are many intersections in Capitola that aren't safe. I must've been walking the same neighborhood as Alexander. Yeah, up there at the Bay Center, at the Bay Senior Housing, we have a senior housing on one side of the street and we have a senior center across the street and we have the only grocery store for them to walk to. And there's just a normal crosswalk in there with just stop signs. So having some flashing lights in those areas like that and that's just one example of unsafe center but I look at that as one of the biggest ones because we encourage the senior squad to exercise, walk across the street or to go to the senior center in fact and forth. So that'd be important, flashing lights and stuff. And then with the utility poles, that's a two-prong question. A lot of the poles aren't owned by the city of Capitola so you have PG&E, you have utility services that would have to work with them to develop a budget so that those could be moved off the sidewalk which would be very important. People that have accessibility issues to use but it can be a goal and that would obviously come out on the road's budget if the city was gonna pay for it. So there would be a sacrifice. Thank you. Yeah. So if I were to be re-elected I would encourage fellow council members to set these much needed improvements at our annual goal setting meetings with adequate funding. So that means every year on the dais if you annually you get to set priorities and goals and this will continue to be one of the goals that I would encourage our council members to follow in, follow along with if you will. But the items would include for traffic at least to improve pedestrian and bike paths which we know council has already allocated a certain amount of money but we definitely need more if we wanna see any change or impact to our traffic. We are currently waiting for the street calming project outcomes over on Claire's and on Park. And so we're with those outcomes we'll be able to figure out how much funding we actually need to put towards the street calming projects. And in regards to underground utilities, man, it is a very expensive project to take on and we learned that through the library project. And so what I would encourage our staff to do is look at and continue to look at this as a priority I actually said this last year is to seek grant funding and to work with PG&E they actually have funding that they could offer cities to offset costs to underground utilities. And so those are some opportunities that we have in the city to mitigate these really, really important improvements that we need to see in our, in Capitola. Very good, thank you. This was a little inside baseball. You have to forgive me and we're gonna start with Alexander. Would you support the flagging and staking ordinance that would provide early physical noticing to the public affected by new developments or significant building projects? And how would you work with the county planning staff to accommodate their draft agenda, general plan regarding rezoning that would put impact on the city of Capitola? I'm not prepared to answer this. Thank you. I'm with you. Enrique. I'm definitely gonna have to repeat that question. No problem, I was expecting that. Is everyone familiar with the term flagging? Flagging means you put up long poles with netting around them that show you the extents of a building and the height and the mass of it prior to it being approved and built. So not good, okay. So Enrique, would you support a flagging and staking ordinance that would provide early physical noticing to the public affected by new developments and significant building projects? How would you work with county planning regarding their draft general plan which would allow for rezoning that would impact the city of Capitola? Thank you. Yes, I would like to see the flagging. So I live in Capitola Bay and Oak and if my neighbor wanted to build a, if they got approved to build a two-story, three-story house and I wasn't aware of it and I saw the flagging that would at least notify me so I can go down to the city hall and possibly complain about it if it's not too late because I think that is why they put the flagging there is so everybody around can know what's going on and how high the building's gonna be. The second part of the question was, I'm sorry. How would you work with the county of Santa Cruz where they have a new general plan that allows rezoning near the city borders that would allow for more impact on the city because of its density? I don't know if that clarifies the question. Okay, thank you. That's definitely, I would listen to our community on that. I wouldn't make that decision solely on me. I would like to listen to what the community says on that and then I'd base my decision on what the community says. Thank you. Jerry. Yeah, so in the construction world we refer to those as story poles and so they're two by fours that go up and usually have a two-foot orange dining that wraps all around the top of them. We have building height requirements that are called out in our zoning code. Normal house in capital is about 25 feet. What is 25 feet? It all depends on where it's measured from. It depends if you're up slope lot, down slope lot. And so massing can be an issue and can be laid out. So many cities I work in, we do story poles. Problem is with doing that, it's very costly. To do, let's say, a typical residential house if we use it in a normal neighborhood can be excessive seven to 10, $12,000 because it has to be staked out by a surveyor built as story poles, netting put up and then a surveyor has to come back out to make sure you did put it in the right spot. It is the right height and then that letter has to come into the city and then it has to be verified. So as it's a catch all that it's good for the neighbors and I think it's good for also planning department. Katie and her department can go out and look at it to make sure that it fits in with the neighborhood but there are zoning requirements and so if it falls into that. So I think it's good for that that the neighbors can have an input on that and look at that. If that's something that would change the qualification or capitol from the standpoint of a requirement, I guess that'd be it and the neighbor gets the community to have to speak on that, I know it does help but it does stem a lot of feedback. Your question with the county don't know what project they'd be talking about but if it was a large project that was on the outside and you're talking about a county facility there's definitely no money in the budget for the county to put up major staking and let everybody in the community have input. Thank you. Thank you. Is that? Thanks Jerry for giving us that information because I learned a lot in those two minutes. So clearly I am not the expert in flagging and I apologize the community for not being prepared to answer this fully but I know that any ordinance or policy that we create at the city level requires a lot of input and review by a legal and so that would be our first steps in creating anything new at the city level but that's all I have to answer that particular question. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. Yeah, not knowing what our current planning does as far as that, I think it is a great idea in order for us to see what projects are gonna look like, how big they're gonna be, how intrusive they may be for the neighborhood and other folks view. So yeah, I think we should work with our county and come in with something uniform so that we all do what's the same. So if the project goes up in the county but it affects most of Capitola then absolutely we should have it. So I think it's a good idea. Thank you. And Alexander, I'm gonna give you a chance to step back onto this question after hearing this. Thank you. Yeah, I learned a lot too. You're welcome, Joe. Well, from the little bit that I know it sounds like it's great for the neighbors but it is very costly. I don't wanna add any additional, potentially unnecessary costs to building in Capitola. I think it's already really expensive for a million different reasons to build a house. I would like to see, I mean, I don't know much about it but right off the top of my head, I wonder if there's not cheaper alternatives maybe to put up a digital version where you could see the plans like a QR code or something. I mean, you could put up a QR code that links to the plans that they already have for free rather than building a structure that costs $7,000 plus. So those are my initial thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question is, and we will start this one with Enrique. COVID-19 has been particularly tough on our children. What can Capitola do to support K through eighth grade education as well as improve the community, this community for our children? Well, working at New Bright Middle School during COVID was very difficult. As the athletic director, I was the first school in our county to bring back sports. We started off with, we called it conditioning, but it would start off with flag football. I had the head coach Dwight Lowry from Soquel High come down and it was just us two. And every time we throw the ball, we would definitely have to wipe it down. So that was the beginning of COVID. So we are really happy that we've moved on from there. Second, the next phase was we were able to go inside the gym. So we had to start wearing masks while the children were playing. I don't know if you've ever worked out with a mask on running full speed, but it's very difficult.  Luckily, we were able to move forward and we got rid of the mask.  And being homeschooled essentially is what was going on, was very difficult. Another thing is the kids, you gotta remember it was two years.  If they were a sixth grader and they came in an eighth grader, they're still acting like they're sixth grader. So it took a little bit of time for all of us to get everybody back on schedule. I'm glad that we have moved out of the COVID area. I'm really glad things are moving forward. I hope that we never have to face that again because all it did was set all our children back but moving forward, things are great. Thank you. Thank you. Jerry? Yeah, so I have two daughters that are in public school education and they're teachers. And was that a conversation that we talked about many of days? And what the impact is on our youth and like Enrique said, the impact on a student who was in first grade and they come back and now they're in third.  I think our community did a good job in doing everything they could. Nikki, who is our director up at Jade Street, the program that they work within the community to help offset some of the teaching with the local school district being closed. That program was amazing, what they can do. The COVID-19 was something that hopefully we never have to go through again but I think we all learned a lot and there's many opportunities to grow from that. And so that if we ever had another pandemic, the lessons that we learned, we can be better prepared to support our youth in a different fashion. Thank you, Yvette. Yeah, Capitola should be really proud of themselves for passing the increase to the TOT in 2018. Because of that, the funds to support our children, our programs were able to continue during the pandemic. And what I mean by that is the TOT increase created a dedicated children's fund. And so when we had to cut all discretionary funding at the time, we didn't have to cut programming for kids. And because of those funds, we were able to open one of the first childcare programs in the city to support families of essential workers. We were the first city to ever do that and that's something that the city of Capitola and with the help of Nikki, that we're really proud of and able to see those dollars continue to support after school program today in both our elementary and middle school. We're also seeing a wonderful thing come out of this as well as our partnership with the SoCal School District. They have also supplanted funding for scholarships for students and kids in the community who wanna attend our Parks and Recs program. And so that's really cool. And we've actually seen that increase this year from 10 to 20,000. And then lastly, one of the great things that we're able to do and I'm trying to highlight the good because it was really hard for our kids. I have an eight year old, I was homeschooling while being your mayor working full time. Like I know it was really hard for a lot of our community members. But one of the great things that I got to do on the dais with our fellow council members is allocate over $300,000 to our Jade Street Park to make it more inclusive so that we can see all kids of all abilities play there. And so I'm hoping to see that project move forward in the next four years while serving on behalf of the community. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. Well, COVID-19 was an experience and I guess we did an okay job but not knowing what we know now. I don't know if we would have done anything different. We are lucky that we do have Jade Street Park. It's a jewel, it's not just used by Capitola residents, it's used by people outside the area also. I am proud that we have that and would look forward to bolstering anything we could do for our kids, such as Jade Street Park. I have a grandson. He was in fifth grade at the time when this COVID happened and some of his friends had a real difficult time just navigating the computer. So we need to be prepared to do outreach for some of the kids in our community that might need the extra help and Jade Street's a great place to start. Thank you. Thank you. Alexander? Thank you. Personally love to see a further collaboration with our school districts to provide after school programs. So we've had great success since COVID in these types of partnerships. I think it's so important to get kids out and together in person. It's great that we can do that again. COVID was really hard for everybody. We live in this amazing place that really is perfect to get kids out in nature and exploring their environment together at the same time. I think there are potentially interesting possibilities for utilizing some of these digital trends we've seen since COVID-19, which is a very double-edged sword. I think kids probably have too much screen time but at the same time, we've seen things like Zoom and different apps and social networks be able to connect us in ways that we haven't before and really in human history. So I'd like to look at all different angles for providing programs and learning opportunities for our future children. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations candidates. This is your last question. Why do you want to become a council member? And knowing that it is a four-year commitment, can you assure us that you will serve the full four years knowing or thinking that you know what it entails? And we will start this one with Jerry. Thank you. So my wife, my four daughters, we've been coming to Capitola for over 30 years. We have grown up on the beaches in Capitola. I care and I love deeply about this city. I've been involved with the city as a business owner. I've done development in the city. And about four years ago I was approached by a group of citizens and asked me about running. I was patient. I thought about it. I went to the leadership academy class to make sure I understood what it was like and what Capitola was all about. I met with different department heads and tried to understand what the intricacies at Capitola is all about. I focus on what the history of Capitola is about. And I'm just confident in my experience that I have in past local governments, some law enforcement background, also being a developer and understanding with like when we talk about the mall development, understanding what development is and construction, I understand public contract code. And so now's the time for me to run for city council. And I think those qualifications are important. And I think that'd be a very important thing for me to be able to share those knowledges I have with the council and also with my citizens. Thank you. I bet. Mike, are these our closing comments or just answering the question? No, this is the last question. We're gonna have closing comments right after this. Oh, we are. Okay. And so why do I wanna be a council member? Well. What are you thinking? What am I thinking? No, no, no. You know, I think you heard it today that projects take time, outcomes take time, things take time. And there are a lot of projects that I'd like to see come to fruition and to be part of the follow through that our city has committed to over time, such as the groundbreaking for the wristband mansion. I had the privilege of seeing, being at the ribbon cutting for our library. I wasn't part of that. I just got to enjoy the ribbon cutting because it took so many years. And so to be able to continue to serve and to be able to continue to participate in community and volunteer my time and other organizations and things like that are just so important. I never imagined after moving over two and a half decades ago here that this would be my forever home. And I was a homeowner and I heard Alexander say, you know, I rented for 10 years and I've rented and then I was able to buy. And now I get to raise my family here. And it's just really important for me to continue to dedicate my time and energy to the community that I love so much. So thank you. Joe. Did you? You want me to repeat the question? Easy to do. Why do you- No, you have to repeat the question. I didn't know if you were prompting me to go ahead. Oh yes, I was prompting you. Okay, you're on. Thank you. So eight years ago, I ran for city council. It was a great experience. I met a bunch of great people. The night of the election, I won the third seat. 30 days later, I lost it to Jock with like 23 votes. But during that process, which was eight years ago, I had a great experience. And so I felt this is the time. The time is right to jump back in and get back into it. So can I last four years? Absolutely. I spent eight years in the military. Anybody that's been in the military knows that that's a trying time. You know, I've been in law enforcement in this county for over 30 years. So I think four years is just a drop in the bucket to do great things for Capitola.  So I look forward to meeting with everybody, listening to what's needed, find out things that I don't know. I just just being here tonight, I learned things, which is great. So I want to soak it all in to do the best job I can working with the city council. Well, thank you. Thank you, Joe. Alexander. Thank you. As I said earlier, I'm running for a city council because I believe it would be an amazing opportunity to serve our community, to create more housing, to create better opportunities for small businesses to thrive. I think these issues are so important right now, especially with the economy, post COVID, small businesses need all the help they can get. And that's such an important aspect of our whole society. It's our taxes, it's our livelihoods, it's house society functions.  But if you look at the numbers, the state of housing is not something that previous generations have faced currently. Even if you look at the housing plan for 2014, it's already very dire. I don't think that anybody currently in the middle income group or below can afford a house in Capitola, which is frankly a failure of a society. It's not a problem just for Capitola, but that's a problem that each one of us as our cities and as our community has to tackle together. In regards to working through the four-year term, I have a long history of keeping commitments to organizations. I've been working with community organizations for a past five years in leadership roles. I've never stepped down from one unnecessarily or before my term ended. Becoming a city council member is not a role that I would take lightly, as I don't think anybody here would. And I would do everything I possibly could to fulfill my duties. And I would be honored to have this role to serve our community. Thank you. Thank you. Enrique? Yes. So my initial reason for running for city council, I'll tell you the story real quick. About six months ago, I'm driving the bus, done with my route. I see a student on the side of the road crying. Obviously I have to stop. It's in my duty to stop. I got out, asked the student if they were okay. Students said yes. Told the student to get in the vehicle. I'll take you back to the school. There we called the parents. Parents asked me to take this student home. I obviously emailed the principal and the vice principal and let them know what went on, why I was off route. Two months later, that student is dead. And I knew that there was something that I needed to do for the community. And for those students that don't fit in that box, I know that there's something else for them to do. And if a student gets off of a work or a school at three o'clock and their parents work over the hill and they don't get home till six or seven, that's three hours, four hours of unsupervised activities, which is five days a week, which is 20 hours a week, 80 hours a month, 800 hours a year of just unsupervised just running around. We need something for our youth to do. We need a youth center. Live Oak has a youth center. Scott's Valley has a youth center. Santa Cruz has a youth center. We need one here in Capitola. Also, I would like to focus on getting things done like them all. I want safe opportunities for our kids. I would like to give back to our community, maintain this beautiful city that we live in. I'm running for Capitola City Council for your children, our children, and of course, my own. It's in my blood for community service. Thank you. Thank you. And now we'll come up with summing up, giving your closing statements and we'll start with Jerry. Perfect. I just want to go back to the last question, Mike, and I apologize. I did not answer the second part of that question. I would be more unhappy to serve my four-year term. I have never backed off a commitment ever. And so I apologize for missing that end of that part. And so with that, I would like to thank Avet, Enrique, Alexander, and Joe for stepping forward and running for the opportunity to be on City Council. Mike, I'd like to thank you for being the moderators this evening and for your ongoing leadership that you explain our community daily. As you have heard my responses this evening, I'm involved, I'm dedicated, and I have the experience in working with local governments and boards. I know how to build consensus and I care deeply about Capitola. The decisions that the next City Council will be making will shape our future for years to come. The opportunity to run for elected office has a special place in my heart. When I was growing up in San Jose, both my parents were green card citizens. And it wasn't until our neighbor, our family friend, Norma Netta, who went on to be the US Congressman, also Secretary of Transportation, provided leadership and support and guidance to my parents to receive their citizenship. I remember the day my dad, who's no longer with us, received a small American flag at his citizenship ceremony and how proud he was to be able to vote in his first city election. And from that day forward, I've always flown an American flag at my house and hence the reason why I've highlighted red, white, and blue in my campaign. I'd be honored to have your vote on November 8th, so please vote for Jerry Jensen for City Council. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. And I realize I too did not answer that second part of that question and I apologize for the viewers and of course it's part of the job and it would be an honor to serve all four years if I were to be reelected. I wanna take the opportunity to thank the chamber for hosting this evening's event as well as former Mayor Mike Termini for moderating and always making it fun. I also wanna thank my fellow council members. It has been a privilege to work beside you, especially our mayor during these and doing the hard work. We had to be resilient the past couple of years and I truly believe by working together and supporting one another is why we've been able to accomplish so much over time here. And to our community, I hope I've earned your support over the last four years and I would be honored to have your vote this November. To learn more about me, you can visit evetbrooks.com. Thank you so much. Thank you, Fred. Joe. Thank you. I'd like to thank the capital of Sokol Chamber, everybody in attendance and Mr. former Mayor Mike Termini for putting this on. A good city council member listens to its citizens and business owners. He or she then implements policy resolutions for the betterment of the community. Capital city council members will make decisions impacting the future and growth of our seaside village. We need to make sure we do it thoughtfully and with consideration. I believe that my life's work has prepared me for these challenging initiatives. Remember, experience matters, please vote for Joe Clark. Thank you. Thank you. Alexander. Thank you. I'd like to thank you for having me tonight, for everybody in attendance and watching online or on their TVs and for giving me the opportunity to introduce myself. And I'd like to thank the capital of Sokol Chamber and Mr. Mike Termini for moderating this. It's been a privilege to participate in this forum and to be alongside such great candidates here. I'm really thankful to live in a place where we have so many passionate and qualified individuals running for office. I think that's a really amazing thing. To summarize my platform, I'd like to support our small businesses, make sure that they have everything they need to thrive and especially given the state of the economy today. I wanna make sure that we have enough housing for our workforce including teachers, police officers, city employees and young families and that we meet our housing goals by careful zoning without negatively impacting our community. And lastly, I'd like to help protect our natural environment and all of the other things that make Capitola such a wonderful place to live. If you'd like to learn more about my campaign, you can visit my website at www.petersonforcapitola.com or please reach out to me directly at www.petersonforcapitola.com if you have any questions. It's been an honor to be here tonight and I look forward to continue serving this great community. Thank you. Thank you, Enrique. Yes, thank you Chamber of Commerce and moderator Mike, appreciate you very much for hosting this wonderful event. I want to see projects finished that make Capitola proud. I want to include our community as we complete these projects like the mall and youth projects. I want the community to know that this is a community where you can be involved. I will bring infectious enthusiasm to the job of council member, always listening to our citizens and weighing options carefully. I may not be politically connected but I have a fresh perspective and new ideas. I'm connected to our schools, families and local communities. Remember, the future of Capitola starts with our youth. I also think the council should follow the direction of our community. Please vote for Mr. Domo on November 8th. Please visit my website, MrDomo.com and current students, past students. Please vote for me. Also parents, previous parents, please tell your friends to vote for me as well. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to thank Carrie and the Chamber for putting this on.  Your demeanor, your mutual respect and I can't forget your brevity has made my job very easy. Thank you. And as they say, may the odds ever be in your favor. Coming up on November 8th. And I think they deserve a round of applause. That concludes our forum. And as I like to say, just think about how many people want to live here. Consider yourself lucky and be happy. Goodnight, Capitola.