welcome to the illegals movement voters twenty fourteen election coverage i am this west with the league of women voters of berkeley and emory bell this is one of a series of programs designed to showcase candidates for berkeley city council and from berkeley school board and today we're meeting candidates from district seven so welcome and let's introduce you on the left my left is sean barry and chris w something that is a direct statement is made that is inappropriate rebuttals maybe maybe appropriate so and that won't count for the time so let's start with the first question xan and i warn you that this is you have one minute and it's a very broad question so you need to think about the highest priority the question is what are the highest priority needs for the entire city of berkeley well thank you for that question and thank you to the league for  hosting my three priority issues for the city are making sure that we're following through on our climate action plan that has a number of elements whether it's meetings are a waste goals building affordable housing transit corridors and otherwise continue to be the that berkeley has been on these issues i'm second public health partnership so we're fortunate to have our own public health department in the city we should continue to leverage partnership so that we can serve the needs of our residents and help the fight help in equities and third is really creating job opportunities for people at all ends of the income spectrum and from all educational backgrounds i think we can do a better job of creating these living wage opportunities for people who might not have a college degree so those are my three issues where i think berkeley can continue to be a leader and really do view to all the hundreds of issues that we deal with in the course of a year this the city of berkeley has this great reputation as being progressive but we don't always deliver on that in the real world so i have sponsored the most counsel adams hundreds of them on many different progressive issues my second priority is not citywide but more focused on my district affordable housing public safety are critical issues in my district and citywide as well thank you spoke a little about your district but i'd like to pursue that a little bit more what are the key needs in the district your district seven and how are they different from the rest of the city  specific things that we don't see elsewhere chris well district seven is eighty six percent student age and i have been the foremost advocate of empowering an entire generation of cal students i have appointed hundreds of students and helped get others to appoint them to city commissions i've had hundreds of interns who worked in my office and actually wrote ordinances resolutions and city council and it was that got adopted by the city council  i think the disenfranchisement of students by city government for decades has been reversed but you know we've made a lot of headway but we're still trying to make more that's why this year instead of just me appointing twenty or thirty students we set a goal of getting fifty one students appointed to city commissions by all the council members so that we can try to reflect their percentage of the population thank   to students and residents feel safe at night in their neighborhoods and on our commercial corridors and the second is the affordability of housing rents of guy rocketed mortgages are high new home buyers face a perilous landscape and that's really affecting everyone in the district both students and non students and the third issue really is making sure that we have a vibrant and inclusive telegraph corridor we have a great history in berkeley and in the campus community i think we can do more to meet that potential to make sure that it's a welcoming space for people from all walks of life whether they live here visit here and show up here for a saturday of the once in a while i think we can do better and i think working together with the city we can do that thank you actually following up a little on telegraph telegraph is a key street for us it's right next to the university it's a bit from the light up it's in your district as you know and we'd like that to be a showcase for the city what what can we do better what are some of the key issues and what do we need to do about them and i think it's absolutely true that telegraph is the gateway commercial corridor for the city and it really is a part of our history and is an important part of our future and you know in my mind the solution the telegraph really starts with people means more people living on telegraph working on telegraph dining and shopping on telegraph and investing in telegraph both their time in their money and their banner g and i think there are some practical steps that the city has started to take that i want to really accelerate starting with the level in office space the first start ups on second commercial units i voted for that on the planning commission building more housing units on the corridor on bancroft and some of the surrounding streets so that we have guys on the street i'm a big believer in the jane jacobs paucity of eyes on the street so it really just start with people and their investment in they have new and that's what i would pursue thank you chris what we've made a lot of headway in terms of changing the laws and the policies i have sponsored proposals for one hour free parking to create a park that policy to get the berkeley police department and you see police department to have better coordination i wrote the violence prevention response plan i proposed that the city sue a vacant lot in or owner in order to get it to have a housing proposal shortly after we sued they did and in a proposal i fought to just remind the permit process successfully and i sponsored the most important change that's happened in the years for telegraph which is increasing the floor area may show from three point five to five this will allow a forty percent increase in the amount of affordable housing and student housing that can be built above white way close to campus thank you berkeley has a unique culture and style across the city and we have a robust artists and community have mom and pop stores we have a very engaged population is it possible to retain and style and culture and still have the development we need for particularly for housing and for businesses and i guess if you're chris well i have been a passionate advocate for support for the arts you know getting helping the freight and salvage and helping many other arts institutions get get the funds in order to stay in berkeley and survive and thrive i've supported many proposals for small businesses and economic development both pose i've written the largest number of economic development for poses for the city council and i've also proposed the sunshine ordinance and many other rules and policies and procedures and use of modern technology to allow the public to become more engaged and more inclusive are we do have an engaged in this and we but it's somewhat elitist and self selecting we don't actually embrace and include all the people of all the different parts of our community for far too long south and west berkeley have been left behind students have been left behind young people high school students and other young people have been left behind so we need to expand on our efforts in terms of arts and small business and community engagement thank you sean yes and i absolutely professionals and people from all walks of life and all incomes who want to stay in the city and hopefully they can it really does create opportunity in terms of sales tax receipts in our commercial corridors and it's very important that we nurture that customer base for the have only two or three employees and really do struggle and i think we've also seen great progress in our downtown arts district as a medic the managing director for prickly repertory theater is one of my supporters and somebody who has really been critical in that effort and i really would want to continue to to nurture that in downtown and hopefully bring bring more of that effort to the telegraph area as well thank you on the topic of economic growth element we have on the ballot measure  which seek to make changes in the downtown plan how do you see measure are and why shawn well i am opposing measure r and i think that we have seen really good progress in downtown we've seen new people  restaurants a lot of new potential and i don't think that the current downtown plan is perfect i mean nothing is ever perfect in the policymaking realm and it's also not set in stone and the council has an opportunity to change it my big problem with measure our one is that it changes the rules and midway through the game we had applicants for projects who thought that we had a certain set of rules in place and now those are being changed but more importantly if we pass a measure are we're not going to be able to modify it in the coming years so to have this twenty plus page document that was written by two or three people without a public process like we had meeting up to the current downtown plan i really think would be a mistake for the downtown and i think it's something that every candidate has to take a strong position on so that voters know what they think is happening in downtown and and what we should do about it thank you chris well there's been a lot of hoopla and a lot of screaming and shouting and fighting over the previous version of the downtown flynn and this new modification and yet i would say the practical real world solutions that high have i have introduced actually have done more to change the real world possibility for development even just a floor area ratio change for telegraph and a forty percent increase in how much housing could come in to telegraph in those opportunities cites you know that could probably have just about as much of an impact nearly as the entire ballot measure that everybody is yelling at each other all over the city  the the increase in development in berkeley is attributed by some people to the previous measure are but these same kinds of massive increases in development are happening in many cities in the whole bay area who didn't  measure or or didn't have a downtown plan so i think people spend too much time arguing about a plan and not enough time focusing on practical real world economic development solutions like the ones that i have sponsored thank you talking about climate change you raise we in when we first put out whether we wanted as a city to have a climate action plan we passed it by over eighty percent so we have a very supportive  population here for climate action we've got a climate action plan it's gotten international and national recognition but we want to know how effective is it are we really on track to where we need to be  and what if anything should we do differently chris well i mean the only council member who has repeated really advocated that we shouldn't just have a playing with hundreds of good ideas  we should actually implement many of them what are concepts and in deciding which ones to implement we should evaluate the cost effectiveness and the environmental effectiveness of each of these proposals not all three hundred proposals are of equal environmental environmental merit or equal economic feasibility so we need to prioritize a few dozen things that are really critical that will have the greatest greenhouse gas reduction possibilities and do some of the ones that could be done really inexpensively but you know they may not have a dramatic impact but they don't cost much so i think we need to sort of pick off the big ones that need to happen like community choice energy which many other cities and more in county and richmond are doing it alameda county is moving towards it and yet we still haven't gotten berkeley to do this and by an important environmental thank you priority thank you xan yeah  tree was really an important aspirational statement to make as a city but the more important thing is are we following through and are we taking concrete steps to meet those goals and i was interested to read the city auditors report recently on r s zero waste goals and the fact that we've critical and you know my background when i went to work in d c after i graduated from college was at a transportation advocacy group we really worked to find solutions nationally for building walkable sustainable communities we're doing some of that in berkeley but i think we also creating more green job opportunities in the city close to where people live so i'd like to work on those issues on that thank you on that topic more specifically how do we get people moving to reducing fossil fuels and which is the biggest hitter that we need to do for mitigation cars are fifty percent of all emissions in california how do we get people out of fossil fuel burning cars in berkeley and given we have the challenge of the freeway going through always look at the berkeley residence at this point and tell me what you have as ideas to make that work let's say it to you sean yeah i think it's an important question because again it's easy to be aspirational but it's harder to really make the lifestyle changes in our own lives and i think all of us have changes that we know we could make that might be difficult but when it comes to getting out of cars i mean the real crux of the issue is is there a a regional effort also a lobbying effort at the state level and so really have to make sure that people who want that alternative have it available we also have geographical challenges in the city people who live in the hills and elsewhere so we have to have a creative fix of solutions thank measure b b additionally i have been a strong advocate for downtown public transit center which ac transit begged the city of berkeley to do and the city of berkeley has refused to do it we need to create make the kind of improvements to bus service that many other cities around us like oakland and san francisco are already doing we have an antiquated bike plan that really needs to be refreshed there are cutting edge ideas that we've built richmond oakland are all doing and we're not doing them yet so we need to catch up with the bay area and update our plan and we also need to update our pedestrian plan telegraph avenue has some of the most heavily accident problem intersections in the city and yet we're not having pedestrian lighting there for the safety of the people daytime and nighttime and we're not fixing the dangerous pedestrian intersections and telegraph sufficiently thank you and bankroll and craft thank you skipping a little bit your district is includes the university and as you've mentioned you have a large proportion of university aged people and university students what are what do you see as the major town and gallon issues facing our city and how you propose to deal with them chris well i think there is i mean the university is the single biggest entity and force in in the entire city and the city sort of ebbs and flows between you know when they sued the university and wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars of the taxpayers money to sue them on a case that there was no chance of winning and yet that was seen as politically very popular and then they go to the other hand and they sort of like let the university administration do whatever they want to do whether it's good for the students whether it's good for the neighborhoods whether or not it's good for the businesses and so we have this been a passionate advocate for the students for the employees for the neighborhoods saying we need to negotiate with the university we need to appreciate it but we also need to stand up to the u c administrators who neglect all of these  well the university is a critical part of our city and it's impossible to imagine berkeley without it but it is a two way street and the city and the university both have to make sacrifices and compromises to make sure that the relationship is  constructive for all parties and i think one example of this when it comes to student issues some students live off campus some live on campus the most move in areas that for instance are patrolled by the berkeley police department the greek system in particular as we discussed earlier in the program crime rates in the south side are higher than the rest of the city although crime is down citywide which is a very good thing but we also have a serious sexual assault issue on the university side and and that's something that requires a strong partnerships and that's something that i would want to be a part of on the council and that really comes to bringing the police and the university in the city and merchants to the table i think that's the kind of role that i could play and hope i have a chance to do that thank you ok for the last question let's go back to the ballot measure is proposing to impose a general tax on distributors of sugar sweetened beverages xan what is your opinion on measure d so i'm a strong supporter of measure d and i spoke earlier about my previous work experience in transportation and housing and i really am convinced that health and transportation and housing and general quality of life and live ability issues are all tied together and we have a lot of hope inequities in the city i think we're fortunate that we have a citizenry that wants to do something about it and this is an issue that's unified the community we have in anonymous city council unanimous school board and i think we're going to be able to do what richmond was not able to do because we really put in the legwork to put together this broad coalition that represents people from different opportunities obviously we're supposed to keep our options open on that but i think that it really is a great coalition and i'm excited to be a part of it i think that this is a other potential first for berkeley thank you chris health care issues are one of my passionate burning issues that i work a lot on i sponsored the city of berkeley to support us on forty five and no one forty six the big ballot measures that are on health issues and insurance reform statewide with all of these other important things like fighting for single payer fighting for insurance reform with prop twenty five and dealing with proper support posing prop twenty six so i you know i'm a long time activist on these health issues you know have strongly advocated for nurses and patients and for the people who are the victims of these issues like diabetes so in your area housing of course it is an important issue but what are the specific issues or problems with housing in your district low income housing many dorms studio apartments family housing what are their real questions and in district chris well there are numerous possibilities for fixing the housing crisis the housing affordability crisis is one of the biggest issues in berkeley i have proposed  solutions some of which are working their way through the bureaucracy one of the most important is to increase the supply of student housing close to campus and to get the university to actually provide housing on university on land  right adjacent to the university so that students don't have to drive or come from a long distance we also need to increase the funding for the affordable housing trust fund i have proposed pacific ways and specific poor is a money that can be added including a five hundred thousand dollar amount from the berkeley in project if they don't build affordable housing there that they should add that money to the housing trust fund when control is one of the most important policies we need i'm indoors by the eight pro tenant members of the rent boy and i support opposing vacancy control and and ok yeah i mean we have a lot of housing challenges in district seven and really the challenges come down to the quality affordability and availability of palestine and the solution is going to be a mix of everything but one thing that really is critical is we do need to build new student housing opportunities near campus and i was dismayed to read in the daily cal and i was quoted in the story about a project on duran avenue a fifty six units that has gone through the city process i was encountered numerous delays and it's important to have an engaged citizenry to review projects to make sure they're a good fit but we also have to make sure we have fair rules of the road so that we can get these projects built because there is definitely a housing scarcity you see it when students show up you know a dozen or more of them some with parents in tow looking at houses i had that experience when i was a student just a couple of years ago so it's really critical that we build new housing whether it's from the private developer from the university and also sure that we make available resources on what's already there so that students and others can navigate the process thank you on behalf of  voters i'd like to thank the candidates for spending this time with us and answering our difficult questions we really appreciate your time for more information on candidates if you may go to the smart voter dot org website or the league website on the credits at the end of this so thank you for watching and don't forget to vote