welcome to the league of women voters twenty fourteen election coverage with the league of women voters of berkeley albany and emory that this program is one of a series of programs to showcase candidates for berkeley city council positions and for school board tonight we're meeting candidates from district eight and so let's meet the candidates so from left to right george buyer mike alvarez cohen laurie droste and jacqueline mccormick welcome thank you will be asking each of you the same question and you all have one minute to answer if  rotate so that each of you will also have a chance to be first and last and if there are direct statements to a candidate there may be a chance for rebuttal and that will be at my discretion so let's start with you george ok one minute and this is a very difficult question in that you could answer it for much longer than that i think so remember you need to go to the highest of what are the highest priority needs for berkeley as a whole for the entire city i think the affordable housing i am very concerned that berkeley is changing rapidly with these really high rents and santas go in and shoving runs through the ceiling in berkeley and i want to keep our economic diversity i do want to become a city of have and have nots so it's very important for me that we keep the momentum moving downtown and and we get that housing downtown to berkeley stays affordable i think that's the that's the clear retire already of the city i'm also very focused on the city budget we are living budget deficit i'm in finance from a hospital i know how to make budgets work i'm also very concerned the telegraph avenue which has languished for thirty years it's time to turn that around it is legal to open up a gun store and telegraph it is illegal to open up an electric scooter store that has no sense city that's both environmentally it's basically sustainable and these are tough problems and the group are a lot of skilled a lot of funding a lot of a collaboration to coach a plan to get themselves and most of the strengths that i can contribute to our city council  wonderful glory so city wide i think we have broader challenges like the last loss of business problematic street behavior lack of vitality and some of our commercial corridors i'm also concerned about the academic achievement gap in our schools and i think as a as an educator i can play a real role in that partnership in addressing the academic achievement gap in district eight itself i'm concerned with the store fronts too much traffic in lack of viable parking course i'm concerned with crime and i've addressed many of these issues as chair of the commission on the status of women i've led the efforts to reduce sexual assaults in the city financially we need to start setting a new course on how we're going to be financially sustainable into the future and that means creating if the school action plan we really do need to get all of the stakeholders together at the table to determine what we're going to do moving forward we have a fabulous climate action plan we have wonderful zero waste goals we need to establish the same time type of solutions on how we're going to address our budget crisis because we have over a billion dollars unfunded liabilities and infrastructure needs and those are that's a lot on our plate the the second thing we need to do is as a community we're not as prepared as we need to be in case of a natural disaster and we need to do more work around that and we continue to continue to push down our crime rate and then third we need to address affordability here in berkeley and we need to address affordability for families and that is something that hasn't entered in the conversation we have to make sure that middle to lower income families can afford to work and live and work a wonderful thing so that's the city as a whole now let's talk about district eight what are the critical needs in your district so i feel like my highest priority in the district is be responsive to the needs of our neighborhoods our citizens and our businesses and that's why i have a district a plan that will model how government that's transparent and tech savvy can  cost effective and how responsive to the needs of those neighborhoods residents and businesses and in particular we need to really focus on say for family from your neighbor words mitigated traffic maintain parts especially for example our district were poor and inviting commercial districts which district eight again so i'd like to see more economic vitality and as i mentioned before empty storefronts are really big problem and so one way we can address it is through a carrot and stick  approach for instance we could have a vacancy fee but we also need to combine it simultaneously with more business friendly policies also in terms of our commercial districts we really need to have some difficult conversation so for instance people have been talking about telegraph avenue well we need to talk about people's park as well and again going back to traffic and lack of parking i wrote a proposal analyzing traffic in parking situations in the city of oakland so i have real issues that we have and it's this is nothing new it's been going on since the one nine hundred fifty s and we haven't done enough as a community in working with the university to try and mitigate some of the impact that those commuters have going through that also we have an issue with the university not so much with not so much of its expansion but the fact that we've had an increase in their student population and that population has been moving out into the neighborhoods and some of the impacts have been very detrimental i was part of the southside consortium we were very successful at getting an ordinance passed that will stop the proliferation of many dorms and that has a direct and very significant impact our neighborhoods we need to work closer with the university and we're doing that through the south side consortium and some of the work that i've been able to push forward with in the clim george so i polled this question so we have the summer survey series in my campaign and we asked people what they think is important and the number one issue surprisingly to me was telegraph avenue a lot of people felt we had a woman class university and we should have a world class street the second most important issue for them was education and partnerships with the school district and something that came up for example we didn't but i keep emerson school yard open on the weekends i would be really wonderful also the school gardening program is going to cut a lot of people are supporting a measure diesel to get money like freeway traffic because it's cut through traffic so we've got to do a lot about that and i agree with jackie when she said that the partnership with you see we've really got to really examine that they have broken through their moment cap and that might give us cause the really to renegotiate the agreement ourselves great thanks very much you've mentioned telegraph which is an important story in history data is important in the whole city what what would you do to reinvigorate  laurie ok well as i mentioned before i do favor a carrot and stick approach so looking at vacancy fees i realize vacancy taxes are illegal but they concede fees are not and then incorporat friendly policies one way one easy way is to update our city website also a lot of the buildings along telegraph avenue have very large areas in the back for inventory in the olden days and so if we could maybe reconsider our zoning code to allow for more uses of those store fronts on on telegraph avenue and again as i mentioned before i think we really need to address problematic street  behavior and the role that people's park plays in that so for instance i was taking my kids down telegraph avenue and i saw two individuals using drugs right in front of my kids and i thought well i would i would really like to be able to take my kids into people's park or along telegraph without having to worry about this issue yeah i think we've got come a long way in increasing the density north of the white way to add more housing so we have the greater mix and we'll have more people on the street i'm a little bit troubled on some of how some of these projects are coming forward as condominiums that could be purchased by international parents for their children i think that we need more housing for students and we need housing that's affordable for students and that's one of the reasons that a lot of the students are coming into the neighborhoods it's less expensive to live there as far as the problematic paper that has been ongoing in telegraph for years and once again examining and having a more open dialogue with the university we always forget that people's park is a university property and whatever how you know what happens on that property i their responsibility but through more dialogue and i think there are leaders within the university today that are willing to tackle some of these issues so i look forward to being charged we have a quota system on telegraph which limits types of businesses should scrap it it literally is illegal to open up an electric scooter store that doesn't make any sense we should have to buy a property use the corner of paste and telegraph has been empty for twenty seven years we should have a blight tax increases year by year to make that sting  that developer i also agree with jackie we didn't create the disease or the telegraph unorthodox way we got a lot of opportunity for dense housing there and hopefully it's a mix of hopefully get some condominiums up there get the people who owned the place where they live that are paying taxes where they live i think   increase the next housing on the street on the avenue and address the product the problematic street behavior now in the first one revitalizing people's park i have a very strong track record the university i won the talked about the empty store fronts and we talked about increasing density north of like for example and and in general in the district that the housing and development itself is something that  we need more of to close up those empty storefronts that berkeley has a unique culture and spile that that we love and the mom and pop stores the casual  demeanor of of the store owners is and we're still retain that culture and style and have economic development at the scale that we think we need jack i think it's important that we maintain that style that is part of the character that has made berkeley what it is that's why people live here that's why they moved here berkeley it's not a big change suburban city berkeley's magenta it's what i like to call it and so to promote those kinds of small businesses unfortunately rental rates in berkeley are even though there's a lot of vacant storefronts those prices are really quite high we need to look at they can see taxes if they can see tax to try and bring some of those prices down in specific areas but i also believe we can do a lot more in this community and bringing businesses together to form cooperate is so people have the opportunity to start something new and something unique i certainly serve on a loan or just months before the law ministration board and the city actually has funds available to small businesses to start but so many businesses don't even know that this is available more outreach needs to be done to try and and generate more storefront ok george i think it's a great question i'm going because with all this development in berkeley how do we retain our economic versity the character or or a johnny abbas robot it is doing a sale i mean people flock to that stuff i think people really cherish what we have here and i think people will support it and i think people do support i think that's why the old what has been so successful you know w e and and my i can we do development and well apparently in our district a commercial districts are sure neary and that's why i'm so proud to live here to work in the downtown and to raise my family in our community our public schools and i think that one of my objectives as an see council would be to sustain what is wonderful about berkeley's culture but also we have to make these changes to improve the both locally and regionally and we have great opportunities to grow the number of companies in berkeley so that we have more people that are buying stuff and things like that by the way it's easy to prevent exclusive i think we can have a funky berkeley and also have economic development and development in general so the conventional way of thinking was that we attract entrepreneurs to a city and that's still very important  but recent evidence has shown that people move first to where they want to live and then they find their job so we need to expand the housing supply for a variety of income levels so families retirees looking to downgrade from the of so for instance in detroit they implemented a pop up store plan to revitalize a part of the neighborhood that had empty storefronts and we could really sort of think outside the box maybe have free concerts in the park you so on the topic of economic growth and development on the on the ballot we have measures are we do which seeks to make changes to our current downtown plan what is your opinion on measure our georgia and  i think there are some great things about measure our i think for example it has a higher percentage of paying prevailing wage it has a higher percentage of local workers hired it has a higher environmental standard a great historic overlay to protect the buildings so if you don't like the parking rule you have the back of the ballot if you don't like a setback you have to go back to ballot so it's just i find it is too cumbersome so i applaud just the arrogant for coming up a lot of great ideas and forever putting all of those one measure but changes that it would not be prudent to implement as a ballot measure and the reason why is twofold first you have to take it all or nothing and there are some good parts about it but there are some not for the parts about it a measure are and secondly if you want to downtown will grow and prosper without it thanks larry i too think that downtown has made some great strides over the past few years and i think this ballot measure is well intentioned but misguided and i've done a fair amount of research and organization i really respect transform discussed this ballot measure and why they thought it would be against the environment and also how actually  it has misguided even bicycle parking policies so the reasons why i oppose it are i think it undermines public participation in the process there were two hundred meetings over a believe six years and this was written by just a few people i also think it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions because it requires parking and it doesn't allow for a zero parking will lose revenue the hotel downtown is being stalled right now and we prize our social services so we would lose revenue there and it creates fewer affordable homes the nonprofit housing association of northern california found that the initiative would reduce the ability of creating more affordable housing thank jackie certainly and i'm the only person out here supporting measure r and i'm doing it because for the following reasons and i'm going to share with you what was on the ballot in two thousand and ten when we originally  passed measure r and as far as you know that there was a community process that was years in the making and with hundreds of participants but that was not the measure are they went on the ballot measure are that one on the ballot was one and it was even discussed yesterday in the chamber of commerce mean that was developed and written by a group of development and livable berkeley and it circumvent it that public process but let me share with you what was on the measure our language  promoting green buildings of course we want all of that and that's why our community voted for it but that's not what we've gotten all of those benefits were voluntary this measure mandates those benefits ok we've talked greenhouse gases berkeley wind in the election i don't remember when voted overwhelmingly over eighty percent to have a climate action plan that's been put in place it's been recognised nationally and internationally and we're going forward it's we've done some of the easy stuff and now we're doing the harder stuff how effective do you think the action climate action plan is mine and what if anything should we do differently or emphasize more one of the philosophy that's driving my platform is what i call the three pillars of sustainable government fiscal sustainability a situational sustainability and environmental sustainability that is key and are quite action plan for berkeley put us on the right course for that state ability however we've fallen short the most recent report the city council shelled that we're below our target and so we need to step it up and on the city council i would be an advocate for ways to do that and there are several it may have to do with back to your issue about development is growing the downtown in west berkeley in ways that put jobs in proximity to housing in mass transit and again in my can have the funds to address our climate action projects laurie so i agree with mike in that we really need to start embracing smart growth policies because our population is going to get larger and we need to do something about it we need to prioritize and plan our cities around people and not around automobiles so i think the climate action plan is actually a very good plan and it's doing remarkably however i think we need to have more performance metrics incorporated into the climate action plan so three quarters of the cycling and walking plan have no measurable targets and they also have no measurable targets in terms of water consumption and greywater harvesting so we need to have these outputs in order to measure how successful a program is so we are off parg and on on several of these things but again we're making great strides and i wholeheartedly support the climate action plan but that means again that we need to prioritize people and not cards second our climate action plan has some great goals and we are falling short of them somewhat but i don't believe that the community in the people who live here are as engaged in meeting those goals and understanding what they mean and what we could do to contribute to ensuring that berkeley is truly one of the green green the cities in the country and i believe that should be our goal and we need to work harder at getting there there has been real no real real outreach to our residential community or small businesses and finding ways for them to finance solar capturing grey water to help with irrigation especially in the sprout is incredibly important there are vehicles out there that we can tap grants are available to start putting some resources together so our community can start participating in meeting the balls and be a partner in it and that's what's very exciting about working in the community as i have and delivering those messages and getting people excited about wanting to participate hard i agree with all the other panelists i i think the most important we can do is put to reinvest in our parks and supporting the parks tax we have fifty three beautiful parks but they are very poorly maintained they're falling into disrepair we have to reconnect people to nature and when i went up for the sierra club which is worth a by the way which is great i talk a people in the center says that they can walk within which we've already discussed to some extent but what other creative ways might we look at getting people out of fossil fuel burning cars and let's start with employers and institutions to issue transit passes to their employees because i'm i'm sure as you all of heard a lot of neighbors sometimes have a difficult time finding parking in front of their own homes so we could incentivize larger employers to issue free transit passes we could also incentivize usage of public transit by enforcing the california parking cashel law at a municipal level so if someone decides not to drive to their work than make it then they could be cashed out so that could look at that type of solution to incentivize public transit which i think is actually really important to act and you're absolutely correct when we talk about the east west traffic o ability to get on public transportation i mean i can walk up and down the hills my husband i can get it down the hill i can't get it back up again because you have medical condition so we drive everywhere and we would love to shop more in berkeley but there is a challenge and find parking to be able to do that so as a result the city of berkeley is using it losing a significant amount of retail revenues because we're not accommodating people who want to shop in berkeley either from a parking perspective or a transportation perspective it's costly venture to provide some kind of on call service in smaller run around kind of vans that would be electrically operated but i think it's something that as we look in our community out of here at our fiscal action plan with jackie just said you know i've knocked on fifteen hundred doors so far and eight and they've all they've all laughed at me when i said i take the bus there is no bus service up there and so many years ago some local heroes in the community we developed in the c which improved the one our we got level and biking we got increased headway we got transponders to turn the lights green we'd always things for the bus but we didn't get a route up to the hill so one of the things i was thinking about was this boat purchase of a transit passes what that would in ford fusion and i think if we had more we're trying to charging stations in the downtown parts of west berkeley all the commercial districts then that would encourage more like a car usage in person likewise i think we should set parking fees that give discounts to cars distributors of sugar sweetened beverages so jackie what what is your opinion on that what are the advantages disadvantages and why do you support or not support  one of the proudest moments and i go to every single council meeting and i was so proud for the night that we stood up against big soda to fight this battle i am very supportive of the soda tax and in fact commented last night on berkeley side when there was a lot of debate going back and forth on sugar person juice and i said well you left off left one very important element and that was caffeine berkeley has always been a leader when it comes to public health and ensuring that we protect our children and our community and i am very proud of us for taking the stand and waging this war and i hope that other communities will take our lead and follow saint george the first curb cut for him to get people here in berkeley the first place to ban styrofoam little donald here in berkeley so you know this in the middle wage and other issues when we really show leadership it makes it exciting and fun and different and just a wonderful place to be and i think that the soul is actually exactly the same now i know we had a lower the bar to fifty percent just to get a pass i thought that was actually pretty good strategy and there's issues with the money going into the general fund and and not tax in the  consumer but i still believe that as a signature issue for berkeley we should pass this thing we should pass it overwhelmingly i believe it'll sweep across the country and bring attention finally to what these sort of companies are doing to our kids ok mike  health of god i don't drink soda i don't vote by sort of my family for the more i've been working in downtown for many years now and i see the kids coming out of the stores when sold in one hand and junk food in the other for breakfast and throughout the day talking about food and health this morning with alice waters on the phone is supporting my campaign and i told her that i approved of the soda tax because one out of three children will get diabetes at some point in their lifetime and so it is a link to that and the tax focuses on big soda and not on the consumers so i think it's a good first step and it this is this incentivizes in jesse in these dangerous drinks because the obesity epidemic pack is our city and unseen ways so i support the fact ok let's shift a little bit crime is always a consideration  your district is a major transit where the university you have students you have a library of a great diversity of people in your district what are the crimes that are the most problematic in your area and what can the city do to help george well let's see so i am part of something called a brother to a neighbor safe neighborhood council we meet every month or so to discuss crime what's interesting in the the what the what they talked about last night was well it's the active citizenry that report crimes that are very active in their community that forms neighborhood watch groups those are those are really the key is the public crime and preventing cri people patrolling telegraphist goodwill ambassadors well then we could probably reduce crime on telegraph so i i wrote the proposal i presented at the city council i presented the telegraph business district and downtown and the british ambassador program was born and that has really i i went to police reefing used to learn about how they're addressing issues and also went on a police ride along and that was happening and i can tell you our police are so extraordinarily trained they are diplomats and scholars and choices voting and part of why i got that is because i support maintaining their training and also i support data driven policing and i think we can do more of that in berkeley and with the right tools and that will help us really well and i've worked with them in particular over the past year on sexual assaults and i have been leading the fight against sexual assault both on campus and in the city and in fact i created a partnership with the mills college public policy program so we take students within the entire graduate program and have them look at an issue within berkeley and provide concrete policy recommendations so this past year it was sexual assault and the year before it was the sexual trafficking of minors so we have tangible policy recommendations that we have delivered and would like to see enacted i also would like to say that of course property crime is a huge issue as well my car was stolen off my block just a few months ago and we really need to again keep our eyes open and reinstitute the community block captain program thing jackie you know george and i both attended and we did last night this berkeley safe neighborhoods resurgence of that particular group and we're looking at a lot of issues city wide in our particular neighborhood there's been a huge uptick in car break ins along avalon hill kraus domingo you know all around monkey island and they're grabbing goes and it's becoming very problematic because these homes tend to be located up the hill they're not close to the street so we need to do some more education with the public in and help them understand what they can do as far as getting the right kind of camera equipment so when these things happen you could possibly you know capture a license plate the police could track down and the police are more than there they would be thrilled to help the community yes but the biggest issue that i see is of disconnection in our neighborhoods in our community the more we  together and share information and share conversations the better we're going to be in supporting each other around issues of crime and i have always done that and that's one of the big things that i'm going to continue to do when defeated in your opinion what would be the right thing to do and if it's passed of course there confirm but what would happen if it's defeated georgia or no my country fought i think our redistribute process one elaborate community process and over a long period of time and i think we came to what is a good compromise and so  i'm fine with the way the districts are now for this election and i don't suggest going back and reducing that however the next time we do this i think we should have a citizens committee that  laurie so i absolutely believe we need to have a student district but i i don't support this measure because we have so many other urgent issues to focus on and but i do agree that we need that independent redistricting commission because this entire process was so divisive and we need to make sure that we don't revisit this in that in that manner and jackie i was very involved in this process and actually created the neighborhood map and then work with the united students district now in coming to an agreement that included both the university needs and provided for a diverse group of students to be represented paternity and co ops the north side and the south side we came up with a consolidated map that everyone was very happy with so i'm intimately involved in the problem that i have with supporting this measure is the way it ended up getting on the ballot i don't believe that a process that is available to our community through our city charter to referendum something that came before the voters  should be challenged in court by the leaders of this community and that's what happened we should not be afraid of citizens in this community of being sued by our leadership if we exercise our right assistance that are provided to us in our city charter than stuart i ran for office in one thousand nine hundred six and i argued strongly for the student district i think i was the first person to say it actually i went around with a big map and said hey you know we've never want to see i was a recent student of a time when this is not right that we should have a district drawn for students for students by students we could finally win an election having said that i want to talk on what jackie said i mean the process got very politicized their race and i went to the city council several times to the morning kind of deal and said look you guys you got to compromise you know one team once this the other team once this list is compromised let's get this thing off the bow of us come up with a compromise plan i didn't get any budget any budging on the council i mean the partisan lines were drawn a read like to hear from each of you give us a few minutes on why your constituents in this trick they should vote for you what separates you from these wonderful people should vote for me if they want a leader with backbone with experience that knows how to get things done people should vote for me if they care about affordable housing if they want to keep the momentum downtown people should vote for me they care about the budget i'm an m b a from hospital in finance i know what i'm talking about people should vote for me they care about telegraph avenue like i said it is legal to open up a gun store illegal to open up a scooter's or doesn't make any sense people should vote for me if the arrogant and they're all more into that when graft trust because they know i can build coalitions they know i can lead teams they know i can get the best ideas out of people and get things done and if you vote for me the bill the progressive city that works thanks my berkeley and district eight are extraordinary that's why i'm so proud to live and work and raise my family in our city i want to be our city council member to sustain with wonderful daughter community and i also want to address our problems our top issues are my priorities and they are safer family friendly neighborhood improving schools mitigated traffic well maintained parks inviting commercial districts and a city that's both environmentally in fiscally sustainable these are tough problems and they're going to take a lot of skills a lot of funding a lot of collaboration in kota plan to achieve them those are the strengths that i can contribute to our city council team my city wide plan will bring clean jobs to berkeley there are thereby increasing our commercial tax base so that we have the funds to address our challenges my district plan will model how government that's transparent and te savvy can be cost effective and highly responsible to the needs of its neighborhoods its residents and businesses i have a track record of award winning public private partnerships that demonstrate my results oriented skill set for example i co the most qualified person to do the most qualified professional to do a tough job thank you thank you so again i'm laurie draw c and i'm running for city council in district day and throughout my life i've dedicated myself to public service and giving back to my community when i moved to the elmwood seventeen years ago i knew it's where i wanted to raise my family so immediately i got to work and started giving back to my community by volunteering with the homeless teaching public schools and working with cities and counties to craft effective public policy and i'm running for berkeley city council to bring a fresh perspective and to ensure that city services are provided to all from the youth to seniors on the housing advisory commission i work for affordable housing because people who work in berkeley should be able to live in berkeley as chair of the commission on the status of women i believe the efforts to combat sexual assault both on the campus and in the city as an educator i work with who i work with schools and i also work with students and we need to stop the gap that exists between some students in our schools most of all i'm running for berkeley city council for my kids i have a son simon he's three and i have a daughter core and she's seven months and i want to make berkeley the best possible place for them and i want to be the best possible place for you and your family we need to usher in the next generation of pragmatic leaders and that's why a family member nancy skinner is supporting me along with vice mayor linda miles capitally darryl moore and countless organizations including the space stonewall democratic club the national gay and lesbian victory fund the john george democratic club and many more so please and i'm running as a community leader and a neighborhood activist in the district a community and i'm running because i want to be the change on council that our neighbor elections aren't just for the candidate but they're there for the people of this community to demand more and demand accountability from those that are going to represent them on council but that's not enough we need to elect people who are truly going to be in our communities every day talking to you about your issues working on solutions and continuing to bring our community together that's what i do today that's what i want to do in the future and that's what i will do as your council leader we need someone who is going to do bring our neighborhood together in that position on our berkeley city council we need to have a new this we need to have a physical action plan we need to ensure the book per solvent into the future we need to improve our public safety and ensure our entire community is ready for a natural disaster and continue to push our crime rates down and we need to address berkeley's affordability we need to ensure that families within our community can afford to live here that we can open up opportunities for those who work in our community we cannot see allowed to be a one percent city that's not what we're about none of us want that to happen i'm running under the idea that mccormick makes that happen whenever i'm asked i stand up for our community and i work for our neighborhoods whether it's assaults in the house if it's dealing with noise that affects our elderly and our support someone with a proven track record vote for me jacqueline the permit for city council thank you so much on behalf of the league of women voters i would like to thank the candidates you've been very enjoyable and we definitely have a choice for more information on candidates and ballot measures please go to the website smart voter or you can also go to the league web site l w  websites that you'll see on the credits so thank you very much for watching and don't forget to