San Leandro needs measured and well-informed leaders to work through the financial challenges and police staffing issues that confront the city.
In the Nov. 8 election, the best choices are Lee Thomas for mayor and Kenneth Pon and Monique Tate for City Council.
The city’s cautious budgeting with solid reserves has helped them weather the pandemic, but the long-range forecast shows years of spending exceeding revenues. Compounding the problem, payments on the city’s $397 million pension debt are siphoning off funds, plus there’s a mounting list of unfunded needed capital expenses.
At the same time, the city, like most in the East Bay, struggles to help the homeless population and fill key jobs throughout the city. That’s especially true in the Police Department, where, because of severe understaffing, officers are regularly working mandatory overtime. It’s the result of a confluence of events.
The city, which had been historically supportive of its police, divided when an officer in 2020 fatally shot 33-year-old Steven Taylor inside a Walmart store around the same time that the national police defunding movement was accelerating. The city became one of the first to trim police funding.
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office later charged the officer, Jason Fletcher, who resigned from the force, with manslaughter, making him the first officer in Alameda County in more than a decade to be charged in a fatal police shooting. And the City Council this year established a Community Police Review Board.
The challenge for new members of the City Council will be in rebuilding community trust of the Police Department while shoring up its staffing within the budgetary constraints the city faces.
The challenge for voters will be navigating the city’s voting system. Like some Bay Area cities, San Leandro uses ranked-choice voting in which voters number their top preferences rather than picking just one candidate. But San Leandro adds an unusual twist: City Council candidates run in district elections based on their residency, but voters citywide vote in all the district elections, not just the one they live in.
Mayor – Lee Thomas
Thomas, who served on the City Council from 2014-18, is a school manager for the Oakland district. He brings a blend of human sensitivity and an understanding of the city’s policy issues.
He speaks from his experience in his own San Leandro neighborhood and working in East Oakland when he talks of the need to bolster the staffing of the Police Department and the need for East Bay cities to unite to provide regional services for the homeless, rather than watching unhoused people migrate from one city to the next.
Under the city’s ranked-choice system in this four-person race, Juan Gonzalez is a solid second choice. He’s an economist who specializes in statistical and economic analysis at the global KPMG accounting and professional services firm. He wants to build a culture of cooperation between the council and police officers.
Bryan Azevedo, a sheet-metal foreman, was unfocused despite serving nearly two years on the City Council. Christopher Bammer did not respond to invitations to participate.
District 1 – Kenneth Pon
Pon, a professional accountant, former school board member and current member of the Planning Commission, is the standout candidate in this race.
He has a deep understanding of San Leandro’s finances and wants the city to focus on public safety and basic services, such as road repairs. He’s rightly concerned about the short-staffed Police Department. And he smartly wants to get ahead of the city’s pension debt by using an independent actuary rather than relying on the state pension systems’ delayed accounting and unrealistic investment assumptions.
In contrast, Celina Reynes, a former high school teacher and current law school student, doesn’t recognize the value in Pon’s approach to the city pension debt and says that this is no time for the city to practice austerity. In short, she doesn’t grasp the fundamentals of San Leandro’s current financial situation.
Instead, our recommendation for a No. 2 vote under the city’s ranked-choice system is David Anderson, an Oakland school board trustee from 1987-92 who has lived in San Leandro for 19 years and is currently a member of the city’s Senior Commission. Anderson understands the seriousness of the city’s underfunded pension fund and supports increasing the number of the city’s police officers while reforming department practices to guard against abuses.
District 5 – Monique Tate
This race features two weak candidates, both of whom need to learn a lot more about city finances and the issues the council will face in the years ahead.
Their experience preparing them for a City Council seat comes primarily from the school district. Tate is a member of the San Leandro school board, where, among other things, she approved placing the district’s Measure N bond measure on the March 2020 ballot. Bowen is on the district’s bond oversight committee.
Unfortunately, neither seemed to understand how the tax rates for those bonds are determined, much less the very large tax burden the district’s series of measures has placed on homeowners.
We recommend Tate because of her elective office experience and her recognition of the need to rebuild community support for the Police Department.
