Redwood City Council sees competitive race

The candidates are Jason Galisatus, activist and member of the Complete Streets Advisory Committee; Planning Commissioner Giselle Hale, longtime Councilwoman Diane Howard; Rick Hunter, accountant and former planning commissioner; activist Diana Reddy, Planning Commissioner Ernie Schmidt and local businesswoman Christina Umhofer.

Each candidate supports the half-cent sales tax measure on the November ballot, but with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Galisatus, Reddy and Hale support the cannabis tax, also on the ballot, for bringing in a modest increase in revenue, and they also look forward to seeing those numbers grow with the legalization of retail commercial cannabis in the future.

“Cannabis is here to stay, we may as well benefit from it,” Reddy said.

Umhofer said cannabis research and development brings in more money than retail and is suggestively interested in seeing that industry have a greater presence in the city.

Schmidt and Howard, on the other hand, aren’t ready to greenlight dispensaries in Redwood City, at least for now. To boost revenue, both emphasized the need to retain and attract large car dealerships, one of the city’s biggest sales tax generators.

Reddy has suggested a head tax or square footage tax on the city’s large businesses. Howard said she’d be open to studying the head tax and Hale described such a tax as reasonable, adding that Mountain View is currently exploring one and appears to have the support of the Chamber of Commerce.

Hunter also appeared open to the aforementioned taxes and suggested renting out city facilities to increase revenue. Umhofer wants to build micro grids and then sell the power back to residents.

As for cutting costs, Hale favors administrative cuts and a greater reliance on technology to maximize the efficiency of government operations. She suggested the use of chatbots to answer residents’ questions rather than staff. She’s also interested, as is Hunter, in further pursuing shared services with other jurisdictions.

Hunter said no cuts should be made to programs that serve the underprivileged and if any cuts have to be made, there needs to be extensive community outreach first.

“I want to avoid making cuts for those who are least able to afford them,” he said.

Galisatus mentioned development as a path to boosting revenue.

“If we develop further that will add to our property tax base, but the question is how do we do it and where do we do it and we need to make sure we get thorough community input to make sure it’s done the right way,” he said. “I don’t support adding the housing we need at all costs. ... I don’t support filling in the Bay to accommodate our housing needs. We have plenty of space near transit corridors for housing.

“I disagree with the sentiment that housing is the problem, that market rate housing is the problem,” he continued. “Because they need somewhere to live and if they’re not living in the market rate units they’re going to be competing for more affordable units, driving those rents up and displacing those residents.”

Hunter said growth is inevitable and wants to see a slowdown of office development to close the jobs-to-housing imbalance, which he believes is the single biggest cause of the housing crisis.

But Hale said Redwood City’s jobs-to-housing ratio is relatively low.

“It’s that we’ve been impacted by our neighbors,” she said.

Hale described the redevelopment agency as the city’s “most successful tool we had in the toolbox” for affordable housing development.

“We need to bring back [redevelopment agencies] and when Gov. Brown took it away, everything since then has been an attempt to replace that,” she said, adding she is interested in working with state legislators who would have to make it happen.

Schmidt stressed the importance of communication when it comes to past and present development.

“It takes community leaders to continually find ways to remind our community about what occurred and how we got here,” he said. “What I’m looking forward to doing is taking more time to involve the community more and if that means that if a project comes before us and we find that it’s a hot topic then instead of one study session you have two and you do that with all the other commissions and committees.”

Asked about her vision for the area east of Highway 101, Howard sees a “low-density lifestyle with recreational opportunities,” as the zoning permits, and not a “densely populated office space.” She also believes biotech companies would love to relocate there and hopes Google, which recently opened a new campus along the waterfront, will help make ferry service at the Port of Redwood City a reality.

“I still want to get that ferry service going in Redwood City so on the south side of Woodside Road I’d say let’s work with Google and others so we can build up their campus, make it a solid campus where they will invest in future ferry service and help us move forward creating a water transit in Redwood City.”

Hunter is worried about the loss of light industrial areas being rezoned for offices, and celebrated the city for buying waterfront property from building materials company CEMEX.

“I think we can have our own waterfront destination, like a river walk, and combined with a new park, which would be a trail on both sides of Redwood Creek from downtown to that area,” he said. “I think we could have a destination area of restaurants and recreational opportunities and entertainment all along our waterfront. That would be very exciting.”

Schmidt suggested development shouldn’t take place in that part of the city, at least not until the Woodside Road/Highway 101 interchange is complete.

“Can you even imagine the impact that the community of Redwood City is going to have if a large development is out there and we’re nowhere close to raising the funds for that interchange,” he said. “In the interim, I do agree as we continue to grow in Redwood City and hear concerns about rapid development, I think we owe it to the community to preserve open spaces.”

Reddy said she’s completely against offices and any large developments on the east side of Highway 101 in part because of concerns about sea level rise. She’d rather see light industrial uses there. Umhofer agreed that the area should remain zoned as is.

“Where I take my harder line is you already bought into an industrial restricted zone, build within those zonings,” she said, referencing the Harbor View proposal. “It’s very black and white for me as far as that zoning goes. ... You bought where you bought.”

The November ballot will also include half-cent sales tax increase, a cannabis business tax and a charter amendment, which would eliminate a residency requirement for the city manager and establish term limits for city boards.

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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