Voters to decide on San Mateo’s District 2 councilmember

Fernandez was born in the district, has lived there for more than a decade and works for state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park. Hansen has been a San Mateo resident for several years, but moved to District 2 several months ago, though he said his role as chief programs officer at Peninsula Family Service has led to frequent conversations and relationships with longtime community members.

Both described their plans if elected and how they’d address some of the top-priority issues in their district.

Budgetary challenges

Due to the city’s roughly $11 million projected budget deficit this fiscal year, Fernandez said it’s important to develop several ways to stem the bleeding.

“We are going to have to contract. We are going to have to prioritize programming and infrastructure projects,” she said. “We need to make sure we are negotiating in good faith with the unions, especially management, to see what can be done, in order to have those well-paid six-figure employees — maybe make short-term sacrifices for long-term gain with regards to pension or other things that can be done to stop the hurting.”

She added that public-private partnerships are also essential, especially given the presence of firms like Snowflake and Verkada in the city. Making sure city staff are well-equipped to seek state and federal funds is also key, she added.

Hansen echoed similar sentiments about seeking grant funding from state and federal agencies to fund necessary infrastructure projects. He said he’d also support better accessibility to the budget process to make it more digestible for residents.

“I believe in increasing transparency around the city budget and making it easier for city residents to see where their tax dollars are going,” Hansen said.

Public safety and law enforcement

The San Mateo Police Department faces staffing challenges, and hiring officers who are able to live in the city is even more difficult. About half of the city’s police force live in the county, although they tend to live with family or rent. Those who live outside the county are more likely to be homeowners.

Both candidates said they would advocate for more workforce housing for city employees.

“I would love to be able to have first responders, including police officers, that are policing in the community that they live in, so offering housing stipends to help those families get started would make the department more appealing, especially given the high cost of living in San Mateo,” Hansen said, adding that he’d also support the expansion of civilian, non-emergency roles. That would include, in part, increasing the number of mental health professionals who can respond to non-violent incidents.

Fernandez said she’d be in favor of down payment assistance or programs that would allow them to pay a lower interest rate.

“[Police and firefighters] are not interested in apartments and smaller dwellings because all of them tend to have families, so they actually want single-family homes,” she said.

Fernandez added that the city should also look into adopting a similar public-private partnership that Meta has with Menlo Park, where the tech firm funds some police officer positions.

Electrification

Fernandez and Hansen acknowledged that the city should strive for all-electric buildings in the long term only through a measured, phased-in approach.

“When you have close to 47% renters, I don't think that cost can be put on the renters. I believe in providing incentives for households to make the transition,” Hansen said.

And with many neighborhoods largely comprising people of color and immigrants — 43% of the district is Latino — Fernandez said the city shouldn’t put any direct pressure on residents to switch to electric until it secures as much outside funding as possible.

“When people are dealing day to day with trying to find child care and pay their mortgage or pay their rent, electrification is pretty low on the priority list, and I would not do anything until we made sure we had a grant or a good amount of money available to our low-income residents in order to help them with that,” she said.

Housing and historic preservation

Increased development has generated both support and pushback from residents, especially with more aggressive state-mandated housing goals. The city needs to plan for 7,015 new housing units by 2031, 40% of which must be for low-income households.

Hansen said most residents are generally supportive of housing but are more divided over how and where to put it.

“There needs to be more education and more transparency in how we go about building those homes, those apartments, affordable housing,” Hansen said. “I am not 100% sure that when people are voting yay or nay, they understand the complexities of what they’re voting for … some additional town halls to educate people more on what each housing project entails would be vital.”

Fernandez said she’d make sure to work with people with varying perspectives on how San Mateo can reach its housing mandates, though reiterated her support for Measure T, which would amend the city’s current five-story building cap and allow for higher buildings in certain areas, including near Caltrain stations.

“I do think it’s really important that we do build at all [income] levels, and we also work to preserve housing, especially in the North Central and North Shoreview area where we have a lot of gentrification happening,” Fernandez said. “It’s really important that we work to preserve the affordable units that are already in existence, and if we have to build, we build along the corridor of El Camino and in downtown.”

Some housing divides have become more apparent over the last year. A resident-led group, the San Mateo Heritage Alliance, submitted paperwork to the state’s Office of Historic Preservation to designate more than 400 homes as historic in the Baywood neighborhood — without full consensus of the affected homeowners — which would impose new rules and restrictions on a home’s exterior if significantly remodeled or updated. The city does not have the ability to reverse the decision once approved by the state.

The issue has sparked numerous discussions, many times contentious, over how to preserve historic buildings while respecting individual property owner rights and making progress on new housing goals. Both Fernandez and Hansen said that North Central is full of important history worthy of assessment and preservation, but there also needs to be respect for homeowners’ choices.

“It’s important that we work to have a citywide revision and update of our historic processes and rules and something that homeowners who believe they have historic property can opt into,” Fernandez said.

She added that she supports the council’s recent $500,000 commitment to a historic resource evaluation and program to “stop these divisive conversations,” but hopes that efforts to circumvent the city in the future don’t continue.

Latino community

Improving outreach and communication to monolingual Spanish speakers is a high priority for both candidates. Fernandez said she’d address concerns over food trucks and in-home restaurants by providing more education regarding hygiene, licensing and law enforcement, as well as increasing business partnership opportunities.

By working more closely with the Chamber of Commerce or the San Mateo Downtown Association, she said the city can host food trucks in areas that are still waiting to be developed, like the proposed Block 21 site. It can also partner with nonprofits that have industrial kitchens, for instance, so food vendors have a place to shift operations.

Hansen said stronger rental protections are imperative to a community that often faces housing insecurity.

“Yes, we need to create more affordable units but we need to ensure that, not only are they diverse in the levels of income, but that the renters are able to stay there and the rent won’t be hiked up,” he said.

Traffic safety and congestion

Congestion, as well as cut-through traffic has remained a concern for many North Central and North Shoreview residents.

Fernandez said there could be ways to decrease entry points in the North Shoreview area to minimize cut-throughs, as well as working with North Shoreview Montessori School on better coordination during pick-up and drop-off times.

Hansen said he feels the city hasn’t evaluated traffic patterns and possible mitigation measures adequately since the implementation of the controversial bike lanes project on Humboldt Street— which ended up removing 200 parking spaces to bring in a bicycle boulevard and bicycle lanes.

“I would love for the city to take a look at traffic patterns, that way we can look at — especially around schools — stop signs, traffic lights, more of a police presence … so even where there is this cut-through traffic, it’s done at a respectable speed,” he said.

Both added they are in favor of implementing a mixture of approaches — from increased stop signs to one-way streets — and prioritizing improvements on Peninsula Avenue, where a San Mateo pedestrian was recently killed.

The election will take place Tuesday, Nov. 5.

alyse@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 102