Meet Jean Josey, Candidate For Dublin City Council

DUBLIN, CA — Learn more about Jean Josey, the current Dublin vice mayor running for re-election on the city council. Some questions have been removed to avoid redundancy.

1. Why are you running for Dublin City Council?

I am running for re-election for Dublin City Council, because while I am very proud of the work that our council has done in the last four years, there is more work to be done. I have always prioritized quality-of-life issues for our residents, and over the last four years, we have built new parks, brought more intersections into our network of adaptive signals, started on the Cultural Arts Center, created and moved forward on the Downtown Preferred Vision, added a behavioral health unit to our police department and worked with our Tri-Valley partners and Axis Health to create a Mental Health Urgent Care Center for our residents. In addition, we have moved the needle on affordable housing and climate action. Finally, we have worked very hard to give our businesses and our residents everything we could to help them weather the COVID storm. We offered technical assistance to help our businesses transition to online commerce, handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and loans, and changed the municipal code to facilitate both temporary and permanent outdoor dining. We gave our residents rental assistance so they could stay in their homes. I am running again to further the work we are doing to keep Dublin the wonderful community it is.

2. What do you think is the biggest challenge facing your constituents?

a) Growth – Dubliners want us to slow down our housing growth, but they know that we are mandated by the state to continue to provide new housing. I will continue doing all I can to ensuring that these additional housing developments are the right mix of unit types and affordability so that we aren’t overburdening our infrastructure – schools, roads, water, open space, public safety agencies. I will continue to do push for opportunities to create more affordable units for our public servants and service workers, those just starting their careers and our seniors
b) Safety – Nothing is more important than ensuring the safety of our residents, now and in the future. Dublin is a very safe city, but that doesn’t happen by accident. While protecting the fiscal health of our city, I will protect our police and fire budgets and pursue grants for additional programs, thereby ensuring that we have rapid response times from the fire department and enough officers in the Dublin Police Department to investigate those crimes that do occur. I will continue to ensure our police services budget covers enough officers to adequately handle our calls for services, which is the only metric that should be used to determine the number of officers necessary. I will also look for opportunities to add additional programs like the Mental Health Urgent Care center, and the DPS behavioral health unit we started during my first term so that we aren't putting our most vulnerable residents on a collision course with armed responders. In addition, I will continue to push, at both the city and county level, for additional diversity among our police force. It is important that the make-up of our force mirrors, as closely as possible, the racial and ethnic diversity of our area.
c) Economic Development – I will continue to promote and grow the programs that incentivize some of our older businesses to update their facades. In addition, we need to set policy that makes it more attractive for larger businesses to move to Dublin for their corporate offices. I will push for outreach and policies that make Dublin attractive to high tech, bio tech, light manufacturing, and other companies. I will actively seek out as much business development as possible, to provide local jobs and good corporate partnerships with our city.
d) Parks and Recreation – Dublin is the jewel of the Tri-Valley when it comes to parks. I will continue to grow our wonderful programs, without overspending our budget. We have many, many acres of beautiful parks, with more on the way. As I did with Fallon Sports Park Phase III, Wallis Ranch, and the Cultural Arts Center, and others still to come, I will make decisions that are both fiscally responsible and socially responsive to the needs of our residents. Our parks and community facilities need to reflect the diversity of our growing community. I will continue to look for opportunities to ensure we have a wide range of recreational options available to our residents of all ages, and I will make sure that we continue to offer something for everyone, while maintaining our bottom line.

3. What should be done to solve the affordable housing crisis?

The only way to solve the affordable housing crisis is to create more homes that are affordable. We need to move the conversation beyond “affordable housing” to true housing affordability. That means moving away from only discussing deed-restricted units for those qualifying based on lower-than-average income and moving towards pushing developers to build housing choices that are affordable for the wide range of community members that live here. Everyone from our service workers to our recent college graduates, from our trades people to our tech workers, from our growing families to our down-sizing seniors need a choice that will work for them. We cannot simply build 3000-sq.ft homes that can only be attained with a combined income over $300k/year. I continue to push developers to bring us developments that include smaller for-sale units that are true “affordable by design” or “starter homes,” and also a single-story age-qualified development for our seniors who want to down-size from their two- and three-story home.

5. What do you think the city can do to conserve water?

We can do, and are doing, quite a lot. In addition to using recycled instead of potable water for our parks irrigation, we continue to ensure that developers are adhering to the latest water-friendly building codes for both indoor and outdoor water. We are designing our own new parks and street-scapes with drought-tolerant landscaping and designing bio-swales into the city for as little run-off as possible. In addition, going forward, I’ll be pushing for less wide-open lawn in our future parks. Turf is one of the biggest users of water. The state is moving away from “non-functional turf,” and while parks don’t fall under that category, reducing the square footage of lawn that requires irrigation will go a long way towards conserving water. It’s important to note that because of updated building codes, new construction is more water friendly that older construction. We always evaluate water usage when we look at projects that come before the council, and ensure that DSRSD has issued a will-serve letter for any new project. In addition, the city has a role to play, along with our water agencies (DSRSD and Zone 7) in helping to educate the public on conservation methods. Finally, in drought years like this one, we partner with our water agencies and our other Tri-Valley cities to sponsor a recycled water distribution station so residents can get recycled water for their own irrigation needs.

6. What can the city do to help its downtown and small businesses?

In my first term, we approved the Downtown Dublin Preferred Vision, and we made Downtown Dublin and Economic Development our number 1 strategic priority for 2020-2022. We have been steadily working towards making that vision a reality. Quite a few administrative pieces must happen to move the vision forward, and we are making good progress on them. We have made zoning changes already to accommodate the types of uses we want in the Downtown; we have adopted a new Streetscape Master Plan and are working on changes to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan; we have embarked on a parking study to make sure we right-size the parking in the Downtown. Most importantly, we are working closely with the property owners in Downtown Dublin to ensure that they have buy-in and that they are partnering with us to move our vision forward.

In the meantime, we are supporting our existing businesses as they come out the other side of the pandemic. During COVID shut-down we gave loans and grants to our businesses to help them stay afloat. We gave them technical assistance to move their businesses online, and we changed the municipal code to allow outdoor dining (temporarily and permanently). We continue to work creatively on City-wide marketing campaigns that drive foot traffic into our small businesses throughout the city. I’m committed to making sure our businesses, both small and large, can thrive in Dublin.

7. What other issues are important to you?

Ensuring that the services we offer, and the way we offer them, keeps pace as Dublin’s demographics change. We all know Dublin has been the fastest growing city over the last decade. But Dublin didn’t just grow – we grew and changed. It’s not enough to scale up our services. We need to also change to fit the make-up of the residents who live here. Making sure we are listening to all voices, and tailoring what we do as a local government to meet the needs of the wide diversity of our residents is my biggest priority. The things that impact the daily quality of lives of the people in Dublin are why I want to continue to be on City Council – public safety, our parks and recreation offerings, our traffic flow, the city’s relationship with the school district, how we attract commercial and retail businesses – these are the things that impact people every day.

8. If applicable, what is your political party?

City Council is a non-partisan position, but I am a registered Democrat.

9. How long have you lived in Dublin?

I moved to Dublin in 2000.

10. What brought you to the city?

We moved to the Bay Area from Maryland because we wanted to be close to my parents in Sunnyvale. The community we fell in love with was Dublin.

11. What experience do you have serving the community?

Prior to being elected to Dublin City Council in 2018, I was a long-time volunteer in Dublin, serving on city-wide and school district committees. The following is from my website:

“Jean Josey has been a Dublin resident for over two decades and has been an active volunteer and advocate in our community. Starting with providing help to the teacher in her daughter’s co-op preschool class, she has held many diverse leadership roles. She held elected positions on the Parent Faculty Club (PFC) and/or Site Council for each school her children attended, helped to establish by-laws for the PFCs for some of Dublin’s newest elementary schools, served as an assistant soccer coach for the Dublin United Soccer League, led a Girl Scout troop, chaired the long-running Wells Middle School Crab Feed, and co-chaired the Dublin High School Every 15 Minutes program. Prior to serving on City Council, Jean was also appointed to serve on the City of Dublin’s Fiscal Sustainability Task Force.

Her volunteer work and leadership in Dublin has earned her the Dublin Unified School District Volunteer Recognition award (2012) and the DUSD Superintendent’s Award (2016). In 2016 Jean was named the Dublin Citizen of the Year.”

Community Leadership

• City of Dublin Fiscal Sustainability Task Force
• President, Treasurer, Secretary, Dublin Elementary Parent Faculty Club
• President, Treasurer, Wells Middle School Parent Faculty Club
• Chairperson, Secretary, Dublin High School Site Council
• After School Math Tutor, Wells Middle School
• Assistant Coach, Dublin United Soccer League
• Troop Leader, Girls Scouts of America
• Co-Chairperson, By-Laws Committee, Briarhill Swim Team
• Chairperson, Yes on Measure B Parcel Tax Committee
• Chairperson (2 years), Wells Middle School Crab Feed
• Co-Chairperson, Every 15 Minutes (Anti-Drunk Driving Awareness Program)
• Member of the following Dublin Unified School District Committees: -- Optimization Committee -- Safety Committee -- Financial Advisory Committee -- Homework and Grading Committee -- Local Control Accountability Plan Committee

Awards

• Dublin Unified School District Outstanding Volunteer (2012)
• Dublin Citizen of the Year (2016)
• Dublin Unified School District Superintendent’s Award (2016)

1. Of which accomplishments are you most proud?

I’m pretty proud of all of the new parks we are building in Dublin. I’m particularly excited about the completion of Fallon Sports Park Phase III and the new Cricket Field we will be opening on October 22nd.

12. What is your education?

I have a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Washington.

13. Tell us about your family.

I raised two children who went through the Dublin Schools. Both have now graduated college and are working in their chosen fields. My daughter Katie is a finance professional in Arizona, and my son Ryan is a marketing professional here in Dublin.

14. What is the best advice you ever received?

Don’t surround yourself with people who agree with you. Take the time to listen to people with a wide range of viewpoints.

15. Please provide links to websites and social media.

www.jeanjosey.com
www.facebook.com/jeanjoseyforDublin/
www.twitter.com/jeanjosey