In Your Gut You Know The Redwood City Incumbents Are Nuts

A year late, but here we are at the beginning of another Redwood City City Council election year. Must be all that pent up demand created by the very fact that the incumbents voted themselves an extra year in office that has already led at least four new candidates to begin the process by registering with the FPPC. The City Clerk serves as Filing Officer for Campaign Statements and Statements of Economic Interests as required by the Political Reform Act and administered by the Fair Political Practices Committee (FPPC.) For more information you can visit http://www.redwoodcity.org/home/showdocument?id=11059

The first thing prospective candidates whether they are incumbents or new candidates must do is file a Form 501 with the FPPC. Essentially by filing this form candidates can begin to raise funds for running. Supposedly to comply with SB 415, the California Voter Participation Rights Act, incumbents voted last year to move the City Council’s elections from odd-year November 2017/2019 cycles to even-year November 2018/2020 cycles. This change effectively extended incumbent terms but also raised the cost of running substantially as local elections will now compete for advertising and mind share with statewide elections for governor and US Senator which in the past has meant that incumbents name recognition is of tremendous value and a big hurdle for non-incumbents to jump.

But the competition is already lining up and ready to jump in so strap your seat belts on. This promises to be a wild election ride. At the governor’s level we have six candidates including California State Treasurer John Chiang, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Newsom and Villaraigosa are already getting personal in the debates. For US Senate we have incumbent Diane Feinstein being challenged by 16 other candidates. Although fortunately for statewide races the number of candidates will be greatly slimmed down after the primaries June 5th. However for local City Council there are no primaries so whoever files FPPC papers and completes all the nominating documents to run before the deadline which is likely to be August 10th, 2018 will be on the ballot in November.

Three seats are up for grabs in the Redwood City City Council. Barely one month into the new year, it appears like two incumbents have already filed FPPC papers Jeff Gee and Diane Howard. One current planning commissioner, Gisele Hale, whose current term ends June 30th, 2018 but is likely to be reappointed, has also filed. One former planning commissioner, Rick Hunter, has filed. Life time resident, Christina Umhoffer, has filed. And social justice advocate, Diana Reddy, has announced her intent to file.

You would think that locally for voters the main issues would revolve around city planning and proper management of any future growth. With traffic, parking and all sorts of infrastructure issues still to be addressed; and yet more and more projects being approved and coming online; Council Member Jeff Gee’s statement several years ago that nobody need worry as there were only three more projects in the pipeline was either disingenuous or proof positive of just how nuts the incumbents are.

The question Redwood City voters who head to the polls in November to vote for new City Council representatives will need to ask themselves is at the local level have things gotten better in the last five years or worse? Because if they have gotten worse the right thing to do is to get rid of ALL the culprits.