My Platform

Resilient Pinole

To be resilient, we need 3 things

  • infrastructure to support resilience (reliable roads, cooling centers, power reliability, planning for evacuations)
  • a resilient community: one that is engaged with and understands its government, that celebrates the strength that comes from every part of the community, and that has the societal support systems needed to recover from disasters; and
  • resilient finances- enough funds for the city to be able to create the necessary infrastructure and support systems, and to meet its obligations, both short and long term.

Resilient Infrastructure

  • Rebuild our roads- underground utilities, connect bike lanes and sidewalks

Right now, Pinole doesn’t have the infrastructure to be resilient. Our roads are failing, we don’t have a current plan for evacuating the community in the event of a disaster, and our power systems can and have been shut down from outside. We are working on those things- updating the safety element, maintaining roads as best we can, and creating limited battery backups for critical infrastructure, but we can and should do more. Not just repairing the worst off roads, but rebuilding the system so that we can have a network that connects the community by under-grounding utilities and building a fully connected network of bike lanes and sidewalks. But in order to do more, Pinole needs …

Resilient Finances

  • Raise revenue to pay for unfunded road repairs and unfunded Retiree Healthcare, along with other deferred costs

In the short term, Pinole has enough money in the budget to meet operating expenses and some of its unfunded liabilities. It does not have enough money to deal with broader projects, like rebuilding the roads. We have $42 million dollars worth of unfunded road maintenance as of 2019, because to fix the roads properly we need to do it all at once, and $42 million is far more than one budget cycle can support (Pavement Management Program Update, March 19th 2019). We also have a substantial unfunded liability in OPEB- Other Post-Employment Benefits, or Retiree Healthcare of $46.5 million. (April 26th City Council Meeting, Preliminary Proposed Long-Term Financial Plan, page 48). In order to solve this, Pinole needs more revenue, whether from becoming a charter city and establishing a greater Real Property Transfer Tax, General Obligation bonds backed by property tax revenue to fund road repairs, or expanding the Utility Users Tax to cover water and wastewater (April 26th City Council Meeting, Preliminary Proposed Long-Term Financial Plan, pages 55-56). But by default, people are not going to support that unless we have a …

Resilient Community

Why support higher taxes if you don’t know on what they are being spent, or for whom they are being spent? If the majority of people in Pinole feel as though we aren’t part of a broader community, that Pinole is just a place you sleep for a few hours before you head off to work, then there cannot be resilience. How do we build a resilient community? Transparency and Engagement.

Transparent Pinole

First, we need transparency. If you don’t know what the city does or why it does it, it’s impossible to figure out what you want to engage with or with whom you want to work. The city provides a great deal of information, but unless you know what you are looking for it’s difficult to find. I will explain what the city does, and make the information it does provide more accessible through the Pinole Transparency Project.

Engaged Pinole

Ultimately, we need to embrace Pinole as our city and its governance as our responsibility. The city has started to call for more engagement through tools like Balancing Act on the use of American Rescue Plan Act Funds. But we need to encourage engagement by:

  • having meetings at a time when people can attend and not so long that it’s a trial of endurance to be there
  • having direct, door to door outreach, not just mailers
  • nurturing neighborhood networks that can support their own, smaller communities rather than having everything come from the top-down city level (such as Neighborhood Watch, block events, or community clubs)