OD: Osby Davis               GC:  Gary Cloutier           CV: Cris Villanueva

                                     

 

 

George De Ocampo (Vallejo Intertribal): By you being here this evening, you are showing that you are concerned about what is going on in your community.  And you are committed to choosing the most qualified candidates to lead us to a difficult time the City is facing. I would also like to thank the candidates for this opportunity in allowing us to hear what their visions and goals for our City are. At this time, I would like to introduce my friend and colleague, Peggy Cohen Thompson, President of the Solano County Black Chamber of Commerce.

 

Peggy Thompson: Welcome and we’re gonna go right into the program and I am going to introduce the Mayoral candidates by name. Starting to my immediate left is Cris Villanueva, Gary Cloutier and Osby Davis.  Pam Pitts called this morning and said she had another engagement and that she would not be here tonight.

 

(boo...)

 

…Anyway here we go getting ready to start this program and I’m going to turn this over to Eva Cooley who will give you the forum procedures.

 

Eva Cooley: Thank you, and good evening everyone.  I will explain the procedures. Candidates for mayor will begin in 2 minutes to give an opening Statement. We will then have a series of questions. For each question, the first speaker will get two minutes and the rest of you will get one minute to answer that same question. At the end of the series of questions, each of you will be given one minute to make a closing Statement.  Any questions?

 

Host: Question No. 1; Opening Statements, I’m sorry, I’m ready to go here.

          Opening Statement, Chris?

 

CV: Okay thank you, Good evening to everyone. I’m Cris Villanueva, I used to be a Council member and Vice-mayor for the City of Vallejo and I’m seeking the office of Mayor because I believe I can provide passionate leadership and to turn around Vallejo as I’ve done in the past. During my incumbency we have addressed the budget issue and before I left we had appropriated a surplus and a long term financial projection of income. My financial background with 8 years of Council and vice-mayor experience prepared me to seek the office of the Mayor and I am technically, professionally, and politically prepared for the office of the Mayor of the City of Vallejo.  As a technical person, I know how to do things right and as a politician I know how to do the things the right way. So both ways, do the right thing the right way which is the difference between a technical person and a political person. And I have both of those experiences. I am CPA that treasures my family. I have my wife with me and I intend to earn money for the City of Vallejo and save some money and help all Vallejoans if they need to get educated because I believe in education. The family that I have, we have produced 1 CPA, 1 captain, 3 nurses, and these 3 nurses are all working in the City of Vallejo. I think that’s about it.

 

Host: Thank you. Gary?

 

 

GC: Good evening everybody. My name is Gary Cloutier. Last night I was down at the Wednesday night celebration and a young woman was introduced to me and I was introduced as a candidate for mayor and she said, “who do you represent?” and I said “I represent the people”. I am running for the Mayor of Vallejo because I love Vallejo and I love the people here and I love my job and I’ve been in the City Council for 8 years. I’m running for mayor of Vallejo to help make Vallejo one of the best places to live in the United States. For 8 years, I have worked diligently with my colleagues and with many committed members of this community to arrest decades of decline and to chart a path. I’m running for mayor of Vallejo to help make Vallejo one of the best places to live in the United States. For 8 years, I have worked diligently with my colleagues and with many committed members of this community to arrest decades of decline and to chart a path forward for this City because it is a great City and it can be much greater. The next 5 years will determine whether everything stays the same or whether everything changes. I want everything to change. My platform is simple, comprehensive, aggressive. We will improve the quality of life and create jobs and new places to live by rehabilitating the I-80 and Tennessee Street and Sonoma Blvd corridors. We will improve the quality of life by paying attention to those factors that diminish the quality of life: noise, litter, smoke shops, graffiti, potholes – those are the issue that we must pay close attention to. We will find a way to deliver essential services and still have money left over to improve the quality of life and that has been one of our greatest challenges since I have been on the City Council for the last 8 years. We will create incentives to diversify our retail base. We will weave together a series of disconnected with wonderful neighborhoods and put a new face on the City of Vallejo.

 

Host: Thank you.  Osby?

 

OD: I’m Osby Davis; I’m also a candidate for Mayor. I’ve been a life long member of this community. I’ve served as a Supervisor formerly with Solano County for 14 years. I’ve served on various regional and State bodies. I have the experience as a background and contacts across this State to make things happen in this community. I’ve had a conversation with someone the other day and what I’ve come to realize is that there are 3 types of people I want to talk about right now. One is, we call them “complainers” they complain about everyone and everything, and then we have “movers”, they get upset with everything and they just move, then we have “changers” those who are willing to jump in and make changes to what’s going on. We see challenges as opportunities, not as things to run from. So that’s the reason why I’m running for Mayor. Vallejo is in the worst condition it’s ever been in. That’s not something to brag about. We are on the doorstep of bankruptcy right now. Our schools are coming out of receivership. We have potholes everywhere. And you might ask, “so why would you want to jump in?” because I’m a changer. I like to change things, it’s a challenge. I see opportunities for us to do great things. The City of Vallejo is a good place to live; it can be a better place to live. But I want you to understand, the things that we find facing us today did not just happen. They didn’t happen over night, they’ve been happening for the last 10-15 years. We have a report by a citizens committee which said back in 1991, we are spending more money than we are taking and 1990, 1991, 1992, we spent more money than we took in, yet we did nothing about it.  We continued to do business as usual. And we must change business as usual if we are to change the City. If we wait for 5 years to talk about doing something different. Nothing’s going to happen. Dec. 6 is going to decide whether we change or we stay the same.

 

Host: Thank you. Let me repeat the procedures again. As you can tell, I want to get moving. Candidates will have a series of questions. The first candidate chosen will have 2 minutes to answer that question, the rest of you will have 1 minute. At the end you will have 1 minute for a closing Statement. As you can tell we have a beep and we have me. Not that I want to cut you off but we do want to hear everyone. So thank you. Now we are ready for question one.

 

Gary, what is the single most important issue facing Vallejo?

 

GC: The single most important issue is money, in our budget. I think that I disagree with Mr. Davis that nothing’s been done. In fact, in the last year, for the first time,  this Council has taken the matter into their hands and are dealing with the budget rather than what we have been doing every year which is just postponing the inevitable thing and that’ s taking a lot of courage and determination by my colleagues but we are doing that. And I think that if we continue to do that, stay the course, we will have a budget where we can provide fire and police services, and there will be money left over for potholes and public art, to trim trees, for community organizations, and to do all the things that are necessary to improve the quality of life in Vallejo. So we have to follow the money. That is the most important issue that we are facing right now.

 

Host: Thank you. Osby?

 

OD: I think the one thing we have to do, and I’ve said this before, and I realize that we have a fiscal crisis and we have to deal with that fiscal crisis and I have some ideas on how to deal with that. I can’t share them with you in one minute. We ought to change the way we do business, we have to change the way we structure our budget, but I will say this to you that we also have to change our attitudes and our opinions of ourselves in this community and make things happen. I think things happened in the last few years. We continued spending as usual that is what has happened. We’ve raided every special fund, we’ve taken money from other departments to fund our ongoing crisis with employee wages and benefits and that’s why we have a 9 million dollar deficit. We need to do something different. Change the way we spend our money, change the way we budget. Change the way we think.

 

Host: Thank you. Cris?

 

CV: I think I agree with them, financial crisis is where we are in. I think we can resolve the problem by generating income. I think we can enhance revenue of the City by going into the tourism business. We can probably pay off all debts and issue new ones and build a convention center and hotels which will initially open and then have private partners who will probably manage the convention center in Vallejo hotel and then after some time, they’re going to buy it again and it will be a property that will be owned by a private enterprise and can be taxed with the property tax, this way we can incubate the turning point of economic activity in the City of Vallejo by having revenues for the City we can now address the issues of fiscal crisis. We can increase our services to our citizens and we can give them quality services because of the new income. With that new income, we can also have the educational partner of..

 

(buzzer)

 

Host: Thank you.

Question No. 2, what would you do to create a better working relationship between the various City departments? Cris?

 

CV: The first thing I will do is I will call for a goal setting, team building session with all the major players in the City including the Council members and various department heads. We will come up with all the goals that we would like to establish as a City and then prioritize, give assignments to individual responsible persons so that the responsible person can be monitored and the progress can also be likewise periodically monitored, that way we have a time table in which we can accomplish the goals periodically monitored, that way we have a time table in which we can accomplish the goals that we have prioritize. This is the way we can accomplish things in the City of Vallejo. Have someone responsible, having monitored and the time frame in which to accomplish the goals that we have set in the first place. That is how you build team work because they have a common goal, a common direction and they have common performance evaluation that everybody will be looking at.

 

Host: Osby?

 

OD: There’s no doubt that we’re going to all sink together or we’re all going to swim together. I think the first thing that I would do is call together the other Council members and we would all sit down and talk about our whole motivation in the City and that is having the City work like a team and moving in one direction. If we are all motivated to do that then I think the next step is to meet with the City Manager and talk about what needs to  be done in our departments to bring that about. And then after that we might meet with all the department heads make sure we get everybody on board and make sure that we recognize that we are a team. We are not fighting against each other, we are here to provide services to the public. And if we are not doing that, we have a problem. We are not here to compete with each other, and make one person look bad or the other one look good, we’re here to provide services to the public and that’s what I would want to see happen.

 

Host: Thank you. Gary?

 

GC: The smooth functioning of the department head is really a function of having a coherent common vision that comes from the Council. And you have to have that vision in order to articulate it and get a buy in from the staff and department heads and that’s how we will move this City forward. And I believe that I can articulate that vision. I believe that I can share that vision with Council members and that’s a large part of the process in of itself. And then of course, you have to have a good City Manager, and we’ve managed to pick one with Mr. Tanner and he’s doing an excellent job in creating that team spirit right now.

 

Host: Question No. 3, As Mayor what type of businesses would you seek for Vallejo and what role will you play in bringing those businesses to our community? Gary?

 

GC: We need a place to buy books and women’s dresses, and men’s suits and all the retail that we can’t get in Vallejo right now. That is the inability to get those items that actually make life worthwhile is one of our greatest problems right now. Vallejo has enormous sales potential because we do not have a retail base so I think we need to have a targeted approach to bringing in that kind of retail. To bringing in revenue sources that we do not have right now and at the same time, there is nothing wrong with big boxes. There are good big box businesses so we need to have a wide diverse range of businesses. I think the Mayor can be instrumental as a sales person and going out there and telling the benefits of being in Vallejo and of course we need to look at the incentives we can possibly offer to bring those businesses to Vallejo. And I have an aggressive plan to do that.

 

Host: Osby?

 

OD: I agree, we need those kind of businesses. I think I would first of all recognize we have revenues that are escaping this community every single day. The only thing you can basically buy and that most people want to buy is generally groceries and gasoline. If you want to buy other things, then you’d have to go out of town. I think we need to do a survey in the community to determine what kinds of services they would like to have in this community. Then we ought to aggressively and assertively go out and attempt to attract those kinds of services, providing incentives as Mr. Cloutier indicated, I think the Mayor is the person who has the mode of pulpit – he can go out and talk to people and people will listen. But I also believe that the mayor has to work with Council and I’ll go back to say and you’d have to pull the Council in together and make sure that you are all moving in the same direction. I would like to see the Council move, join together, not a 4 to 3, I’m talking about a 7- 0, and I know that’s not always possible but I think whenever possible the Mayor ought to try to make sure that everybody’s on board with the kinds of things that we are doing.

 

(buzzer)

 

CV: I believe that we should maximize the assets that we have at our disposal. We have 2 million tourists every year in the City of Vallejo but we are still a tourist stop over. We will make Vallejo a tourist destination by having industries that compliment tourism. I would like to re-state that we would like to have a convention center, a performing arts center, so that this will compliment our Marine World, and it would increase our TOT taxes, and with that TOT taxes, we can give the non-profit organization the finance that was cut by the present City Council. I think we could increase the taxes for these tourists, because at any rate, we are increasing the taxes for those who are coming here and not those who are staying here. I believe also that we can also maximize the use of our Mare Island by having clean industries in there. Like having give the non-profit organization the finance that was cut by the present City Council. I think we could increase the taxes for these tourists, because at any rate, we are increasing the taxes for those who are coming here and not those who are staying here. I believe also that we can also maximize the use of our Mare Island by having clean industries in there. Like ethanol which can probably, I am talking about the ethanol businesses which can probably employ no less than 1,000. Now the date, we have only 100 employers at Marine World and it’s too small at this time.

 

(buzzer)

 

Host: Question No. 4, what are your plans to get Vallejo on it’s feet economically? Osby?

 

OD: Well, I can’t do this all in 2 minutes but let me say this, the first thing is that I’d call together a task force, a task force for this community and try to create the economic team that I want and that task force would consists of CCRC, Main Street, Downtown Association, and Better Business Bureau, Economic Development Commission and other members on this community and like other employers, like Kaiser Hospital, like Wells Fargo Bank, like Bank of America, and we’ll put together a task force to begin to work together on the solutions to the problems that we face economically. We all have ideas, that task force will also include other people in this community, regular citizens who have a say so in what’s going on. Start finding out what are the hindrances to moving this City forward as far as businesses is concerned. I’d also like to mention and we don’t have time to talk about as a community is to invest as a corporation. We need to invest in our own community where we have a nonprofit organization that’s contributed to is to invest as a corporation. We need to invest in our own community where we have a nonprofit organization that’s contributed to, we develop money that we can reinvest in our schools and our streets, and public safety and everything else. It’s a comprehensive problem and it’s a comprehensive solution.

 

Host: Cris?

 

CV: I will create economic empowerment so that there will be a lot of clean industries that will be coming in, or green industries because they will be given enough incentives and they will be given State as well as federal and liberal loans. I will also try to be business friendly, the City will be a business friendly by streamlining the approval process. And I will use the entrepreneurial power of the City by probably marketing our water in a profitable way by probably bottling it and distributing it to States, to other cities and maybe even internationally so we’ll become an exporting City. I think by this, we can be using our existing assets to the maximum and we can generate revenue.

 

Host: Gary?

 

GC: Our police and fire contracts expire in 2010. No. 1 there will be no deals to extend an already too rich contract. That is above all the most important step that must be taken in order to balance the budget and have significant money left. I am talking about millions of dollars left over to pay attention to quality of life issues. No 2,targeted marketing at the kind of retail that we do not have. No 3, pay attention to the flowerbeds and what I mean by that is what businesses would want to come to a City with filthy entrances, with litter everywhere, with noise, these quality of life issues must be addressed in order to attract good businesses and that is a very important thing to do. All those 3 things together will bring the kind of business that will make it a wonderful place to live.

 

Host: Question No. 5, Vallejo High School’s football mascot is called the Apaches. The Native American Community has voiced their objections to this name, indicating that it is an insult to their culture. The issue to rename the mascot brought to the Vallejo City Unified School District Board, would you support the renaming of the mascot? Cris?

 

CV: I used to be a naming committee chair at City Hall, I think what we’ll do is solicit the input from the community and based on the input of the community we will solve and command what is most appropriate. I will listen to the people and the people must decide what kind of name will be acceptable to the biggest and probably the all sector of the community. So I will base my decision based on the input of the community because this is a community based City , it is a community based school and I believe the community should have a say.

 

GC: The answer is yes. Language is really an evolving project and we cannot ignore the fact that this term “apache” has been used in the past in this century in films and all kinds of popular medium that is a term of derision,  for Native Americans. And I think it has to be looked at as a serious issue and so for that reason I believe that we should rename the mascot.

 

OD: I think that we need to learn to be sensitive to all elders of our community. I don’t think we can sit back and let someone else decide whether or not a term is offensive to a particular nationality or not. And I, of course will support the renaming of the mascot. If it’s offensive to the Native Americans, it ought to be offensive to this community. And we ought not stand for it.

 

Host: Question No. 6, what do you see as City Hall’s role specifically as it pertains to African American students in the following areas – expulsion, drop-out, API scores, EXIT exams, and the disproportionate number of males in special education classes? Gary?

 

GC: First of all the inter-governmental commission has not been used enough to help promote the cooperation between the City and School District. And as Mayor, I will encourage that they meet on a monthly basis so these issues can be discussed. The Council needs to be educated on many of these issues because on a typical basis, because of state law we do not have or even deal with these issues. That does not mean we cannot have input in these through that commission that I have just mentioned. The other thing is that I think more and more if you look at where the state funds education in the, across the state, I believe the state discriminates against districts like Vallejo which need it the most because they fund the School District based on enrollment. We’ve lost since 2004, almost 1,200 students in the City of Vallejo at a time when we don’t have the money to do the activities that are necessary to deal with these important issues. So I think at some point it would behoove us to band with other cities  like Los Angeles that have similar problems and go to the Governor’s office and go to Legislature and say “you need to change the way you fund education” so that we can deal with these critical problems. Because it’s quite clear to me that unless we do deal with these problems, Vallejo will never achieve the status, a tranquil status as one of the great places to live in the Bay Area. So those are the measures that I’d encourage.

 

Host: Osby?

 

OD: The question that you asked really requires a thesis. However, what I think we need to do is we need to recognize, that this City, even though we are not necessarily a part of the Unified School District, we have to be as concerned about our School District as we are about any other department of our City. We talk about economic development. We won’t have economic development unless we do something about our schools. Nobody’s going to come here when our schools are at the low end of the totem pole in our test scores. So I think the City has to jump right into bed with the School District. If it requires us to participate in a regular and consistent basis, we should. I think that the School District, GVRD and the City. And if it means that at some point we have to look at putting in resources, if we need to because without our schools, nothing else is going to happen around here. I don’t know that we can really increase the effectiveness..

 

(buzzer)

 

CV: Last night I attended the community that ignites change seminar and we discussed the very issue that you are talking about. And we came up with the issues why it happened because of broken family, lack of discipline, there is no father, no mother in the home. I know it takes a village to raise a kid, and so I think the community leaders, both the schools, parents, teachers, the business people, and even the City itself should collaborate do something for the kids. We have to rehabilitate them, we have to give them love and affection because it’s through love and affection that they become aware that there is somebody caring for them, so again, takes a village, it takes both of us the community leader and everyone in the City of Vallejo that the kids get their education so that they become citizens, and pretty soon do their thing for the City again. So it’s gonna be a good rapport between everybody.

 

Host: Last question. There is a proposal floating around that City employees salary and benefits should be reduced to increase revenues for the City. What would your solution be to raise more revenues for Vallejo without decreasing salaries and benefits of city employees? Osby?

 

OD: I think the assumption of the question is that revenue is the answer to our fiscal crisis. Revenue is not the answer to our fiscal crisis that is very important to understand. The solution to our fiscal crisis – we need to change the way we do business. We can’t continue to spend more than we take in. It doesn’t matter if you take in 20 million dollars more next year. If you spend 25 million, you’re still broke. The point of the matter is that we have to change the way we do business. I have said before, that the citizens committee that I was appointed in, and I keep harping on that, because it’s amazing to me that the citizens committee that was appointed by the Council has studied the revenues, the expenses and spending of the City and made recommendations, said back then “we are doing it all wrong, we have to change the way we spend our money, we’re overspending, we’ve raided our reserves, we’ve raided our special fund and now we’re still spending one time money for on going expenses.” Salaries and benefits had decreased in terms of cost and the percentage of the budget from 85% in 1991 to 89.5% in 199..

 

Tape stops

 

Side B  “Mayor + Council Part 1”

 

OD: (continued) is take a look at everything that we’re spending it all of our salaries and benefits. I want to start everything now and start talking about how we provide the services to the public that the public needs. One of the problems is that we decide how much money we have then we decide what we’re going to do. We gotta do that the other way around. We’re going to decide the kinds of services the public wants and needs and then we have to fund those services.

 

GC: We are changing the way we do business and we changed it this year by declining to extend the contract that makes our ability to provide services completely unaffordable. I think people need to keep in mind that when they make their analysis about what will happen to Vallejo in 15-20 years, when our infill projects, Mare Island, the downtown, the Waterfont, the possibility of the Fairgrounds development have been completed. And those projects will yield hundreds and millions of dollars in revenues into the City. You can be sure that in 25 years, this City will have the money to absolutely transform itself but it is critical that in the next 5 years we make the proper decisions so that we can put this City on a fiscally sound basis and go forward from there. What a fiscally sound basis and go forward from there. What it must come, in the next 5 years, and that’s why I say that in the next 5 years is going to be absolutely critical. And I’ll mention one other thing, our employees have already sacrificed.

 

(buzzer)

 

Host: Thank you.

 

CV: Well, probably the reduction of salaries and benefits will be a short term solution. What we have to do is to have a projection of our economic, credulous and probably expenses so that we will not be blind in the future. In other words, we should come up with ideas by which we can increase our revenues and expenses will go along with that revenue so that temporary reduction could be augmented or probably mitigated by our projection of future income. In other words, we will not be future blind, another idea by which we can come up with good revenue is the creation of the enterprise zone. With an enterprise zone, businesses will be coming here, and most of the businesses, we can select which one, because there are so many of them who would try to take advantage of our enterprise zoning proclamation.

 

Host: Thank you. We will now have 1 minute statement closing, and when that is over, we will have a ten minute so we can switch to our City Council candidates. Cris?

 

CV: Thank you for your giving us a chance to talk to you. I really would like to be the Mayor of the City of Vallejo because I believe I could be a service to all of you. I’ve been here since 1975. I’ve been your Councilmember who has turned around the situation before, when the base was closed and when Marine World was about to go into bankruptcy. We were able to turn around this before and we can turn around this thing again. It’s just the matter of the will and determination of each and every one of us. I can bring probably a good teamwork in the City Council because I have done that in the past. We were able to go even singing together in karaoke contest and bowling alley. So we can make sure we can have a good team working City Council. I believe that it’s about time, that we have a reflection of diversity in the City Council, and let’s start from the top. Thank you very much.

 

Host: Osby?

 

OD: It is clear to me that we cannot wait 5 years, to start making proper decisions. I have said, business as usual has failed and I mean the way we do business in the city and the way we elect people into offices around here. I think we have to realize that new decisions, proper decisions have got to be made on Nov. 6, that’s when things change. Nov 6 is when we elect 3 people to Council and Mayor and that will determine what our City is going to look like in the next 4 years. So I encourage you to look at where we are, the entrances to our City didn’t just happen yesterday, they didn’t just get over run with weeds and trash everywhere, it took a while to do that. We need to change the way we do business. That means if we have to change the people we’ve put into office, that’s exactly what we have to do. This city is going to have to decide if it wants to change or stay the same. If you continue to vote the way you did, you’re going to continue to get what you got.

 

Host: Gary?

 

GC: I’d just like to say, that with all due respect to Mr. Davis, I’ve been sitting here for 8 years, and I saw him once during the Waterfront debate, and it was not at teambuilding at that time. Ladies and gentlemen, I am 45 years old and I’d like to grow old in Vallejo because my friends and the people I consider family live here. And I think this is one of the most beautiful places that I’ve seen in California and can be one of the greatest places to live and work. This community needs all the things that other great communities have. Jobs that pay a living wage, strong arts community, a properly staffed police force, clean well paved streets, a reputation as a great place to live. Fewer alcohol outlets, fewer fast food places, and better restaurants and places to buy books and good bread, and dresses for women and suits for men. All those things that make life worth living. We can have that here. Please vote for me Nov. 6.

 

Host: Cris, Gary and Osby, thank you very much. We will now have a ten minute break.