Ann Schwab is Our Pick For Chico City Council District 3
We appreciate Ann’s focus on the creation of housing and her commitment to protecting our greenways and parklands. She brings knowledge and experience in working with city staff and the council on these issues, and with the influx of funding to create housing these things will be particularly important.
However, Ann has been a disappointment on the council in recent years. While we can all generally agree that it’s preferable to build consensus around issues, and this is something that Ann has focused on, it has been at the expense of getting things done. Unfortunately, focusing on consensus can slip towards pandering to noisy special interests and Ann has too often abandoned valuable projects and principles that served community interests when faced with opposition.
She has also not been an effective consensus builder within the council; she has done very little direct outreach to other councilmembers and allowed herself to be embroiled in some petty infighting.
We expected the current council to tackle issues like homelessness more aggressively. There have been several solutions brought forward in the last two years that would have moved many people off our streets; none of them has yet succeeded, primarily due to NIMBY, obstruction in the form of repeated lawsuits from local retired attorney who appears to be making his living from suing the city, and last but not least, a lack of will from the council to aggressively move solutions forward.
To be fair, the current council inherited a mess. Homelessness was already a critical issue in 2018, and this council was sworn in as the Camp Fire was still smoldering. An influx of 20,000 people taxed our infrastructure, housing and hospitality as it had never been taxed before, and then just as the city began to move towards some kind of normalcy, the pandemic hit. All but the two conservatives on the council have been harassed and vilified for things they either did not have control over, or actions that were taken in compliance with Public Health and CDC recommendations.
With those things in mind, it’s been an extraordinarily challenging time to be on the council. Nonetheless, much more could have been accomplished if the council had found solutions they believed in, stood fast in the face of opposition, and then let the success of those solutions speak for themselves. Looking out past the election, part of the work of Stand Up for Chico will be to ensure that candidates are held to advancing realistic solutions and Ann is on our watch list.
Steven Breedlove might have presented a great alternative to Ann, but with the pandemic, it’s been an especially challenging time to run. The lack of ability to hold events, both to fundraise as well as to meet and talk with folks in the district has been a major hindrance. It’s always difficult to go up against an incumbent, and perhaps never more so than this year.
Steven is smart, principled, data-focused, and brings innovative ideas to the table, including scalable rapid-housing options, public banking and and we hope to see him run in the future, but we don’t think he will have the numbers this year.
Kami Denlay, who is also running in the district, is arguably the worst candidate running in 2020. Her near complete lack of employment experience, inability to manage her family finances, and last but certainly not least, her wild conspiracy theories and bizarre video posts are alarming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A62DaI2yqg0&feature=youtu.be
The right-wing PAC that backs Kami has spent $47,541 on her alone as of their last filing. They have also spent another $21,164 on attack ads against her opposition. All that is in addition to the $13,461 she spent herself, bringing the total spent on a completely unqualified candidate to over $80,000. If Kami's candidacy succeeds, it will be an ugly demonstration of what money can buy in a local election.
