Councilmember Randall Stone is our Pick for Chico City Council District 5
With the departure of Karl Ory, Randall Stone has the deepest knowledge of housing, has consistently pushed for inclusionary zoning, and excellent working relationships with a variety of organizations throughout the state. He sits on the Board of Directors for the League of California cities, and connections like this help to ensure that he brings forward up-to-date solutions that are in alignment with best practices for the state.
Unfortunately, he has also been intemperate at times, and his arrogance, real or perceived, can be off-putting. Nonetheless, this isn’t a popularity contest. We need people with experience and knowledge as we work to bring housing online in coming years, and Randall brings those things to the table.
We also like Lauren Kohler a great deal. She is smart, focused, and thoughtful. Her experience working directly with the homeless in recent years would be helpful as the council contemplates policy and solutions in coming years. Some of the things she has been attacked on are bonuses as far as we are concerned. We appreciate her youth and believe we need more young people in leadership in our community. Her perspective would be a valuable addition.
Lauren has also been attacked for living with her parents. That reflects a nationwide trend – according to the Pew Research Center, the share of young adults still living with their parents has hit an all-time high this year, at 52%. (https://www.pewresearch.org/.../a-majority-of-young.../)
This has nothing to do with the competence of young adults, and everything to do with the lack of affordable housing and national economic policies. Unfortunately, Lauren’s campaign doesn’t appear to have gained the traction it needs this round. We hope to see her run again in the future.
Andrew Coolidge wasn’t re-elected in 2018 for good reason. He was ineffective on the council, seldom brought forward substantive solutions, and more concerningly, his ties to organizations like Chico Scrap Metal brought (and still bring) ethical concerns to the forefront.
Andrew was previously a paid consultant for a campaign organized by Chico Scrap Metal, and his literal first motion as a city councilmember in 2014 was to agendize a discussion about them. Later, he voted to protect them rather than Chico families and children who are affected by pollution at that site, proposing an amendment to the General Plan (with which they have been out of alignment since at least 2006, not to mention a state conviction for pollution in 2007). The city should have negotiated a way forward with CSM, and held them to moving to a more suitable site. The long and short of it is, there is no evidence that he has the best interests of the community in mind and every indication that his focus is the best interests of paying clients. We don’t need another 4 years of Andrew.
