Housing and access to higher education are the key issues addressed in a recently released report, the product of nearly a year of surveys and town halls to gather input from what CAUSE calls “hard to reach residents.”
Leaders from CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy) called a press conference outside Santa Maria City Hall on April 18 to release the report, which includes data collected in Santa Maria’s most “underrepresented” communities.
CAUSE organizer Abraham Melendrez said it’s not always easy for working-class and immigrant families, who often face extensive work hours and language barriers, to give public input on the city’s current projects.
The goal is to make those voices heard, he said.
Through the surveys and a town hall, residents were asked to vote for specific issues they felt should be prioritized within four categories: housing, transportation, environment, and economic development.
Of the roughly 200 surveyed, 36 percent said the city should address rising rents before fixing older housing or making it easier to buy a home. Nearly 40 percent said they’d like to see more public buses and additional routes before traffic reduction efforts are made or sidewalks are improved. And 38 percent said they’d like to see pesticide use and pollution reduced before increasing access to healthy foods and parks.
Of the 100 who attended CAUSE’s town hall meeting, 69 percent said they’d like the city to focus first on attracting four-year university opportunities, 51 percent said they’d like to strengthen renter protections, and 43 percent prioritized reducing air and water pollution.
Only 16 percent of town hall attendees chose downtown revitalization as one of their top four priorities; 8 percent of those surveyed chose downtown revitalization as an economic priority, while improving education and job training opportunities garnered 33 percent of the votes in that category.
The report did suggest that the city use large, unused parking lots to create a pedestrian plaza modeled after Olvera Street in Los Angeles. CAUSE also argues for an inclusionary housing ordinance—requiring that 15 percent of new developments be affordable for low- and moderate-income families. And its report suggested that Santa Maria Area Transit add more east to west routes or redraw the routes entirely.
While the city does work with CAUSE consistently on various issues, Public Information Manager Mark van de Kamp said he and other city staffers received the report at the press conference and hadn’t yet evaluated its contents.
“The city appreciates this input,” he told the Sun.
This article appears in Apr 25 – May 2, 2019.