If you feel the leaders of Santa Maria do not represent the needs and concerns of all of the people in your community, then run for City Council.
November 2018 begins our first district elections.
If you are a registered voter and at least 18 years old and you live in the southeast or southwest sections of Santa Maria, you can go to City Hall and file today. These are Districts 3 and 4, where Etta Waterfield and Jack Boysen are the current incumbents, respectively.
All you need to do is submit 20 signatures of registered voters on a petition to the City Clerk. It costs nothing to do this. There is no filing fee. There is a $1,000 fee to put your name and information on the fall ballot. The window for declaring you intention to run is closing soon.
If you feel strongly that you can create a real sense of community in Santa Maria and speak for those who never get heard, then run. If you feel your community’s needs are more important than the needs of agribusiness and big developers, then file now.
You will need to go door to door to get to know your neighbors, but because we have four districts, there are 75 percent fewer doors to knock on. Through that process you will get to know hundreds of voters, and they will get to know you.
Raising enough money to be competitive against the good old boy and girl machine is a challenge, but not impossible. Look at Bernie Sanders. Through an average donation of $27, he remained competitive all the way to the end of the presidential primaries.
You can inspire thousands of people to vote through your courage and fresh ideas. If you are ready to listen to and work with the community, they may also contribute their time and money to your campaign.
Our current mayor and City Council don’t listen to, or work with, the community. One good example is the Mayor’s Task Force on Youth Violence.
When Santa Maria experienced 23 murders in six months, a large group of community members came together to create One Community Action (1CA). Including the mayor in their meetings, they met a number of times to focus not on youth violence alone, but on all violence in our community. The coalition members did research in LA and brought their knowledge and recommendations back to the City Council.
But the mayor abandoned 1CA and their recommendations and created the Mayor’s Task Force on Youth Violence. She said she didn’t want any third stringers on her Task Force. She appointed only members of nonprofits and other groups working with youth.
The county grand jury strongly recommended that the city include parents and youth impacted by violence in the first tier of the task force from the beginning of its work. The mayor and City Council rejected those recommendations. They neglected to appoint any youth at all.
In response, 100 youth met in a summit at the Vets Hall to find solutions to the city’s problems. I was there. They did an amazing job!
Then, before the youth could even present their ideas to the Task Force, the mayor tried to pass her plan. She was narrowly defeated, and not by any current members of the city council. They were all silent.
In a last ditch effort to be heard, 12 youth representing the 100 at the Youth Summit, came to the City Council to speak in favor of two strategies they felt were crucial to the plan.
The council did not discuss their ideas. Instead, Councilmember Waterfield told these brave young people that no matter how passionately they felt about the issue, they should understand that the City Council is like your parents. The council knows better than you what needs to be done. That’s what the mayor and council seem to believe: They know better. History proves that they don’t.
In Santa Maria and across America, youth have decided that they cannot trust adults to protect them against gun violence. They have spoken clearly and passionately about the need for sensible gun laws that can make our schools and cities safe again. If only our City Council and the adults were willing to listen.
If you want to make Santa Maria fair to every person and every community, file to run now.
If you have the courage to tell the mayor and council that you won’t accept decisions being made behind closed doors, then you should run to be on the council yourself. You can help open those closed doors for all of us.
If you run, we will support you.
Gale McNeeley is a resident of Santa Maria. Send your thoughts to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 3-10, 2018.
