Editor’s note: In order to keep this story from being too long, each candidates responses will be presented separately, in alphabetical order.
On March 25, the five candidates vying for a short-term seat on the Windsor Town Council came together virtually to participate in a forum hosted by the Windsor Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters and moderated by local personality Pat Kerrigan.
Oscar Chavez, Julia Donoho, Jeffrey Leasure, Rosa Reynoza and Cody Wilson all took turns sharing their vision and ideas with the 138 tuned-in voters in their bid to take over Dominic Foppoli’s former at-large town council seat, vacated when he was elected mayor last fall.
The special election will take place via mail-in ballot only, with the first ballots arriving in mailboxes April 5 and due no later than May 4. The last day to register to vote in the election is April 19. The seat will be up for regular election in the fall of 2022, meaning the winner of the special election will be seated for approximately 17 months.
Due to the town transitioning to district elections, the winner of this special election will be able to run in 2022 only if they live in one of the districts up for vote in that election. Because this seat is still an at-large seat, any town resident is eligible.
The forum allowed candidates to make a two minute introductory statement, then gave them two minutes to answer questions sent in by residents ahead of time, followed by a one minute closing statement.
The questions covered familiar territory, including COVID pandemic recovery, the Town Green civic center project, equity and social justice, affordable housing and development, how to spend the Lytton tribe’s $16.5 million community benefit grant, disaster preparedness and how to strike the balance between small-town feel and the need for economic development, specifically tourism.
Oscar Chavez is a former Windsor Unified School District trustee who currently works for the county of Sonoma as the assistant director of the Human Services Department.
“There is no question businesses have suffered during the pandemic, especially our restaurants and hospitality industry,” Chavez said. “It’s very important we do everything we can to help save and preserve these businesses, they are job creators and we need to do our part to help them continue to be successful.”
Chavez went on to state that he believes it’s important to provide aid not just in the short term but also in the long term, and interact with the business owners to get a full understanding of what support they are looking for.
“We must work in a coordinated way on an aggressive strategy to convene small businesses and to see what they need, not just in the short term but also in long term,” he said. “To have a thriving ecosystem for businesses we must make sure they can stay with them, and we must advocate to bring in more resources like short term or forgivable loans to make sure they can stick in for long term.”
When it comes to the Town Green Civic Center project, Chavez neither endorses nor rejects the project, instead advocating for additional input and consensus building from residents ad also a fuller understanding of the risks inherent in the project.
Chavez initially came to the U.S. as an undocumented child, so issues of racial equity and social justice hit close to home for him, and he has worked with a number of nonprofit and governmental organizations on these issues. He headed up the creation of a report the county puts out that disaggregates the data along racial and other lines, and in his words “showed first-hand and (allowed us to see) in a visual way how divided our community was along race and class.”
He leads racial equity work at county and “understands how recruiting and attracting people from diverse backgrounds and investing dollars in communities … to help those in our town that have the least chance at achieving American dream.”
Chavez serves as the chairman of the community development commission which is charged with distributing block grants to facilitate affordable housing. He stated that they had recently created a report with 14 recommendations on how to create and build affordable housing, including things like changing zoning, height and density rules and ADU facilitation. He acknowledged that these things can be a hard sell to neighbors and said it is key to get residents to “see value in more diverse housing.”
Chavez calls the Lytton money “an incredible gift,” but cautions that any projects created with it will require maintenance and those costs should be understood before anything is approved. Still, he thinks that the youth should be consulted as to what projects would please them.
“We should ask community members and especially young people what kind of amenities or facilities would you want to see,” he said. “We are fortunate to have a skate park, we are a family town and keeping with that family-minded spirit. I want to engage with the community how best to engage with that gift.”
Chavez’ agency is in charge of “mass care and shelter” in natural disasters, so he has experience in disaster preparedness and management. He feels resources to improve vegetation management and acquire apparatus for firefighters is significantly important, as well as making sure communications during disasters are accessible to Spanish-speaking and indigenous community members.
Chavez believes there doesn’t need to be a conflict between economic development and small town atmosphere.
“I think this is a kind of tension not unique to Windsor, impacts every community,” he said. “(We need to) ask our community and businesses ‘how do we want to develop, how to we guard against the fear of sprawl or tourism?’ We’re in no danger of solving our housing crisis, we’ve barely built anything. In order to maintain our family-friendly environment there’s a fine balance for how we can develop together in a way that can be responsible to the wishes of our town. To bring more tourists to our town in a way that is not going to turn us into Healdsburg or attract big box stores but is designed in such a way that it meets the needs of our residents and business community.”
