MY TOP PRIORITIES...

This is how I plan to make these priorities a reality....
 

Affordability

 

There are not enough homes in Sacramento County. Until this changes, housing will continue to be unaffordable. Our children will have no chance of ever being able to afford to buy a home and may even have to move out of state for the chance to do so. This is unacceptable. 

 

We must reform our entire zoning and permitting procedures to focus less on process and more on results. It takes too long to build housing in this County and that must change, now!

 

All working people need to be paid a living wage. This includes all employees and contractors of the County.

 

Accountability

 

The County does not take the homelessness crisis seriously. The proof is in how they spend the money. The County has spent over half a billion dollars in just the past year on mental health and it cannot or will not tell us where the money is going. We have no way of knowing which programs are working and which are not.

 

I call for an immediate audit on all homeless and mental health spending by the County. Every cent of public money must be spent on programs that work rather than partners that don’t.

 

We must know where the money is going, what it is funding, and most importantly, whether the money is being spent wisely. Given the deterioration of the crisis in the past decade, I’m willing to wager that it is not being spent wisely. Once we know how the money is being spent, we can increase funding for the programs that are working and cut the funding for those that are not producing results.

 

The County must create a real strategic plan to solve homelessness. The plan must identify how to use its existing resources to achieve an end to rampant homelessness. 

 

The County is hiding behind a nonprofit called Sacramento Steps Forward because it does not want to do its job: solve the homelessness crisis. SSF is a nonprofit without any public authority to create or implement a strategic plan on homelessness. It is nothing but a glorified joint-committee between the County and the City of Sacramento that only implements whatever the two happen to agree upon. That is why it produces inadequate solutions like the Local Homelessness Action Plan. The problem with this is that it is not a strategy or even a plan. At best, it is an aspirational document but not one with any real teeth to take a bite out of the problem.

 

I support repairing our roads throughout the County. If Folsom and Sacramento can have nice roads, so can the county. It will cost us less in the long term to repair the roads now than to rebuild them later.

 

The roads in Sacramento County are in deplorable condition. All residents of this county, not just those of cities, deserve to drive on roads in good condition.

 

I urge the County to create a strategic plan for mental health. This includes working with the cities in the County to better coordinate services for the mentally ill. 

 

Many people in the county jail have mental health issues. If we expand the mental health capacity of the jail, that will free up space to deal with serious criminals instead.

 

I support creating new cities in the county. Responsibility for municipal services belongs with the cities, responsibility for countywide services belongs with the County.

 

The County is responsible for providing municipal services for over half a million people, more than any other county in the state; and quite frankly it’s not doing a particularly good job doing so. This is because counties were never designed to provide municipal services to so many people. Counties were designed to provide countywide services and that’s what Sacramento County needs to prioritize. The more cities we create, the more the County can focus on its core mission: countywide services for everyone in the County.