People filled the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors meeting room Thursday night to learn more about the four candidates who are running for three open seats on the Sonora City Council in the March 5 primary election.
It was the first in a series of public candidate forums being hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Mother Lode, a nonpartisan organization formed in 2017 to encourage informed and active participation in government.
Voters in the city will be given the opportunity on March 5 to select the three candidates they would like to see serve a four-year term on the council. The top three vote-getters will be sworn in at the council’s first meeting in July.
Councilwoman Ann Segerstrom, who is currently serving as mayor pro-tem and next in line for a two-year term as mayor if reelected, is the only incumbent in the race. The other candidates are Darren Duez, Bess Levine and Stephen Opie.
All of the candidates struck a mostly positive tone while answering questions prepared by the league and submitted by audience members about specific issues facing the city.
Duez, 41, a former member of the city’s now-disbanded Social Equity Committee, said he previously worked as a firefighter and believes they should boost firefighter salaries to ensure adequate staffing, similar to raises recently given to the Police Department for the same reason.
“Some of those guys are making very low wages working 48 hours straight … Some of that de-stress and having that time away is super important, and I don’t know if they get that,” he said.
Levine, 28, who has served the past three years on the Sonora Planning Commission, said she would hope to help facilitate more neighborhoods in the city to join the national Firewise program that encourages neighbors to help each other with projects like brush clearing.
The Greenley Road Extension, a long-proposed bypass of downtown Sonora, is another project that Levine said could provide an additional evacuation route for city residents in the event of a major fire.
“I think that is something that’s worth looking at from a fire-safe perspective, as well,” she said.
Segerstrom, 75, talked about work the city is doing to help improve fire safety, such as recently providing $5,000 to support the Tuolumne Fire Safe’s Council efforts at seeking a grant to do brush clearing in the Dragoon Gulch area.
When it comes to homelessness, Duez and Opie both advocated for nongovernmental organizations taking the lead on the issue with support from the city.
Duez pointed to the lack of movement on a vacant home that the city purchased three years ago for a homeless shelter as an example of how restrictions on government agencies can stifle progress on addressing the issue.
The candidates were also asked about their views on the city’s ordinance that places limits on properties that can be used for short-term rentals, such as Airbnbs and VRBOs. Under the ordinance, the renter must also live at the property and obtain a permit from the city.
Segerstrom said the situation was different when the council passed the ordinance in 2021, and that she expects the city will soon be taking a look at potentially lifting some of the restrictions.
“We were in a housing crisis, number one, and we were also having trouble getting the TOT tax from Airbnb,” she said, referring to the Transient Occupancy Tax that’s charged for each stay. “There’s a new system where it’s automatically reported now, so the city has looked at expanding back into the Airbnb and temporary housing situation because we do need the TOT.”
Duez said he believes the ordinance was a “fast draw” and suggested a potential lottery system to expand the availability of short-term rentals to support the area’s tourism economy.
Levine said her decision to vote in favor of the ordinance on the planning commission was not one she took lightly, but she’s since come to believe there are other options that could allow short-term rentals to flourish while also ensuring the availability of long-term rentals.
Opie, 36, who voted against the ordinance while on the commission, said he doesn’t like the idea of people from outside of the area buying houses in the city and turning them into short-term rentals, but he also doesn’t believe the government should be getting involved with what people want to do with their property.
One of the reasons Opie said he decided to run for office was due to the COVID-19 lockdowns four years ago and other mandates that followed, all of which have since been repealed following the end of California’s pandemic state of emergency last year.
“I believe our city is perfectly fine right now, but I never, ever want to go through another COVID again … It really, really ruined the community,” he said during his closing statements. “We brought it back, but I think we get stronger by letting us all be free, and letting us all mingle together, and letting us all just love each other.”
The next forum hosted by the league will be from 6 to 8:10 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 8, for candidates in three contested races for the county Board of Supervisors. It will also be held in the board’s meeting room on the fourth floor of the County Administration Center at 2 S. Green St. in downtown Sonora.
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