﻿Okay Katie, first of all, let's just think not to be like, you know, a barrier.
I can also put part of the screen down a little bit.
First of all, I'm very happy for you to be here talking to me today.
It's like, as I told you in my first interview, the most important thing now for me is to explain to you this research, what I'm doing and everything.
So the name of my research is the territorial impacts of participatory budgeting in mid-sized cities.
So I'm focusing on cities that are like between the metropolis and the small towns, like Valejo, a city of like a little more than a hundred thousand people.
And it's part of a bigger metropolitan area with San Francisco and everything. So it's kind of one of my focus.
I'm studying other cities, two in Brazil and one in Poland, that have like...
Valejo is the smallest, then we have a city with 200,000 or 300,000 and the Poland one is 600,000.
But they all have like the same roles in their urban networks.
And I'm studying these because my hypothesis is that PB in mid-sized cities have the potential to be better than in the other ones for some a lot of reasons that I explained during my research and everything.
And this research is part of a bigger project that we have in Brazil that is funded by the São Paulo State Research Foundation.
That it's about, we call the social special fragmentation.
The idea is that like these changes in the urban space from the last four years are making cities more fragmented.
Like in a lot of ways, but like with shopping centers, with gated communities, with freeways.
You have like the cities that are morphologically more fragmented, but also with social classes.
Like people who are much higher class and low class don't interact anymore because they're like interacting in like closed spaces, closed clubs.
This is like the idea. We have a lot of evidence that this happens especially in metropolis, turner areas.
But our research focuses on mid-sized cities. That's why I'm also studying mid-sized cities.
Well it's interesting. Vallejo is quite an interesting city.
I grew up on the East Coast, Baltimore, Massachusetts, Boston, and Michigan, and Florida.
Which are very segregated, I mean racially especially.
But here in Vallejo, I mean there's not like a, there's not super rich people here.
There's just not. I mean there's definitely a strata.
But in my block, we have all different, we have all different races and even genders.
I mean, well not genders, I mean sexuality, sexual preference.
And so it's really just kind of interesting and we all get along, you know.
I mean we're not like super friendly with everybody, but you know we all watch out for each other.
So I've never experienced that, you know, as an adult, anywhere where I've lived.
So that's interesting.
Yeah, it's an hypothesis.
And especially we have differences between countries.
Like Brazil is, for example, it's a very unequal country.
And we have like a lot of racism down there.
And especially being like the black population is bigger in numbers than the white population.
But at the same time the white population has much more privileges and like income and political power and this kind of stuff.
But first of all I have to ask you the authorization for recording.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Okay, yeah, it's just...
As long as it's not visual, no taping.
Yeah, yeah, no taping, just sound.
Okay, I thought about that when I was coming over here.
I'm like, oh no, I'm not ready to be filmed.
Yeah, no, no, that's not...I'm not doing like a documentary.
My girlfriend is doing that for her dissertation.
Oh, that's cool.
Is she here? Up here?
No, no, she's in Brazil, yeah.
But that's why I'm willing to go back to when I...in March.
Yeah.
But I can...first of all I need like just a small introduction about you, like the basics.
Your name, your age, where you probably already told you are from Baltimore.
That's very interesting because Baltimore is a case study like famous in urban studies.
And also briefly about your career, like professionally.
And your relation to PB, now or back then.
Yeah.
And also your experience at your work.
At my work?
Yeah.
Okay. So to start off, so I'm Katie Meissner, born in Baltimore, raised on the East Coast.
I actually...so for college I went...I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts, which didn't really do much good.
So I got into finance.
So I've worked in finance all my life.
I'm retiring next year from almost 65.
But I've...so I've been in finance.
I've worked for for-profit.
I started for-profit working with real estate management companies, colleges.
I've done...oh my gosh.
And then I worked for many years at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, a big non-profit, HIV and AIDS services corporate company or organization.
And then from there I'm...now I work for the federal government.
So I've done it all, for-profit, non-profit, federal government.
Me too.
Yeah.
The whole thing.
It's hard to find a good job.
I mean I love the AIDS Foundation.
It was the best job ever.
Because we were...it was when people were dying and we really had a focus and there was such camaraderie.
We still were all friends, people that I worked with.
I haven't been there since the mid-2000s.
And now I work for the Forest Service.
Federal.
Actually I have a viewpoint there because it's on Mirror Island.
So it's very close which is great.
Short commute.
I was on city council.
I got elected in 2014.
I just turned out the end of last year.
Okay.
I don't...I don't know.
Yeah.
So you were...you was a city council.
Yeah.
For nine years.
Nine years.
Okay.
And for PB...so before I was in city council.
Marty Brown I don't know if you...
Yeah we talked.
Yeah we had a meeting.
Yeah.
So she was interested in...well Villio has always struggled with our budget.
And so she was interested in introducing PB.
Especially when she was...her last year they had a tax measure that passed.
And so she wanted to use some of that new tax measure for PB.
And so she...before that I helped her...the theater that I just was doing the 994 today.
It's a little nonprofit theater down the street that way.
So I helped her set up community meetings about PB.
Just introducing it to the community.
Because I was...you know I thought this was a great idea.
You know because people don't understand government at all.
So just to give them the inroads to government and then also what I learned once we started PB.
Because I became a delegate.
Whatever.
I was...you know one of the...I can't remember the terms.
A delegate I meant I think.
Yeah.
Not a budget delegate but I was on the PB board.
Oh yeah the steering committee.
Yeah.
So I was the steering committee member.
And then when I got elected I was the liaison.
And as a steering committee member so we facilitated...I facilitated a couple different working groups.
And one was to replace the flooring at the local Boys and Girls Club which won.
And the other was to buy new band instruments for the school.
Which didn't win that year but it won in the next year.
Yeah I remember seeing that on the...
Yeah which is very...I love that one.
And the floor too.
So...and what else was...
I worked on another one that didn't win.
I can't remember it now.
But anyway so what I learned with PB there was a lot of interest actually.
From all over the community.
And so I met people I never would have met.
And I consider them friends now.
And it was very diverse.
It reflected our city.
Which is really nice.
Yeah this is interesting.
Yeah.
So because we have a diversity and we're also...you know it's economically...
I mean I think the lower income people probably are more people of color in Vallejo than people with more money.
Although the strat is not that different.
But in Vallejo there's a lot of sort of middle income of all different types of people.
Which is really cool.
And I think it's because Vallejo was a Navy Yard for so many years.
So you had people who had really good jobs.
Middle class, well paying jobs.
And we had a lot of people came to Vallejo that was from the great migration from the southern states to work on their island.
During World War II especially it started there.
Although the shipyard officially opened up in like 1854 I think.
So we've got a lot of influx from southern states of people to great migration African Americans.
That were looking for a better way of life.
Better jobs.
And it's probably not...I mean it's sort of interesting you're giving me some history about Vallejo.
No this is great.
So there were some real...some really important civil rights wins on their island.
If you look up the original 21ers they fought...I'm mixing it up now.
So there's two things that happened.
So there was the Port Chicago 50.
There was an explosion in Port Chicago which is in Contra Costa County down the Carquina Strait.
And they were loading...they had that sailor, the African American sailors,
it was the lowest job on the Tonin Pole, offloading and onloading munitions in a very unsafe way.
And people were kind of worried about it but the commanding officers, nobody cared.
And so there was this huge...
When was that sorry?
1941 or so.
Ah during the war.
Yeah.
Just before the war.
Before the United States got into the war.
Yeah.
Or maybe it was during the war I think.
But if you Google Port Chicago 50.
So the Port Chicago was not in Vallejo but a lot of the sailors were stationed here and they worked down there.
And there was this huge explosion that killed hundreds and hundreds of people.
It was horrible.
So the soldiers or the sailors I mean that survived, the survivors were back here
and they were ordered to go back and do the same loading and unloading.
They were like, "Well you just had a horrible explosion."
And some of them, the 50, Port Chicago 50, 50 sailors refused to do it.
And they were charged with mutiny and they got a dishonorable discharge.
And I think they were even in prison time.
So just recently after all these years, just recently they've been exonerated.
It's just kind of amazing how when you look back on things you think how on earth could they have done that?
The commanding officers to make them do this dangerous job and then continue after this horrible explosion
when they saw a lot of their co-workers or fellow sailors die.
So there's a lot of history made here in Vallejo.
There's the original 20 Wonders, which I can't remember what that fight was about,
but that was again a civil rights issue where African American sailors were treated differently than the white sailors.
So a lot of history, and people don't really know that about Vallejo,
but there's a lot of, before the Civil Rights Movement frankly, before Martin Luther King,
there were things that happened years before that.
So things were already happening.
So what else did you want to know?
I'm 64, almost 69.
Just checking if it's alright.
No, okay, great. Let me just...
Where is...
No, no, it's supposed to be working.
Yes.
I'm talking too fast. I've slowed down.
[Music]
Oh, did it go away?
No, it is working. It just got out, I don't know why.
So anyway, so PB, so I think all that history kind of came into PB
with the people that showed up and wanted to be a part of it.
And the city had gone through bankruptcy in 2008,
and so that was, I mean I was on council, and before I was on council,
I would go to meetings from 2004 on just because they wanted to build
a liquefied natural gas power, a re-gasification plant on their island, which was huge.
And I had just moved here, and so we fought to get rid of that when we won.
And then I started paying attention to city council, like what's going on in the city, right?
And so bankruptcy, I think that was the wake-up call for a lot of other people.
Nobody had any idea that we were heading for bankruptcy.
So it just activated a lot of people, and then they were involved in PB.
And there's still some of the same people.
It sort of wanes, waxes and wanes, but I don't think COVID was very helpful for PB.
But I think it's, you know, hopefully it'll come back.
And they've gotten good votes.
It's not a huge amount of people that vote, but you know, it's still, I don't know, it's gotten better.
Yeah, normally even just for context, even in Porto Alegre,
that's like the hugest PB of all time, and the greatest probably in these peak years,
because you know, like every participatory process is like not all the same, you know?
Yeah.
It changes over time.
Yeah.
And I'm going to ask that like how, well, they hope it'll be changed also,
but in Porto Alegre, they started like, it has 30 years of history.
Yeah.
And in their best years, they had like 3% of the population participating,
going to the assemblies, voting more than that, like 10%.
Yeah.
But you know, so it's hard for people to go into.
So I can't understand that.
Yeah.
It's just hard to get people to...
For a lot of reasons.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a whole other PhD.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I would like to know about when you were part of,
we already talked a little bit about that, but when you were part of PB, more...
Yeah.
As a delegate.
As a delegate, yeah.
What are your functions and the work structure you're part of?
Well, I just, I facilitated conversations with groups.
So we, in the very beginning, people came with their ideas, you know,
and then they, we had these big kind of town hall meetings where people
grouped together to the ideas that they liked, and then from the ideas that were
generated, big sort of brainstorming, they narrowed things down in those town halls.
And there were different groups that needed facilitation,
like the band instruments and the flooring for the Boys and Girls Club.
So I did those two.
I did another one, but I can't remember what it was.
That's a long time ago.
Oh, yeah, of course.
And so I helped facilitate, you know, just Karen helped with conversation and developed the proposal,
what it would need, you know, like kind of nuts and bolts, how much does a tuba cost, right?
That kind of stuff.
So to make sure that we had a good budget, and then working with some of the city staff,
which in my case we didn't do that because we didn't really, we didn't need their input,
because these were school and then it's nonprofit.
So we did go to the nonprofit and met with them and tried to figure out how much it would cost
to replace our gymnasium floor.
So, and then I would go to the assemblies where they would talk about the ideas once they were formed,
and then the voting, when people were voting, I would help with the votes.
So that was very cool.
But I haven't done it in a while.
I don't know, just working full time and being on city council, her tail pet stuff.
Oh, yeah, I can see.
So you weren't like just a city councilor, you also work outside of the...
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Because it's just not a full time job.
I mean, it is a full time job, but it doesn't pay full time.
Yeah, I can see that.
So I need a living wage.
So at the time, your main priorities were like being a facilitator and helping in the assemblies.
Yeah.
And during that, which were the biggest challenges and the difficulties of the job?
Challenges?
Gosh, I don't remember.
Well, you know, when you're in a group of a bunch of people, there's always people that want to kind of not rule the conversation,
but you know what I mean, they want to take over.
They want to talk a lot.
So that can be challenging to facilitate people in a way, you know, okay, you don't want to insult people,
but you have to tell them to shut up, you know, so that other people can talk.
To get everybody's idea, because some people won't talk at all, you know, it's sort of just the usual stuff with facilitation.
I can see that.
But as far as like just putting those things together, I don't think they were really that beyond that, they were pretty fun, actually.
It's a lot of fun.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Normally, what I've heard is kind of a different way.
So you already told a little bit about how you've been started in Valejo,
but if you would like to give more details about that, if you know.
Yeah, so.
Just finish the question.
Okay, sorry.
No, no problem.
The design, how it changes during time, if it changes at all, and now if you know how it currently works,
and if the committee is discussing new changes.
Yeah, well, I might not have much information about the newer changes, but so PB started.
Well, first, Marty, she was running for council.
She was very interested in PB, just as a way to educate people.
To give people the opportunity to spend their own taxes the way they want to, you know,
and understand how budgets work.
I mean, there's so many benefits of PB.
There's the tangible, the intangible, that kind of stuff.
So I helped her have a couple of community forums at the Meyer Theatre Guild, which is up the street that way.
Keep pointing, I guess if you know.
Yeah, my first day here.
I'm a visual person, so.
Anyway.
So, and that was really interesting.
It just was very interesting to show some of the other organizations that had done PB.
And I think she worked with Josh Lerner, you know, from the, and they actually managed PB when we first started it.
So anyway, so there was that, getting the community interested and that kind of, you know, to build some support for it.
And then when the city passed measure B, I think it was B, to increase our taxes, I mean, she was pretty aggressive.
She wanted 50 percent, you know, behind the scenes.
I don't know if she told you this, but behind the scenes, I mean, she was breaking the ground act because you're not supposed to have a quorum outside of city council.
So you're not supposed to talk.
So if there's seven people on council, you can only talk to two other people.
That's three. Four is a quorum, you know, a quorum that can make a decision.
So she admitted, she talked to, you know, and you can't do a serial meeting either.
It's like you can't have four people together, but you can't, like, I'm going to talk to you and gather your support that way either, the serial meetings.
So, but anyway, so she did get the support and she wanted 50 percent of the tax income, which was going to be estimated about 11 million new tax dollars.
She didn't tell me that. This is great.
Don't quote me. She'll kill me.
OK, I know.
You can say you just heard.
Zip.
So so she wanted 50 percent and there was some back and forth and that was public on the dais.
And they they settled on 30. I think it was public on the dais.
They settled on 30 percent, which is five million or when estimated it was 11 million.
But even when all was told it was five million, it was a lot of money.
And the city manager. So this was the city manager was not happy, not happy.
He never really said that outright.
But so we had TV or they put it on the on the back on the agenda and it passed or they put it on the budget and it passed.
And then the next year, Marty was off council and I got on.
But that's not true. So the first year, the year before I was on council, I was a delegate and we did our we had our groups and there was a vote.
And the votes, what passed and what didn't pass right there.
Pretty straightforward. So then it comes to council to approve next year.
Marty's gone. I'm on council.
And all of a sudden this is so infuriating.
And all of a sudden there's all these problems like, oh, that's a gift of public funds.
You know, that's you can't do that because of this, that and the other thing.
So some of the winning projects we had to scrap.
And that was not people were not happy. People were furious.
And frankly, I think I think that nobody ever said it.
But the city manager and city attorney, I don't think they were I don't they never bought into it.
And so they never they didn't prepare that kind of information should be explicit at the get go.
And to have those projects that were everybody worked on really hard and it comes to the council.
And one of them, I think, was a spay and neuter truck for truck animals, cats, dogs.
So it got scrapped and people were pissed off. And I was pissed off, too.
Like because I am the one that had to vote like, OK, I can't vote for something that we can't, you know, a gift of public funds.
And I think also the city of Alejo is always under a microscope in some ways for various reasons.
But, you know, the pressure, I mean, people love to complain.
And you never hear about the proponent. You always hear from the opponents.
Proponents are at home feeling fired. Yeah, I can see that.
So you say that this relates a lot about the investments. Yeah.
Public funds and everything. Yeah. When I was looking for I'm collecting the data about the projects and the investment and everything.
I could see that there is a fluctuation between the investments along some years. Yeah.
Now I was looking at in the last few years, the last few cycles, there was like just a million per year.
So how does the investment change? Change?
Do you know why they change that money? Because there was, especially in the beginning, were more than three million per year.
And now they're like one million. Yeah. Well, it's just the pressure on the budget. You know, the city of Alejo.
I mean, we, I, my last year on council, I was, I was pretty much the, well, I was the chair and the treasurer of the newest tax measure,
Measure P, which won, because this city just doesn't have enough money and people don't want to pay for, people do not want to pay.
So the people don't want to pay for government, but they want other services. It's like, you know, and Vallejo,
because we're situated right in the Bay Area, you know, we're competing for contractors and supplies with all these very rich cities that surround us.
We are not like our property and it even goes with property tax. Like probably our average house value is five hundred thousand.
But you go to Marin and it's average house value is probably two million five hundred thousand.
You know, there's the property tax. We just have no property tax because our property tax, compared to other cities, because our property tax is so much lower.
We're the lowest in the Bay Area, frankly. And so, so there's always this pressure on the budget.
And so that was one of the reasons why we kept cutting it, because there's like, there's no place to go.
You know, we, it's, and the conversation can be so frustrating because people get very mad that public service employees,
it's not as true now, but we used to be the highest, the highest paid with the highest benefits, especially retirement.
Public services, public service employees get huge retirements, which can be, which can be, depending on how long they've worked here,
it can be almost a hundred percent of their salary. And that's a burden that we got to pay for.
So we've got our employees and then we've got all these retirees who are paying the same amount of money.
It's like, and so people get really pissed off and like, you know, that was decided in the year 2000.
Like, get over it. It's not changing. There's nothing we can do. It actually was even argued in court.
And the court said it was a defined, guaranteed benefit. So that shut the door on it.
So, but people just get so, you know, just it's unreal. People are, there's so much magical thinking in the world of like what governments have
and what they can do with the money they have. So, so we had to cut PB.
But I'm hoping measure P. So I got the money for the new council and I, I did that and then I turned out.
So hopefully they'll fund more money for people. We'll see. That's not my choice now.
Yeah. And you talked about how this especially people have concerns about investment and concerns about spending.
Seeing that we be how do you see the participation from citizens?
Like if you think that there's enough participation in the quality of participation and you think that there are integration between people from different like social and racial classes.
Oh, absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's a okay. It reflects our town.
And there are people, I mean, I wish the participation would grow, but there are people that just love their people that are just so invested in PB.
And that's sort of like their thing, you know, the thing that they like to do. And so we've got people that return that are always there.
And it's also a variety of ages, too, which is kind of cool. Young people and older seniors.
So just a broad spectrum of people that actually participate, which is small. But, you know, they're they're a mighty group. Right.
They get things done. They get the projects done. But then I wish that more people would vote.
I don't know. That's how to get people to vote. It's a challenge. Yeah. It's a challenge. They made it easier. They made it easier for sure.
Do you think there's some region of the city or some group that benefit most of the city?
I don't think so. I think it's more even.
Okay. And do you see?
Oh, actually, I might. You know, I think because now they split it. Right. So they used to have now they have services and capital projects.
So I do think that there's a real altruism in that group.
And I think the people that benefit are probably more low income people benefit than just the general population, which is great.
So I think that's I think I don't know if it's ever been articulated, but I think that's kind of a mindset of PB and the people that participate.
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because there is this concept that was born with the be in Porto Alegre.
Yeah, that's the inversion of priority. So the idea is that people who are more like low income or more in the periphery gets more.
It's more based on equity. Yeah. So do you see that happening?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And especially when it comes to the services, you know, there's funding that's going to nonprofit organizations that like especially addressing children's needs.
And I'm I'm not I don't have anything specific because I haven't I just haven't been as involved except for proving them on council because we always have to approve them.
But yeah, absolutely. Yeah. OK.
And so there's interestingly enough. So the first year, I mean, if you want to hear like a fun little interesting story about the first year, PB.
So there was this project called ABC Arts Benefits Communities ABC. That was a project. I wasn't a part of it.
I wasn't I didn't facilitate that. But so the idea was to pay you to get money to pay utility boxes, give it money to artists to paint the utility boxes around, you know, like PG&E or AT&T utility.
I don't know if you have them in Brazil or not. But, you know, they're just around.
You can see there's I can tell you where some are because that would be fun to see because you can actually see them. The results of PB.
Yeah, this is one of my ideas. Like go to some point.
Oh, and results of PB. Yes.
And I wonder, you know, I won't look now. I'll try to find the Senor Nino.
A floor might know there's there are QR codes on some of the PB projects that are the arts more arts related.
So you can see those. But anyway, so this ABC was to fund utility painting utility boxes, which is just blank big gray boxes.
And they house mechanical stuff for telephones. I think it's just telephones or maybe it's PG&E.
So there's some really beautiful ones around town now because they would get covered with graffiti.
And so when you paint them nicely, the graffiti people tend not to type them.
So there was also another project to beautify a neighborhood and for twenty four thousand.
That was kind of vague, but they decided on tiling the Capitol Street stairs.
So they, you know, just a staircase that goes from Sonoma Boulevard to Capitol Street. And because it's such a steep hill, the road dead ends and then there's stairs.
So twenty four thousand. Well, it turned out to be it turned out to cost three hundred thousand plus.
And the proponents of that project, you know, it just it actually turned it didn't it wasn't very it wasn't very nice for a while.
People were really the proponents kept saying, well, the city should just pay for the public public works improvements because not only were this the stairs going to be the stairs.
They wanted to tile the stairs, but the stairs underneath there are like seventy five hundred years old and they were disintegrating and they needed a huge amount of repair work, which was not incorporated in the twenty four thousand.
And so and so the city manager who didn't like TV, like he kept saying no, no, no, no, no.
And they were trying to raise money on their own. And it just it just was not.
And they were kind of in a stalemate.
And then we got a new city manager who was like, why wouldn't we fund this? And so he approved the funding.
And so now and they're done and they're beautiful. So if you go over to Sonoma Boulevard and Capitol Street stairs, which you can find them on the map, it's right downtown.
The stairs are beautiful. It's all tiled and it's a sort of the tile and the tiles reflect the history of the layovers and maybe towns.
Great. Really pretty. That's a big success.
Although it was there was a lot of thought, you know, the term sausage making politics, you make sausage, lots of argument.
Yeah, it's a term for American politics, I guess.
A lot of like the idea is sausages are really tasty, but you don't want to see how they're made.
So those stairs are really pretty, but you don't want to know how they were, you know, how they came to be.
Makes sense. Yeah, makes sense.
And you are saying about like a project, this stairway project.
Yeah.
And do you think that the design of the city in Valero specifically has any influence in how the projects are distributed like territorially like in the town?
Yeah, you know, I think probably the projects are more on the west side.
The west side, we're the older part of town. There's more needs over here. People have less money.
Generally, I don't know if that's true, but the northeast side is all the newer suburbs, all the cul-de-sacs.
And they don't need anything. And there's nothing up there anyway.
There's some shopping centers here and there, but most of all, it's just suburbs with cul-de-sacs forever.
So a lot of the projects are in South Valero, especially the services stuff, South Valero, North Valero, on the west side, and on the west side, just west of 80.
Yeah, where the city started, right?
Yeah.
Okay. Makes sense.
Yeah, like this is old town right here. Over there.
And from your experience, what type of projects receive more investment and where this project like where in the you already told me that like where the projects happen are more common more than like in South town and in North side, right?
Yeah.
But what types of projects receive more investment?
Oh, I think.
Well, the public works stuff, you know, the capital improvements.
And you know what? This is so frustrating. People love to fill potholes. And so potholes tend to get when they're when people are voting, we tend to see potholes number one.
Yeah, yeah, I saw that. Okay, looking at the projects. Yeah, it's the most common.
And there's basically every year.
Yeah, and people get mad and like, hey, that's, that's PB.
That's PB.
You know, if you want something different. I tell people, you know, I don't have these conversations anymore. I used to like people get mad. I'm like, well, if you want a different project to win. I mean, this is where the community is really important where they've got to go out and drum up support from from their friends and neighbors.
Because
Potholes just is number one.
Because we have so many.
Yeah, this is interesting. And the sad thing is that our streets are such bad repair that $300,000 pothole repair is like a needle in haystack.
You know, it's just not.
We need $18 million to really bring our streets up to the great where they should be according to whatever, you know, grading organization.
So when you have $300,000 for a pothole repair, it's not that. Yeah, it's not that off.
There's not much importance. Yeah. And you can do something that's really makes a difference. You know, like
I said term microfinancing, you know, like you could microfinance something like the Capitol Street stairs or floors in a gymnasium for little kids in the poor part of town, you know, or in band instruments for our public schools, which really suffer from funding.
So it's aggravating to see potholes get funded. But part of me is just like, well, that's the way it goes.
You got to honor the process. And so people want to the voting people want pothole repair. I can see that. Yeah.
And like, I'm more like, just check it. OK. The recording is OK. I think just like
it happened. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
How do you what do you think about it's more a broad question. How do urban situation of Alejo being a part of the Bay Area. Yeah.
Influences like the dynamics or the city dynamics. And do you think that it can be considered considered like a very ferric city that's in the periphery of San Francisco or not.
Yeah. What's your opinion about that? If you think that the city has divisions inside of it, like there's a referee, you told that region that is more suburban. Yeah. And the city center that's more like there's more needs. Yeah.
And so do you think that is like two kinds of peripheries like the metropolitan area inside of Alejo. If that's OK or not. If you agree with me or not. Yeah. Yeah. If this position of Alejo has any relation to PB at all.
So the other parts of the Bay Area have relationship with PB. Not PB itself, but the fact that Alejo is part of like a metropolitan area. And it's like in this, it's per
the population and like the needs for infrastructure. Yeah. You can see that. Yeah. So PB. Well, kind of a broad question. Well, PB. Well, one of the things that PB did in the early when he first adopted as a city was that it was the first city in the United States to adopt.
I don't know if this answers your question, but you know, there was Chicago, the wards in New York with boroughs, right? Like a couple of distinct. But they were not citywide. No, no. And so Alejo was the first city to adopt a citywide. And so it gave us a lot of recognition. Like, well, the Alejo is really on the cutting edge.
I mean, that's really faded since then, just because we have so many struggles, like I don't know if you've read about the police struggles we have and the budget struggles and, you know, the homeless struggles that we have now. So I don't know if that does that answer the question.
Yeah, no, it's like I'm just like looking for a possibility. Yeah, yeah. But as far as like, so, you know, internally within the city, I mean, I think I already mentioned the city, you know, you've got the, I mean, not that those, those people up there in the northeastern parts of the city, east and northeastern especially that those are the more expensive housing,
newer, newer housing, newer streets, new potholes, HOAs, you know, HOAs, a homeowners association. So those neighborhoods, they pay into like over here we don't have HOAs, but they homeowners association will cover certain neighborhoods, and they pay in an extra tax.
And those taxes go directly to their neighborhood for tree, you know, landscape maintenance, that kind of stuff. And that's, that's something that cities have created years ago.
When Prop 13 got passed, Prop 13 was the proposition that capped property taxes at 1% in California. That was 1978. And really that's frankly destroyed the schools in California. You're hearing all this stuff, you're asking about PV, but no, but it's related directly to governance, to budget.
So, makes sense. So, so Prop 13, so, you know, I think PV was a way to just give people back some semblance of being able to spend the money that the city collects from them, but we just, because of Prop 13, because people decided they didn't.
You know, I think there's a little bit of racial element in there too, like Prop 13. So, when you go to other countries where there's sort of mono, mono, what's the term, you know, they're all sort of the same. Like Sweden, you know, they're all like white Swedes.
So, they pay in, their income tax is 50%. And that, everybody gets free health care. Well, in the United States, there's something about, you know, I can, you know, you have to pull yourself out, up by your own bootstraps and maybe I don't want to pay for your, you know, the idea of like a welfare queen, you know, I don't want to pay for your children have that your unwed mother.
I mean, it's just, you know, I think there's a lot of that went into Prop 13. Like a lot of, I mean, I think, but also, but governments weren't really, rather than trying to watch their budgets, they would just put anything in there and then just pass on the increase to the communities, the homeowners, and increase their property tax.
And that's, I'm being very simplistic, but I think, so the people, so there's this difference in property taxes, the way people get their services. So they pay for their own services because they have more money.
And we over here, I live on, I don't live very far from here. I'm just five minutes drive away. So our neighborhoods, you know, I, we have potholes, we have trees that don't get taken care of, that kind of stuff. But we don't have an HOA. So we do it ourselves.
Yeah, I can see. So you can see like differences inside town. Not just like between Valero and the Greater Bay Area, but inside the city.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The newer, the newer, it's the newer communities where this idea of HOAs, who's it started in the 80s, I guess, you know, at Prop 13 was 1978 and all of a sudden, taxes went boom.
You know, and cities were like, oh my God. And so when they approve new developments, so this is how they do it. So they have a developer comes in, says, I want to build a new neighborhood of 200 houses. So that developer is the owner of all those acres.
And he's one owner and the city says, okay, you have to, you have to do an HOA, you have to do a landscape maintenance district. And you're going to, you're going to, when you build your houses, you're going to charge those homeowners, like an extra 1%, you know, to take care of the property.
So it takes a burden off the city. And so that that's why the newer neighborhoods look so much better in California, not just Valero, but California.
That's very interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah, I know all this from the city council.
But this is going to like relate more to the second part of the interview because this is very like more about the urban elements of Valero. This is kind of interesting for me to know about that.
And especially this law, I didn't know.
Other question about PB itself. Do you think that the NGOs here have a strong role in the process? And you told me about that like, if there are any conflicts or tensions because I said like, for example, when the mayor and PB started here, the mayor wasn't into PB?
No, the city manager.
The city manager, sorry.
Yeah, because the mayor, you know, so we don't have a strong mayor. So we're a city manager run city. So the mayor and city council set policy.
The only difference between the mayor and city council members is the mayor sets the agenda and has an office.
Okay, so if you can see that today, what do you know about today? If there are like tensions between PB and other institutions of this part of the city like the council or city management or this kind of stuff.
And the NGOs part of it.
Yeah, I don't think the NGOs.
Well, honestly, there's conflicts with NGOs outside of PB.
I don't know I think we're a town of like,
so there's, there's not a lot of so Vallejo, the Bay Area,
philanthropy in the Bay Area.
When you go to San Francisco, philanthropy per capita is like $1,000. When you come to Vallejo, it's like $1. I mean, it's amazing.
Vallejo and Solana County are not sometimes even considered part of the Bay Area, but we are, we're on the Bay. It's right there.
And we are considered one of the, and all the government entities, we are considered one of the Bay Area counties, but we just get forgotten. And philanthropy, we get nothing. Some organizations, funders don't even, they don't even come to Solana County.
They don't, they don't give to us. They give to everybody else except for Solana County. And we have the deepest needs. You know, it's kind of irritates me because usually those philanthropic organizations
are there for the needy. Like, hello, we're like poster child for needy up here. We've got deep needs and we can't compete because of this differential, you know, the property tax stuff.
So that, when you're inside Vallejo, we're, you know, we're all competing for the meager amount of money that's here. And so, not just PV, but everything. And so I think that creates, you know, and they're like, and then it just gets personal too.
Because even though it's a city of 120,000, the people that are like involved and connected is very few. And there's so much competition and infighting. And it's really, I see it, like I'm on this board, you know, I'm a treasurer of this nonprofit now.
It's infuriating to see. Like, we could all work together. Instead there's backbiting, infighting, backstabbing. So that's just, I think it might get into PV. But I just saw an instance.
So, you know, people get, I don't know, they get indignant, like they're left out, they weren't invited. So this, this last week there was a Solano Economic Development Committee, or Commission, they held a forum just on this topic.
Like, why are we not getting these philanthropic dollars? And how can we change that? Well, this one woman posted on Facebook, she was all, she was so indignant that she didn't get invited.
She's like, I've been doing this conversation for years. And like, oh my, and so now she's trying to blow it up. She's so mad that she didn't go. She's like, you know, she's not going to give it any kind of credence, you know?
And I'm like, I wasn't invited and I felt like I should have gone too, but, and I actually frankly could have gone if I, because I know people who organize it, but I had to work that day.
So, but I just, you know, sort of, people get so indignant, like, and I, you know, it's just Facebook, social media, so ugly, oh my God. And so I posted like, I'm grateful that that conversation's happening. Because I am.
And so we're so busy infighting that we're not, you know, we should be pointing our fingers at the organizations outside of the layer that aren't giving us money, rather than infighting. But we do a lot, there's a lot of infighting. So frustrating.
So there are a few problems.
Look at me started.
I can see that.
See, I told you I get mean.
No, I can see the reason. Yeah.
And here in Vallejo, do you think that TV has any connection to other like urban planning, like institutions or processes?
Oh, inside Vallejo? Oh, I do think that actually, because you're basically,
you know, it's a survey of the community, what they want, you know, and so I think that the city, I do think the city sees that. And so when they, you know, they're developing a budget, what's left over is very meager. You know, there's, you've got all these things that you're committed to fund.
And if there's any, you know, slush or whatever. But I do think that the city council and the city staff see what happens to TV and try to like things that don't get funded.
Like a spillover effect. Yeah, yeah.
This is interesting. Yeah.
I don't know about the rest of the community though, but I think it's helpful, you know, it raises people's profile, even if they're not,
even if their project's not selected, it's there and it's for all people who are voting to see.
Well, about PB, my last question. Do you believe that Vallejo PB looks for justice, like for social justice or territorial justice?
Oh, yeah, I think so, yeah.
And if it does, it's achieving it, in your opinion?
You know, on a very small scale, you know, with a million dollars. But I think that they, I do think, if you look at the projects that are funded,
and I can't, just because I haven't been that focused on it in the last couple years, but I do think when you see some of the stuff that's funded,
it's going to the neediest parts, especially the service part. And I think actually that changed, because it used to be just one big pot of money.
So that was an explicit change. I can't remember why, but the PB committee, they changed the rule book.
Yeah, it's a design change, right?
Yeah. And so I think that change was to make sure that those people, you know, because they were competing with the capital projects.
You know, and I think, I do think sometimes people, when they look at them, they don't see the limit.
Because there's only a million dollars. They look and they're like, "Oh, that's 300,000. I'm going to vote for that. Here's this little 80,000 dollars."
Well, you know, I'm not going to vote for that because only 80,000. And usually the services are, they tend to be lower than I've seen.
So I do think it's on a small scale.
On a small scale, okay. So I have a few more questions about like urban elements of the Valeo Espírito.
Because, you know, like urban geographer and like the research, the broader projects more focused on like urban transformations.
Yeah.
But like if you want to like go to the bathroom or something like that, so before I ask you that question.
What's that? If I...
Like going to the restroom. I need to. So if I can like just like two minutes stop, you know.
It's right over there.
Great. Like I'm going to stop just...
Okay. I'll check my messages.
Okay.
Fast.
Yeah. So about Valeo as a city, as a urban space and everything.
Could you evaluate like the changes that happened in the city in the last 10 years?
And your opinion about these changes? What can you see like if something like really changed in the city in the last 10 years?
Just in general? Not related to PB?
No, in general.
Okay.
And if these changes have any relation to like changes in the Bay Area?
Oh, definitely. I think the biggest change...
So I used to live in San Francisco and my husband and I moved here in 2000. So we've been here 23 years or more.
And I worked in...I don't know if you know San Francisco. I worked and lived in the Tenderloin.
And saw that you know there's a lot of homeless, a lot of poverty in that area.
And so we moved up here and it's just a little suburb. You know, not fanciest, but just way different than San Francisco.
And the homeless crisis has exploded here. Exploded here. It's just a...and I don't know if any PB projects have gone to address that.
But...
I think there are a few about like meals for the homeless, for instance.
Yeah, yeah. And it's just a drop in the bucket. The need is so great. Not just Vallejo, but the Bay Area, San Francisco and the 9th District.
So what's driving this...well, what's driving homelessness is a multi-pronged, very complicated issue. Lack of housing, lack of mental health services, drug use.
And I used to work for a needle exchange. So I know this population when I was at the AIDS Foundation.
So it's just...and I honestly feel like it's partially there's no mental health services for people.
And that's true. It's true in the Bay Area and it's gotten...it's just gotten so much worse.
And the 9th District Court, which is California, Arizona, I mean it's the 9th...it's the Western states kind of basically.
They decided in 2018 in a ruling that cities can't move homeless encampments off of public property unless they have a place for them to stay.
Well, again, here's the city of Vallejo. I mean San Francisco can't even do that.
And here we are with much less able to compete with other cities. Like there's no way we could do that. There's just no way.
And so it's kind of intractable. I don't know, unless something changes federally, it's a real challenge.
I mean it kind of feels like we're now a third world country, frankly, when you go...and it's all around the water.
You see it's around the water.
Yeah, yeah. In my opinion, like walking around in San Francisco, there's a lot of homeless people.
Yeah.
A lot. And not just that, but like using drugs in the street.
Oh, right on the street. And then there's a drive. So I have friends who still live down there in not the nicer neighborhood.
Because I didn't live in the nicer neighborhood either. I always find it because it's cheap, you know.
That's where the rent is cheap. That's why I'm here. That's where the houses were cheap.
Yeah, and the last time I was down there, you know, there's homeless people.
I mean there are people sitting in wheelchairs that look like they're dead, frankly, but they're just so drugged out.
And then there's the drugs. I can tell there's the drug dealers, you know.
Yeah.
It's all in the mix. And I just walked down the street like, "Hi." Don't mug me.
So...
And this situation, this process...
Oh, and I must say though...
Say, say.
To be positive, right? So we first moved here in 2000. So we were in San Francisco. You can get love coffee, the best food, you know, everything.
We first moved here. There wasn't even a Starbucks in the entire city.
Not that I like Starbucks, but it's better than the wheat coffee at the donut shop, right?
So... And this didn't exist. This was an empty building. And so Maryland grew, set up.
So things are happening. It feels like there's more of a youthful vibe here.
So definitely... And I think that's part of what was happening in San Francisco.
It's just got so expensive. That's why we moved here, because we couldn't afford to live here anymore.
So... And the continuous waves of that continue to come to the layout. So we've got...
Like, this didn't exist. You know?
No, that's good.
Definitely it's something. And we've got nicer restaurants, like that Anchor Pantry, the Jessica...
Like, I love that place. You know, it's nice. You can get a fresh loaf of bread in the morning. It's just baked.
You know, cheeses, you know, that kind of stuff that you can eat.
Yeah, it's interesting, yeah.
The bourgeois.
Yeah. But this process, for example, the homelessness...
And these changes, you told me about this northern area that you have a specific wall that makes them work how they work.
Normally they are related to urban changes that are broader in the world and everything.
And one of them that happened in the whole world, in the West, in Europe, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Mexico...
In the last years, we call the diversification of housing.
Like, gated communities, communities for different social classes.
Verticalization, like more buildings. New urban divisions.
And how do you see these changes in Valero?
So, yeah, the newer areas... I think people...
I mean, I think there's a lot of people that live in fear.
You know, they want to have their gated communities.
And I think there is a lot of crime. You know, it's a property crime.
But there are people with such deep needs.
But I've lived in all my entire adult life because I don't want to pay a lot of money for rent.
Basically, my motivation...
Because when I was in art school in Boston, I lived in Cambridge.
You know, the city where Harvard is, right?
They have also a famous PB there.
Yes, yeah. But I lived in the worst neighborhood.
In a dump that had... we moved the refrigerator and there was a dead rat behind it.
Okay.
But, you know, I don't mind. I can walk down the street and I don't feel unsafe. I don't know.
You know, especially in the city environment and there's lots of people moving around.
But I think people live in fear.
It's connected to their property.
Their things that they own. I don't know.
But I just hate gated communities.
I mean, that's why we're on the side in the older neighborhood.
Because we're just open and it feels like... I mean, it is an older city.
It's an older part of the city. Like more European kind of, you know.
Like your city.
And do you remember if there were discussions or debate or projects in PB that were related to housing?
Like for homeless, for example?
Well, maybe homeless. Like meals, I think you mentioned.
Oh, no, no, no. Yes, actually.
So this project in particular, if you wanted some background on it.
So there was this woman, Maria Guevara, sad story.
So she was an advocate for the homeless.
And she worked... she created this organization called Valeo Together.
And they're still in existence.
Now they're a non-profit.
And she wanted to address homelessness.
She wanted to have like a house... she wanted to have a safe house or whatever.
So she had a PB project.
Twenty... and I don't remember the name, but it was maybe 2015?
Like 600,000 or 800,000.
And it was not very well articulated, frankly.
And the mayor at the time, Osby Davis, kind of helped her shepherding.
He kind of forced... other projects would never, in that kind of shape, would never have gone on the PB project.
The PB list of projects to vote on.
But Mayor Davis... I don't know.
I guess he worked behind the scenes and got it on the ballot.
And it won.
But then they couldn't figure out... but it was so broad and undefined.
Maria kind of felt like, well, it's her money to spend.
But the city's like, you know, this push-me-pull-you, like, give the public funds.
And, you know, what can we do?
And what's legal and not legal?
And so it kind of just sat there.
And she... the city was looking for ways to fund it.
And there was one non-profit that would have been able to fund it with services.
But she fought against it tooth and nail.
It was like no way, no way.
And she galvanized people to fight against it.
It was a Berkeley something.
Anyway, so the money just sat there.
And recently the city built permanent supportive housing on Sacramento Street.
I feel like a 2200 block.
You can drive down there.
You're probably not in a car.
But if you go down Sacramento Street, you'll see it.
It's recently built and recently occupied by people that were formerly homeless.
And it's interesting because on Merrill Island there's a company called Factory OS,
like Factory-Offsite OS.
They build modular housing.
And they call it offsite because they're in a hanger that used to repair submarines.
Huge hanger on Merrill Island.
You should repair submarines.
And so now they build these.
It's like a jigsaw puzzle.
It's kind of like the size of containers.
They build these apartments and then they put them together offsite.
So they build them there which is way cheaper in Vallejo because when you build on a site,
like in San Mateo or anywhere in the Bay Area, it's so expensive.
But if you build them there and then drive these container-sized apartments and put them together
like building blocks in San Francisco or they've done housing for Google.
So the city finally was able to cobble together the funding to get this permanent supportive housing
built on Sacramento Street.
And that project that Maria advocated for, those funds went towards that project,
which actually was millions of dollars.
So the $600,000 or $800,000 that project was funded for was not a whole lot of money,
but it was important money.
And then Maria, it turns out that she...
There's a whole lot of reasons why she was advocating for homelessness.
And I think she was homeless herself.
Like many people, she was on the edge for many years.
And it turns out she was undocumented.
And then during the pandemic, she committed suicide.
So it's just a tragic...
Yeah, of course.
But her contribution with the project turned not into policy, but turned into a broader project, right?
Yes, yeah.
And they're naming it after her.
They're naming it...
I think they are.
They should be.
But unfortunately, it should never...
No one really knew that she had mental health issues.
No one knew that she was undocumented.
No one knew there was a lot of things that people didn't know about her.
She was very...
And the fact that her project got funded, got on the ballot in the first place,
I think it led to her having some really...
This is where politicians shouldn't meddle into things.
The mayor got it on the ballot, and it was undefined.
I mean, it talked about broadly helping homeless, but it was never like,
"Well, is it going to be a building? Is it going to be safe and camped in? What is it going to be?"
And Maria, she felt like it was her money to spend because it passed,
and because the mayor got it on the ballot in the first place.
That's an interesting case, considering spillover effects, and it relates to housing and everything.
It's interesting.
Yeah, I forgot about that one.
That was a big one, too.
Of course, the end of the story is sad.
Yeah, but she did...
Whether or not she would have wanted it to be spent that way, I don't know.
I think she had her own ideas, but...
Yeah, but at least they spent it or something, right?
Yeah, you should drive by.
Maybe, if you talk to Floor, she might be able to get you to go visit it.
It's part of PB, and I think they might be open if you have an introduction for the city.
Okay, that's interesting.
How long are you in Vallejo?
This whole week.
Oh, good.
So you have to visit the Capitol Street stairs, and that project on Sacramento, and the utility boxes,
those are huge.
They're standalone huge projects that have been from PB.
Other stuff is a little more not quite as quantifiable.
Yeah, one of them that I was looking for that is very...
Looks huge, looks interesting.
It's one of projects that were originally for also potholes and this kind of stuff,
but it got into rebuilding some streets that were close to middle schools,
and they made big changes in lightening and crosswalking and sidewalks.
I had the name of the streets, but I forgot by now.
Yeah, that's a newer one, right?
Yeah, it's from 2019, I guess.
Which I always vote for those, and they benefit...
It's good for the community, it's good for the health of the community, that kind of stuff.
Yeah, it's also...
Yeah, I'm going to take pictures of the places.
I don't know if it is common here in Vallejo to put plates that were funded by PB.
Oh, sometimes they'll have banners.
Banners? Okay.
Oh, and there's also...
I'll talk about...
So one of the things early on was community gardens.
They funded community gardens.
And so the really great one is the Emanuel Temple Community Garden.
It's on Sonoma Boulevard at Indiana or Illinois.
I can't remember the name of the park.
I mean, Flora will know, but it's a beautiful...
It's a Kyle's Temple Community Garden, or yeah, Kyle's Temple, not Emanuel.
And it's very...they had an open...
They had a...I don't know what...
Oh, maybe it was part of community gardens.
So we have a Vallejo community gardens once a year where people will open up their houses
and show people their gardens.
And Kyle's Temple Community Garden, funded by PB, was part of it this year.
And I got a snip of rose-scented geranium.
They gave, you know, which is rose-scented geranium.
So they have all these beautiful flowers, and, you know, everybody has their little boxes
that community...
One of the poorest parts of Vallejo is off of Sonoma Boulevard
in that particular central Vallejo.
Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, those are the cross streets.
But Kyle's Temple is right there, and people can grow their own vegetables,
and they can grow flowers.
So when I went to visit, one of the ladies there gave me a little cutting
of a particular geranium, which is now growing in my backyard.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, so you should check out Kyle's Temple Community Garden.
That's another one, yeah.
And you'll see the neighborhood's a little gritty, you know.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
I'm gonna look at that.
Yeah.
Great.
So now I'm coming remembering stuff.
Yeah, yeah, this is part of the process of the interview.
Yeah, it makes sense.
I don't know if you think that it's taking too long.
Oh, I don't care.
Yeah, it's okay for you?
No, I have like just five more questions.
Okay.
Who do you think that promotes mostly the urban sprawling here in Palermo?
Sorry, like the urban constructions and the sprawling of the city.
You think that's more the realistic market or the public power, like public housing?
Well, okay, so here's...
I have all the background, so I'm probably, you know, I can keep all this information.
Feel free.
The city, there's a lot of urban sprawl, like in the northeast, you know.
Uh-huh.
And so the city, when the city was facing bankrupt, I knew the city was going bankrupt
because I'm a financial person.
So I looked at their...
I'm like, "Oh my God, you're approving contracts."
You know, I don't want to get into too much detail, but they're approving contracts for
their police and fire that were going to cost them like...
The contracts, when you calculated the cost of them, $10 million.
And like, how are you going to...
Where are you going to get $10 million from?
Like, I don't see, you know, just looking from the outside.
So I knew that was in 2003, but what the city was doing prior...
What the city was doing was they would approve anything that came in front of them that would
give them funding because they were desperate, frankly.
When the Navy left, that was a huge blow, and nobody...
It was never really like...
It should have been...
They should have set off the alarm bells, and they never really did.
So these projects around town, the big...the sprawls, they generate development fees, one-time
development fees.
So the general rule in accounting is you get a one-time fee, they're just paying you once.
You don't use it for your ongoing costs, like police and fire or, you know, whatever.
The stuff that you have to pay year after year.
But that's what they were doing.
They were using those development fees to pay for their ongoing services, and they should
have used it for one-time funding or one-time projects, like capital improvements.
And so, you know, it was a recipe for disaster, but they were kind of...
So in some ways, it felt like planning wasn't even happening.
It's just like, we're desperate.
Yeah, go ahead, just give us the money.
You know, that's the way it was.
And the developers love it.
They make money hand over fist.
You know, they take those acreages, whatever, and they build 200 houses, and each house,
you know, they could sell it for...I don't know.
I don't know what it was going for back then, but, you know, even 150,000 times 200, a bowl
of money.
Yeah, it's a lot of money.
They build them really quickly.
They're crappy.
Yeah, yeah.
I like my old house.
I can see that.
Yeah.
It is interesting to know.
And how do you think that public power deals, not just public power, also real estate, how
they deal with empty urban land?
About?
Like empty urban land.
Urban land that are available for building.
Oh.
Like, they appear as a public demand for more investment, like, because it's kind of common
for, like, urban land that is empty.
So they, like, they have owners and they left the empty so they can evaluate over time.
Yeah.
Speculate.
Yeah, yeah.
And this is a, like, this is a problem here in Valejo or don't you see that happening?
Well, we're pretty built out.
You know, we're pretty built out.
So there's not a lot of that and we do have a parks district.
And so part of those one-time developer fees that the city doesn't get, it goes to the
park district to create parks.
Okay.
You know, so that's ingrained in our, which is good, you know.
But if you're looking outside of Valejo, the, if you've driven, if you've been able to go
around Solana County at all while you're here, you'll go up north, up 80 and see there's
all this open space.
And so that is a very, what's the word, it's very particular.
I mean, it's very, well, it's planned, frankly.
So it's, the county has always had urban growth boundaries and it's, and they're something
that the county residents vote on where they say we keep the development in the cities
and the rural areas stay rural.
Right?
So it keeps, so we're not, Solana County is different than any other county, well,
not Marin because Marin's different, but we don't have a lot of sprawl.
And for, especially for a poor county, it's kind of interesting.
But if you, this new thing that's come along is California forever.
So if you just Google it, you'll find it.
So these young tech people with billions of dollars at their disposal have been amassing
property up in northeast part of county, of the county.
They've been buying property.
They've spent almost a billion, almost a billion dollars, $800 million.
It's like a stoundage.
It's like a, if I didn't know it was real, I would not believe it.
And they call themselves California forever and they say they want to build Paris, like
a Paris of Solana County or Paris of the Bay Area.
And so that's, that is a danger.
You know, the speculators, and these are people with so much money at their disposal from
the Bay, you know, from San Mateo.
This guy's from Croatia or something, or Poland.
The guy that's, but all these people have invested in it, including the widow of Steve Jobs,
you know, Apple.
It's insane.
So we're always vulnerable to that, but we do invest in our parks.
Yeah, I saw that, especially normally every year it has like, in PB, there's a vote for
one project that relates to parks.
Yeah, yeah.
And the parks normally they are in this, that were former empty areas.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
So that happens.
Yeah, okay.
We, before the interview, we were talking about like, the neighborhood I am, for example,
and why walking around here.
So do you think there is any concern here in Valejo about public security?
And do you think that people who are looking for like a safer city, like in these gated
communities, are putting like security cameras and or controlled by private security systems?
Yeah.
Do you think that these provoked are emptiness of public space?
Oh yeah.
Oh absolutely.
You know, it's interesting, like I, when I was living in San Francisco, I mean I lived
in a bad neighborhood and I worked in a bad neighborhood.
But there's people everywhere, you know, and so, and there are people like all different
stripes, you know, and then I would like walk down the street, we crazy homeless guy, but
then there's like German tourists.
Yeah.
Because they like, they're cheap too.
They say the cheap hotels down lower Mark Street.
And so, but there was, you know, I always, I kind of always felt safe because there's
people there, you know, and I, and I also don't.
Like, I just don't take crap when I'm walking down the street.
If somebody bothers me, I just start yelling at them.
And that usually, you know, knock on wood.
But here, I'm, you come here and there's nobody around.
There's just nobody around.
It's just, it's really, it can be creepy, you know.
And so you don't like, like, okay if I yell, then if anybody hear me, you know, I mean
when I, when I, I walk in my neighborhood every day and my neighborhood's not considered
safe and I run into people, I don't know, it's just fine.
But I always bring a whistle, a really loud whistle.
So if somebody bothers me, I'm just, and it works with dogs.
Which I've ran into some stray dogs.
But yeah, people are, I think, I think everybody's afraid.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know, and here I just feel like it's a little creepier because there's not, okay.
Yeah, I saw the urban lighting is not very good.
No, no, no.
Oh, this is interesting.
So you can see like this feeling with public security here.
Yeah.
Oh, and everybody has, it's so funny.
So I know the city really well because, because I ran for council two times and so I precinct
walked everywhere.
So I've walked, this is a big sprawly city and I've walked almost every, I mean every
neighborhood frankly.
And when you go to certain neighborhoods, you know, neighborhoods that are a little
more affluent, they have all these ring cameras that talk to you or they'll whistle like,
you're like, who's whistling?
Like, oh, there's some motion detector that sees you walk by and goes, like whistles.
Or my neighbor, so my neighbor, my neighbor caught somebody underneath the catalytic converters,
that's just big here or everywhere I guess.
My neighbor across the street, he's a big guy, he's huge.
Oh my gosh.
So one morning I hear him yelling.
And so I go out and we're, you know, we're friends, you know, so I go out and like, and
so he caught this guy underneath his car and just kind of sketchy looking guy.
Underneath his car.
Underneath his car at nine o'clock on a sunny morning.
And he's like, what are you doing?
And it's so funny, like they have a ring camera and his wife was with their daughter at some
swim meet.
She saw this guy on her phone from the camera because he didn't, he's inside, he didn't
see anything.
And so she calls him, he runs out and there's this guy and the guy, and so I hear Don yelling,
and I run out and like, what's going on, what's going on?
And so this guy says he dropped his cigarette and it rolled under his car.
Well, he's got this coat, he's hiding something on his coat, which we think was a saw, a sawzall,
these little, you can just saw catalytic converters really quickly.
And so we were both yelling at him like, got it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then they put in a new security system that whenever it activates, whenever you walk
by, it goes, hello, you are being recorded.
So we hear that all the time, but you know, it's okay.
Okay.
And my other neighbor, so if you want to hear some stories about my neighbor, my other neighbor,
he's kind of this old sketchy guy.
He's, he's getting old.
I don't know if he's 60s or 70s, but he's always been at the, he's lived in Vallejo all his life.
He lives in his family home and he's, you know, whatever.
So it turned out a week ago, somebody, and no one heard this, somebody at like four,
1 a.m. on a Wednesday morning broke into his garage and his garage is separated from his house.
So maybe that's why I didn't hear it. And with like a, with a sledgehammer.
And he told me they stole 600 rounds of ammunition.
Okay.
Sounds like an inside job.
And now there's, and I'm like, why do you have 600 rounds of ammunition in your garage, dude?
Yeah, it's another question. Yeah.
Our little street. I love it.
Yeah, it's another, another debate also.
Yeah. So that's, you know, that's Vallejo.
You can see.
You told me about like the public housing, this project in Sacramento Street.
Yeah.
There's, there are other projects of public housing happening in Vallejo, in Vallejo.
And who does them? Is there like, is it federal police or is it the city?
Oh, they're, they're, the older ones, the older ones are all private owners, private, you know, and I don't know how it works.
It's a nonprofit, but there's investors in the background that get the tax incentive right off.
Yeah. It's, you know, it's not, I think it's a horrible.
Yeah. I was going to ask if you see any advantages or problems with this project.
Yeah. Oh, yes. Because, and for 200 main, 200 main street, which is over there, which is on the kind of on the back of the waterfront on main main street.
There's main street. There's the Cartola Parkway and Marin.
That's a pretty big project that was built in 60s and it was sold in the 90s to some investors and it just went downhill from there.
They get federal tax credits. It's privately owned, but it's a, it's a, it's, it's overseen by HUD.
And so the city does, HUD is, HUD Housing and Urban Development. It's, it's United States.
Okay. It's a United States, what's it called? Like an institution? It's a department. Yeah, it's a department.
Oh, a department. Okay. It's the U.S. Housing and Urban Development and they create low income housing.
So it's 100% low income housing and they get funding from HUD, but it's private. So the city has no jurisdiction over it except for, you know, police services when there's problems or, you know, inspections.
And so the owners were, they were reporting to the, they report to HUD like any problems, whatever. So they were reporting there was no crime there and they were, they were lying basically on their reports to HUD, which was surfaced by somebody from the community.
And they've changed ownership so it's gotten better. But it's so concentrated in our downtown. So there's the 200 main, there's Casa de Vallejo. This is all downtown. It's all like a rig.
200 main, Casa de Vallejo, I don't know, what's the other one? Oh, Carolina Heights, 400, the Marina Towers, and there's the fifth one, I can't remember, all surrounding the city, all surrounding the downtown.
And that was all done in redevelopment in the 60s, where they tore down 12 blocks of city, beautiful old buildings and just created all this sort of ghetto of all low income people.
And so you wonder why there downtown is it's difficult to get it to thrive because you don't have a mixture of incomes.
I can see. Yeah. And do you see any like redlining that happened in Vallejo? Oh, yeah. There's any? Yeah, it definitely.
There's definitely remnants of it. I would say that what they did in the 60s was part of that.
There's South Vallejo, certain areas of Vallejo that were redlined. And so, you know, that's long gone, but sometimes some of it still exists on people's deeds because the neighborhoods are so old.
And just, you know, like people being able to build their wealth from homeownership. Some people were left out of that. And then the housing crash of 2008 was devastating for a lot of people who were able to purchase homes and then lost them to foreclosures.
Okay. Interesting to know. Now it's more a personal question. What is your opinion about gated communities in general? Oh, I don't like them.
Okay. As a matter of fact, the first gated community that was proposed and one city council before I was elected, I got up and said, don't don't do this.
If you want to read an interesting story, if you like sci-fi futuristic, there's a book called by Octavia Butler. It's called The Parable of the Sower.
And it's, she's interesting. She's an African American sci-fi, a woman African American sci-fi writer, which is very unusual. She passed away maybe 10 years ago, but it's called The Parable of the Sower and it takes place in the gated community.
And I read it years ago. I read it like 93 or so. You sort of see like how gated communities can just, you can gate yourself in and gate the problems in your community. You think you're running away from it, but no.
I'm going to tell you about one of my and my girlfriend ideas after the interview. They relate directly to that. But okay, good to know about it. I'm going to read that.
Yeah, read that. It's very interesting. I'm going to read that for sure. It's creepy. And now like in 93, me living in San Francisco, but now like it feels like it's not, it's no longer futuristic. It's like, today. It's like now.
And last question. Okay. What's your vision for a future for Vallejo and for the city and for PB?
Oh, well, I hope that so I really worked hard on that on measure P to increase the sales tax and actually a lot of people. This one person blocked me on Facebook because of my support. But I'm hoping, you know, I'm like trying to give the city options and with more money.
I'm hoping that I've said that to the city manager, the city staff, like I'm hoping that measure P some of that money will go back into PB. Just, you know, it doesn't have to be three or 4 million, but you know, make it a million dollars. If it's every, I think they're moving towards every other year. So make it 2 million. Maybe 2.5 million.
Do you think that like the amount of investment in PB is important? What's that? Do you think that the amount of investment like available for PB is important?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just I think it gives people that, you know, the people that the people that work hard to create the projects just give some more hope that they that their project will win.
You know, just when the money gets cut to so much, just such small amounts, it's like, you know, it's then everybody's fighting for the bones, you know, and that creates us like the inviting that I was talking about, like we're all fighting for the same bone and we start to get snarly.
I can see that. Yeah. Do you have any comments or anything other things that like you didn't talk about? I kind of covered nine yards. Yeah, I agree with you. But you know, I didn't answer like the future of Alejo.
Okay, I don't know. You know, I've lived all over the country. I mean, I've actually I mean, I've been to I went to Rwanda and seen in its darkest days, not the darkest days.
So you see, you get to see the what the world goes through and you know, people can be so down on the layoff. It's like this doom loop. How horrible it is. And I'm like, come on, you're in California, people like this is a great place.
It's beautiful. And I have pomegranates that are ripening in my backyard, you know, and I grew up in the northeast in Boston mostly and you know, it's just it's so it's just beautiful here.
And there you know, and then there's, I mean, the inequality, it's I mean, that's a not that's a national thing, you know, the wealth is getting so concentrated in these people, but I don't know what we can do about that.
But we can still celebrate our city. We had this. We didn't have this when I first moved here.
So Katie, we finished the interview basically. I would love to thank you about the name of my institutions, the St. Paul State of the St. Paul State University.
This is my institution in Brazil and the Boise State University where I'm working here in Idaho.
Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's that's where Boise versus Idaho. That's the Ninth Circuit Court decision that created so many more.
I mean, I don't know if it created it created the encampments and the city's ability not to move them Boise versus Idaho.
It was Boise versus Idaho. I didn't know that. Or no, Martin versus Boise. Martin versus Boise, Idaho. Yeah, it's the capital of the city's of the state. So it makes sense.
2018. That's interesting.
Well, I would like to also reinforce that all the information we talk and it's like for scientific purposes. Yeah. So I'm going to just use it for my research and the transcription of our interview is going to be available just for the researchers of my project.
Yeah, not in mine. In Portuguese. Oh, I know one word in Portuguese, "descafenado".
I went to Portugal in 2022. So we learned, my husband especially because he can't drink caffeine. He's like "descafenado".
Okay, great. It's amazing country. I lived in Portugal for two opportunities.
Oh my gosh. I'm a painter. So I took a landscape painting workshop in southern Portugal outside of Lisbon in Azatão. It's Lisbon, then you go across the Targas River. Is that the Targas? And then down to the south.
Yeah, and we went to this beautiful preserve. They had all these pelicans. It was beautiful. This preserve on the water. Great. Beautiful country. All the area. Actually all Portugal is very beautiful. It's a beautiful country.
I have to show you my... Well, the interview is over. I'll show you my picture. Yeah, okay, great. So just to... If you have any questions for me or for the project itself, you can feel free to like mail me and ask questions in the future.
And if you think it's everything okay, the interview and the recording. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. It was fun to talk to you and you know, I always want to talk about this little city that everybody... Yeah, I can see that.
Little city. So I'm going to finish it. Okay.
