Santa Cruz candidates discuss the city’s most pressing issues in last forum before primary

Candidates from all of the Santa Cruz city races on the June primary ballot joined a Lookout forum on Thursday evening at Hotel Paradox, at times grilling each other on the issues.

The forum began with District 4 Santa Cruz City Council candidates Hector Marin and incumbent Scott Newsome, then continued to the mayoral race, where Ami Chen Mills, Ryan Coonerty, Gillian Greensite, Chris Krohn and Joy Schendledecker took to the stage, and concluded with District 6 city council candidates Gabriella Noack and incumbent Renee Golder. 

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The candidates spoke about a breadth of issues, including homelessness, development, hurdles to local business and the city’s budget. About 200 people were in attendance.

District 4 city council

Newsome, first elected in 2022, said he’s most proud of working to restrict rent hikes at the St. George Apartments in downtown Santa Cruz, where dozens of low-income residents faced displacement in 2024. Marin, however, criticized Newsome and the city council for later rescinding the ordinance in a settlement with the building’s owner. Newsome responded by saying that the settlement essentially did what the ordinance would have accomplished.

Marin said that if elected he would push for rent stabilization and development tailored to locals first. He said he’d also hold more town halls to foster transparent conversations with constituents. He said his top spending priorities would be mental health services for unhoused residents and better salaries for essential workers.

“Right now, we have a housing crisis where the wages are not matching the current housing costs,” he said. “We want to ensure that we increase those living wages for our city workers, for our educators, for our police officers and for our firefighters.”

Newsome said the city budget is balanced and “looking good.” He said he would focus on investing in roads, coastal infrastructure and safer streets — and would aspire to do so without cutting anything from the budget. He didn’t specify how that would be accomplished.

To support local businesses, Marin wants to invest in grants for downtown businesses and use state and federal programs so more businesses can open in the area. He also said he’s in favor of improving traffic calming measures and e-bike safety on downtown streets. 

Newsome said that 21 businesses have opened downtown in the past 15 months, and that the city needs to keep promoting an environment for that to continue. 

Newsome also said that the vacancy rate downtown is only about 8%, and added that Marin supported a tax on businesses with receipts of $1 million or more, whether or not they’re profitable: “That will result in a lot more vacant storefronts downtown,” he said.

Marin responded saying that Newsome has approved many “disruptive developments” throughout downtown and that he has not stood up to corporate developers, which Marin said he would do if elected. Newsome said homelessness is the biggest issue he hears from residents, and while homelessness is reportedly down in the city, he said the city still has to increase shelter capacity and provide necessary services.

Newsome asked Marin how he supports affordable housing despite opposing the downtown library project and the real estate transfer and parcel tax, passed as Measure C in November. Marin said that he supported a number of fully affordable housing projects such as Pacific Station North and the Santa Cruz City Schools workforce housing project on Swift Street. He claimed Newsome is supported by external corporate interests and that he’s selling the city to those developers.

Santa Cruz mayor

Development was a major topic of focus in the mayoral forum. Schendledecker said the city has not built enough in the past, and while it has work to do to catch up, she thinks the city needs to push back against developers who say more affordable housing in projects doesn’t make sense. She said smaller and mid-sized developments are better for most places in the city.

Krohn said there are too many luxury apartments and not enough affordable units, referring to Pacific Avenue as becoming a “Wall Street.” He wants to hold a town hall meeting to see how people feel about development.

Greensite said there’s “no question” there is overbuilding in the city, and that the city needs to slow the pace of development. She also said that affordable housing should go to local workers, and that it needs to be spread throughout the county.

Coonerty said that focusing development downtown would make it easier for people to live close to transit and workplaces. But he agreed that some projects along the corridors proposed by local firm Workbench are “way out of scale.” He also added that UC Santa Cruz needs to add more of its own housing, and said a current lawsuit between the university and the city “hopefully” will force the school to build more. Krohn supported the lawsuit against the university, and added that the school needs to either build on campus or accept fewer students.

Chen Mills said the city is building too much, but recognized the housing crisis. She urged the need to balance building with the concerns from locals. She also advocated for a town hall for people to discuss design elements and objective standards for new projects.

The candidates clashed on some issues. Coonerty said it’s “head-spinning” that Schendledecker advocated for getting rid of single-family zoning in a KSQD interview, despite wanting to maintain community character.

Schendledecker replied that, given that people can already divide their lots, single-family zoning is already effectively gone, adding that it was also “racist and classist.” She said Coonerty has taken money from developers and worked as a consultant to developers, and the other four candidates have not.

On homelessness, the candidates also diverged somewhat. Greensite said she believes plenty of unhoused residents deserve help and housing, but that some “give the whole community a bad name.” She said if they don’t take shelter or treatment that’s offered, she would not tolerate public camping. Coonerty also said that it is “immoral and unacceptable” to have people living in streets and parks and that, similarly, if people don’t take resources offered to them, the city should use other tools like conservatorship or the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Courts, which would be a new court system to get people with psychotic disorders into state-sponsored treatment.

Chen Mills said the city has to work with the unhoused community to understand what they need for stability rather than “judging people who are currently unhoused.” Schendledecker said that not everyone can get into a shelter, and that they need space for healing and treatment. 

Krohn said that any replacement for day services, which homelessness nonprofit Housing Matters closed in April, should be spread out in multiple locations. He also expressed doubt that the city has successfully reduced homelessness.

One thing the candidates did largely agree on was that too much of the city budget goes to managerial and administrative positions. Krohn, Schendledecker and Greensite all said the city needs to cut perceived bloat at the top of some departments, while Chen Mills said she’d focus on funding the National Guard Armory shelter. Coonerty said he wants to create a dashboard that shows exactly what’s going on in the city with metrics such as crime rate, the number of businesses permitted and the unhoused population before setting a budget.

Throughout the evening, there was attention on Coonerty and what his opponents see as corporate and real estate backing, as well as a proximity to big tech and promotion of surveillance, like automated license plate readers. That came through when the candidates asked each other questions. Schendledecker asked Coonerty about what programs have led to progress in homelessness and which he would cut; Krohn asked him about his consulting for developers, donations from the real estate industry and how he can represent Santa Cruzans who want to see public oversight of development; and Chen Mills asked him to justify his general support for automated license plate readers.

Coonerty said he does believe that many homelessness programs in the city and county are good, but that the city needs to get people through the system more efficiently and that there needs to be an alternative for those who do not accept treatment services. To Krohn’s question, he said that he worked on projects he felt were good for the community, like a hotel downtown and student and faculty housing on Delaware Avenue, but he will not do any consulting should he win the mayorship. On license plate readers, he said that he holds the same view as the current council, which is to exit the Flock Safety contract, but be open to the technology if the city can find one that fits the city’s values.

Coonerty asked Krohn, Chen Mills, and Schendledecker why they support encampments in the city when voters are against them. Krohn said that once an encampment near Highway 1 and Gateway Plaza was broken up, unhoused residents dispersed throughout the city rather than having a centralized place to go, but that Coral Street is “an abomination.” Schendledecker said she won’t “punch down” and blame unhoused people for their issues, while Chen Mills said she is more in favor of managed or semi-managed shelters throughout the city where people can stay, rather than unsupervised encampments.

District 6 city council

The final forum was by far the most cordial. In fact, Golder told Noack she would have helped her had she not been running herself. 

Regarding UC Santa Cruz housing demand, Noack – a senior at the university – said she noticed that the new student family housing on campus is both expensive and largely unoccupied, despite the university having many unhoused students. She said she wants the university to do a better job of revamping and maintaining its existing housing. 

Golder said there needs to be more housing on campus, and that the city needs to collaborate with the university rather than fall into an adversarial relationship.

Golder said she’s proud of the reduction in street homelessness the city has seen during her service term. She said she’d prioritize workforce housing and advocate for converting old buildings into condos to give people a path to ownership.

Noack said that should she be elected, she’d put more focus on localized labor as a requirement for new building projects, and that the city needs to be careful about who influences its decisions. 

“I think it’s very important to give that platform to grassroots movements, to nonprofits over development companies, over real estate unions that oftentimes have too much say in local politics because of how they donate money and who they have personal connections with,” she said.

Noack said she knows she’d be a young councilmember, but believes that gives her some advantages. She has experience teaching technology and has grown up understanding tech’s impact on society, both good and bad. A child of open adoption, she is in contact with two families, one upper-middle class and another “generationally disenfranchised,” giving her a unique perspective on a wide range of issues.

Golder said she’s worked to make sure the city understands how children are affected by its decisions. As the principal of Bay View Elementary School, she believes she has her “finger on the pulse” and understands people of all ages.

The two candidates agreed that making sure local workers are getting paid sufficiently to live and work in the city is a budgetary necessity: “Santa Cruz has thousands of employees working every day to keep our city functioning, and we need to protect them,” said Golder.

Noack asked Golder what advice she would give her, and what might be her biggest weakness if she is elected. Golder said, while not necessarily a weakness, a challenge would be establishing strong relationships with people in the community as a young person who has not lived in Santa Cruz for long.

Golder asked Noack to name five businesses in the district, their biggest challenges and how she would support them. Noack named Companion Bakeshop, saying the owners struggle with high operating costs and high employee turnover due to housing instability. She said she would advocate for tiered property taxes based on the number of properties an entity owns. She said that would target corporations and create a tax pool to fund small businesses.

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