Q&A with District 4 City Council candidate Jamin Pursell

On June 2, Richmond voters will cast ballots in a primary election. Richmond Confidential interviewed the two District 3 candidates and the three District 4 candidates, either in person or by phone, unless noted. We are publishing their verbatim responses, with light editing for clarity or brevity.

District 4 includes Hilltop Village, Hilltop Green, Fairmede/Hilltop, Greenridge Heights, Quail Hill, May Valley, Greenbriar, Sobrante Hills, Carriage Hills North and South, and the Castro Heights neighborhoods.

Jamin Pursell, District 4 challenger

What our District 4’s top two priorities, and how would you address them?

Our first one is going to be public safety. While there is an issue with not having enough police officers right now, within our district, we have one beat officer on half of our district, and we have one beat officer on the other half of our district, and we have a ginormous area that we cover. A lot of it being property crime means that oftentimes, we actually get a very late response from RPD. And while some of that is due to the fact that they are understaffed, it also is having to do with the fact that they’re in Marina Bay, and so we are just kind of very much far away from it. We also have wildfire issues, well, the threat of wildfire issues, actually. And we have other public safety issues around just trying to make sure that we’re going to get emergency services in a timely manner, because we’re so far away from where most of the emergency responders are coming from. So that’s one of them. And then the other one would be economic development. And I say that because we oftentimes feel like we don’t get the services that the rest of the city does, and it is because we are much further out. Why I believe we don’t get a lot of these services is because the limitations of staff and the limitations of what we can provide within the means of the budget that we have. If we were able to bring more businesses in, to be able to expand our our economic tax base, and be able to bring in more businesses, to be able to generate those sales taxes, generate those property taxes, generate all those things, we would be able to better provide and be able to make sure that we are providing those services into my district. Like we don’t have a branch of the library, we don’t have a substation, we don’t have a substantially good community center. And all these things, I think, are fixable. It’s just a matter of we need to have the means to be able to do so.

How would the Chevron settlement money be put to best use in District 4?

Well, I think that the best use for District 4 is to look at what it can do across the city, because this is over the course of 10 years, this is still a gift. This is not an income. So I don’t think we should be bringing up staffing, but what we can do is investment into our infrastructure in order to be able to try and get a lot of projects that have been waiting for funding, in order to be able to get those moving forward. One thing that I’ve been advocating for would be to have an actual police station. Currently, our police are running out of a rented building. And so having something that is actually owned by the city, more in the center of town, would be a big benefit to my district, because it would help us feel safer. As well, I think we should be investing in a number of other pieces of infrastructure, whether that be working out a lot of the issues we have around donuts and sideshows within our district, by having more street safety plans implemented, whether that be road diets or or however, Botts’ dots. But as well, we need to redo our fire station. It currently needs some structural repair to its foundation. And then as well, some investment in our parks — if you were going to focus particularly on our district. However, I do think these funds should be going across the city and towards some of the more impacted communities that have not had the investment for a long time. I think rising ships, rising tides, lift us all.

Would you be likely to support the continued use of Flock license plate readers when that question returns to the council later this year?

Well, we need to look at what had happened with regard to our Flock cameras, because I think we’re in a unique position compared to a number of other cities within the Bay Area. I’m not a brand person, so Flock itself, it’s not like I think that is the brand to do that. But there is a number of businesses, and honestly, all of those businesses have issues with regard to license-plate-reading cameras. Flock is just one, one company, one brand that does that type of service. What I look at is actually what our chief of police did. Our chief of police was the one who actually pulled the plug on the Flock cameras, because he was seeing that there was an issue. There was that open door that they had left and had not been clearly indicated, about somebody being able to have access to our Flock cameras from the outside. Now, we didn’t have any problems. Apparently, that might have happened in other cities that have been dealing with it. But just the threat of that was enough. So our chief of police went and negotiated with the Flock people, and he got us a different deal than any other city, which is that we have financial restitution as penalties for anything that they violate and anything that they don’t communicate. It puts the impetus on them to be the most transparent. … I think when it comes back, we will be looking at, how do they perform, what are the violations, or were there any violations during that time period? And what is our, public safety effort, which would be our chief of police, how would he assess it? Because he understands what impact ICE has with the community, with instilled fear, and how much it can undermine community trust. And as somebody who is constantly working to be able to create community policing within our city, I think we should believe him and understand his assessments, because while ICE has been using it, these have been around for a long, long time. And that we need to make the best use of all the tools that we can possibly, while still also protecting people from abuses by federal agencies who are enacting a agenda by the Trump administration.

What makes you the best candidate?

People have this assumption that city government is something about being an activist, or that the City Council has a great control over how the town operates. But we are a city manager-run city and one of the biggest things that I think makes me qualified is I understand local government, regional, state, and that’s my background — that is, working within government, knowing how we have an immense bureaucracy that has a number of processes and procedures of how things are accomplished. And so if you really want to be able to get something done within local government, within or work on a regional level, you have to follow those processes. Otherwise, it’s not able to get off the ground. This goes from simple things like knowing how to get something onto the CIP list, or the Capital Improvement Plan, to how to get things on the agenda. But also it’s about what things are within the scope of City Council, and what’s within the scope of what we can implement. I think one of the reasons why our district has not been feeling like it’s been getting a lot of the attention even though we had a district representative, is because of a lack of understanding how to accomplish and get things moving within the city process. And so having a background that not only did I learn it academically, but I also walked the halls of the Capitol. I’ve worked with a number of campaigns. I’ve worked with a number of elected officials, both in West County but across the county. It’s about developing good policy, trying to develop something that is not a knee-jerk reaction, but is well thought out and won’t have negative implications down the line. … Government is an art as much as it is a practice. It does require a lot of consideration, because when you’re trying to bring something about, you can’t dictate it to people. You have to bring them along for the journey, and you have to give them a sense of ownership. I think that part of my background, and what gives me the best qualifications, is that I know how to do that, and I’ve been doing it. And I think it’d be very successful to be able to help address the many needs of our district.

(Top photo courtesy of the candidate)

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