Tag: Al Fox

Sentinel staff report–
Latest campaign finance disclosures filed on Oct. 27 show an unprecedented amount of cash is being spent in the race for three seats on the Citrus Heights City Council this year.

The latest financial filings cover a reporting period of Sept. 23 through Oct. 22 and show newcomers in the race continue to outspend long-seated incumbents Mayor Steve Miller and Vice Mayor Jeannie Bruins, who are both up for re-election this year along with Councilman Al Fox, who was appointed to fill a vacancy on the council last year.

Learn more about the candidates: Meet the 5 candidates running for Citrus Heights City Council

Porsche Middleton, a Planning Commissioner seeking a seat on the City Council this year, continues to top the list for most contributions received, reporting an additional $7,000 received in the latest reporting period — bringing her total contributions for the year to just over $48,000. Her latest contributions came largely from the California Apartment Association PAC, the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, and the Sacramento County Democratic Central Committee, each of whom gave $1,000 or more to her campaign. Her total expenditures are listed at about $45,000, with latest large expenses listed as $1,600 to Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc., likely for several large billboards her campaign has taken out in the city, and another $1,700 to GoDaddy for web-related services.

By comparison, at this time in the race for City Council two years ago, two of the top three candidates that year only reported receiving about $10,000 apiece in contributions, while Councilman Jeff Slowey topped the list with $17,600 in donations. Slowey won re-election that year and was the top vote-getter, but money didn’t end up being the determining factor for the other winner, Bret Daniels, whose campaign reported less than $5,000 in contributions and spent less than $3,800 during the entire campaign.

From 2016: Bret Daniels’ election to city council called ‘a shocker’ by Citrus Heights leaders

Coming in second place for contributions so far this year is labor relations manager Treston Shull, who reported receiving an additional $5,500 during the latest period, bringing his total contributions for the year up to $30,500. His latest contributions came largely from the San Francisco Laborer’s Local 261 PAC and the United Auburn Indian Community of the Auburn Rancheria, which gave $1,500 and $2,000, respectively. His total expenditures are listed at about $24,000, with top expenditures going to TabCommunications, Inc., for campaign management, along with significant expenses related to postage, mailing and literature.

Councilman Fox came in third for contributions, reporting the receipt of another $5,600 during the latest reporting period, which brings his total contributions for the year over the $20,000 mark. The bulk of his latest funding came from a trio of $1,000 donations from the Sacramento Metro Chamber, the Citrus Heights Chamber of Commerce PAC, the Rental Housing Association PAC, and a $900 donation from Gail Sanders, an individual contributor who listed her address as that of Roseville-based Sanders and Associates Geostructural Engineers. Fox’s most recent large expenses have been about $5,000 on mailing-related services and printing.

Vice Mayor Bruins reported receiving an additional $4,500 in the latest reporting period — largely from the California Association of Apartments PAC, Sacramento Metro Chamber PAC, and Republic Services — bringing her total contributions to just over $16,000. Her total expenditures are listed at about $10,750, with the majority going towards campaign mailers and literature.

Mayor Miller still lags behind the other candidates in funding and expenditures, reporting an additional $3,000 in contributions during the latest period from the Citrus Heights Chamber of Commerce PAC, Republic Services, and the Sacramento Metro Chamber. In total this election, he’s brought in about $9,800 and spent just under that, with his largest expense being about $2,400 spent on a campaign mailer.

Campaign disclosures are required by the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) for local candidates who raise or spend over $2,000. Two pre-election disclosure filings are required by the commission, one covering a period through Sept. 22 and the other a month later. An additional requirement for candidates to file a separate form each time a donation of $1,000 or more is received.

The next reporting deadline is not until Jan. 31, 2019.

To view all candidates financial disclosure filings, click here.

Sentinel staff report–
Big money is pouring into the Citrus Heights City Council race this year, with amounts already topping the usual $10-20,000 raised by candidates in order to win local election.

According to the latest campaign finance filings, Porsche Middleton’s campaign has by far out-raised and out-spent all other campaigns, reporting total contributions for the year at $41,139 and expenditures at $39,768. Treston Shull came in second for fundraising with a total of $25,000, followed by appointed incumbent Al Fox, and incumbents Vice Mayor Jeannie Bruins and Mayor Steve Miller. The mayor is the only candidate to report less than $10,000 in donations for the year.

So who’s funding the candidates?
Middleton’s top donor is the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California PAC, which donated $5,000 to her campaign and is known for vocally supporting the recent gas tax increase — something Middleton also said she supports as a way to fund backlogged road repairs. She also reported a non-monetary contribution of $7,000 from The Blocs, which rents out private offices at 2277 Watt Ave., where she held a fundraiser in June.

Her largest expenditure has been a $5,000 payment to the law firm of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP, which represented her in suing the City of Citrus Heights for the right to have her title of Planning Commissioner included on election ballots.

Related: Candidate wins legal fight with City of Citrus Heights over election dispute

Bruins’ top donor is SAFE Credit Union, which donated $2,000 to her campaign this year, followed by three donors who each gave $1,000 to her campaign: King’s Casino, the Citrus Heights Chamber of Commerce PAC and longtime resident and land owner Ted Mitchell. Her total contributions through the latest Sept. 22 reporting period were listed at $11,515, with at least another $1,000 contribution coming in after the filing period from the Sacramento Metro Chamber PAC. (Candidates are required to file a supplemental report within 24 hours of receiving a contribution totaling over $1,000.)

Of the $3,600 she reported spending through the last reporting period, her largest expenditure was around $1,500 spent on campaign signs.

Shull reported receiving $25,000 in total contributions, along with another $2,000 donation by the United Auburn Indian Community of the Auburn Rancheria that came in after the September filing period. Shull, who works as a labor relations manager, reported top donors from six labor political action committees who each gave his campaign $2,500 apiece.

Of the $16,000 his campaign has spent so far, his largest expenditure has been $5,000 in campaign consulting expenses paid to Tab Communications, a Fair Oaks-based consulting firm that has also managed campaigns for Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones.

Fox reported receiving about $15,000 in total contributions through Sept. 22, soon followed by another $12,000 in large contributions. Fox’s top donors are three PAC’s who each donated $5,000 apiece: Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association PAC, Associated Builders and Contractors Northern California Chapter PAC, and Western Electrical Contractors Association Good Government PAC. Of the $8,600 his campaign reported spending, Fox’s largest expenditure has been $4,005 for campaign signs.

Related: See where Citrus Heights City Council candidates stand on local issues

Mayor Miller, who is seeking his fourth term on the City Council, showed the least amount of fundraising activity through the Sept. 22 filing period, with just $6,800 in total contributions reported. Since then, he has only reported receiving an additional $3,000 from a trio of thousand-dollar donations, bringing his total campaign contributions for the year to just under $10,000.

Of the $5,800 his campaign spent, his largest expenditure reported was $2,343 to A-Applied Mailing Service, likely for his early campaign mailer that hit mailboxes across Citrus Heights during the first week vote-by-mail ballots were sent out.

Campaign disclosures are required by the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) for local candidates who raise or spend over $2,000. Two pre-election disclosure filings are required by the commission, with an additional requirement for candidates to file a separate form each time a donation of $1,000 or more is received.

The next FPPC reporting deadline is Oct. 25, 2018. To see all the candidates’ full campaign finance filings, click here.

Have an opinion about the local election? Submit a letter to the editor for publication by clicking here.

Sentinel staff report–
The five residents running for three seats on the Citrus Heights City Council have varying views when it comes to homelessness, mandatory rental inspections, rent control, red light cameras, under-performing schools, economic development, and whether the new gas tax is a good way to fund local road repairs.

In responses to a nine-question survey sent out by The Sentinel, candidates offered their position on each issue in 100 words or less, giving voters an opportunity to see where each candidate stands on issues affecting Citrus Heights.

A question about Proposition 6, which seeks to repeal the new gas tax as a way to fund transportation-related projects and local road repairs, was among the questions drawing varied responses. Candidate Porsche Middleton, who currently serves as a City Planning Commissioner, was the only candidate to state clear opposition to Prop 6, while others either expressed support for the repeal effort or did not provide a clear answer. Middleton was also the only candidate to state clear opposition to the city’s red light camera program.

Asked about rent control, none of the candidates took positions in favor of implementing such controls in Citrus Heights, although Middleton said she was “open to a community wide discussion on the stabilization of rent” for vulnerable populations.

On the topic of accomplishing the City’s strategic goal to “enhance and expand” public safety, Mayor Steve Miller and candidate Treston Shull each offered the most specific plans in their responses.

Shull, a labor relations manager who also volunteers on the Birdcage Heights Neighborhood Association board, said the city is less safe today than it was four years ago and advocated for adding more police patrols. Miller, who has served on the City Council since being appointed in 2005, said he would work to “step up patrols” at all the parks in the city, “specifically targeting drug and alcohol use.”

On improving education, candidates were split on whether to work with the San Juan Unified School District or pursue other means. Jeannie Bruins, who was first elected in 2002 and is currently serving as vice mayor, has advocated for pursuing a charter school and said she’s “ready to partner with other education providers if SJUSD isn’t going to listen.”

The three incumbents, Miller, Bruins and appointed incumbent Al Fox, were the most likely trio to share similar views in their responses to questions on various issues — including on whether the City Council made the right decision in August to vote on pursuing a mandatory inspection program for thousands of rental homes and apartments in Citrus Heights. All three incumbents voted to pursue the program, although a finalized ordinance still has to be presented to the council for a vote.

Fox said rental inspection programs, properly administered, can be a “safeguard” for owners and occupants, while Shull and Middleton both criticized the $500,000 proposed program as the wrong approach and one that would add fees and increased costs to already expensive rental prices.

From August: Citrus Heights council votes 4-1 to move forward with mandatory rental inspections

The area of most agreement between the five candidates was on how to best allocate the estimated $5-6 million annually that will become available in 2022, when Citrus Heights finally begins to receive its share of property taxes, after a 25-year “revenue neutrality” agreement with Sacramento County comes to a close. Most agreed that a portion should be allocated for reserves and a portion should be invested in road repairs.

See each candidates’ full, 100-word responses to each of the nine questions on local issues:

• Porsche Middleton on the issues, in her own words
• Jeannie Bruins on the issues, in her own words
• Al Fox on the issues, in his own words
• Treston Shull on the issues, in his own words
• Steve Miller on the issues, in his own words

Sentinel staff report–
Keeping neighborhoods clean was one of the top priorities Citrus Heights residents said the City Council should focus on in a survey commissioned by the City last year. The topic also came up in one of the questions asked to each of the five residents running for Citrus Heights City Council during a candidate forum hosted last month by the Chamber of Commerce.

When asked what the City could do to improve neighborhoods to attract new residents to Citrus Heights, candidates offered a variety of ideas, including paving streets, growing existing housing assistance programs, and slashing permit costs to encourage development. But an area of significant disagreement was whether a new $500,000 Rental Housing Inspection Unit should be pursued as a way to proactively combat blight and improve the quality of housing.

The inspection unit was proposed earlier this year and would bring on two new administrative staff members and three new code enforcement officers to implement mandatory inspections of the roughly 15,000 rental units in the city. The council voted 4-1 in favor of pursuing the program last month, but a final vote is still needed later this year when a draft ordinance is brought before the council.

Related: Citrus Heights council votes 4-1 to move forward with mandatory rental inspections

The five candidates running for City Council this year include three current members of the council who are up for election — Mayor Steve Miller, Vice Mayor Jeannie Bruins, and Council Member Al Fox, who was appointed to fill the vacancy left by the late Councilman Mel Turner. Two challengers seeking to unseat at least one of the current members of the council are Planning Commissioner Porsche Middleton and labor relations manager Treston Shull, who also serves on the board of the Residents’ Empowerment of Citrus Heights (REACH).

Each candidate’s 90-second answer to the question of how Citrus Heights can improve its neighborhoods to attract new residents is included in its entirety below:

Steve Miller: “There’s a number of ways. One, it starts with public safety, and I mentioned before, property crimes are down, and violent crimes are down 8%. So, having safe neighborhoods, having a police department that responds.

“The council’s also considering now an ordinance on a Rental Housing Inspection Program. What that would do — and many folks have complained about it — 93%, when we surveyed our residents last, said blight in the neighborhoods was a big issue. And a lot of this comes from the rental housing. And we want to, in the next three years, inspect every single rental housing unit — and that also includes apartments, (although) that’s really not been the issue, it’s been the houses, and you can see them in the neighborhood. We have an aging housing stock. And a lot of these homes that are rentals are absentee landlords from the Bay Area. They’re not fixing the siding, the roofs, and it’s just causing blight in our neighborhood and a lot of folks have asked for us to correct it and I think that’s one of the tools we can do.

“I’ve also mentioned paving. I know I was one of the fortunate neighborhoods, way back in ’97 – ’98 we had one of the worst streets in the city, and it had never been repaved since it was paved 30 years prior. And just coming and resurfacing the street, just improved the entire neighborhood. So, I think we need to look at ways that we can raise property values, all the surrounding homes, by taking care of some of the blighted issues.”

Treston Shull: “I believe my plan on that is simple. We need to reduce fees on housing, rental housing. Simplify permitting with a one-stop-shop policy so builders have one point of contact at the City who bird-dog all the City departments and outside agencies. Speed up the permitting process. I am examining financial incentives such as community banking and financing as a possible way to encourage private development of affordable housing. I do not and I will not support any efforts for the City to become a housing provider, builder or landlord.

“But I think it’s really important what Steve said, when he said that the City recently voted on the new initiative that pays for code enforcement. I believe that was actually wrong. I don’t agree with the City on that. They voted on that 4-to-1. And what that does is, 25% of the code enforcement problems in the city come from rental properties. But now they’re turning to basically taxing, with the registration fee, 100% of the landlords and property owners of those rentals to pay for 100% of the code enforcement increase of those five additional employees. The City said that the three new code enforcement officers, and two new analytical analysts, will be paid for by the registration fees and it won’t be any cost out of the general fund. Those are employees who have pension plans, and raises, and benefit increases every year. So after one year, that fee will no longer cover those services. And that’s going to come out of the general fund. And we need to make sure we do have code enforcement to fix the issues, though, but (in) a financially sustainable way.”

Al Fox: “I think that the problem that we’re looking at in these established neighborhoods, and we have older families, older residents that have a tax base that they don’t want to give up. We don’t have a way for them to move that tax base as of yet. There’s going to be a proposition on the ballot coming up that talks about: can a property owner, senior citizen property owner, move out of a larger home into a smaller home of equal or near value, and take their property tax exemption with them. We have a situation in all of our communities where your elderly population are being priced out of their homes, or particularly rentals because they’re on fixed incomes and they cannot make that difference. And yet they own a tremendous amount of the land in our city at this point in time. And we need to respect that, and we need to deal with it accordingly.

“The inspection (program) that people are talking about, I will tell you now, I built houses in the 1960s. I built apartment buildings in the 1960s, and the apartment buildings we have in Citrus Heights, built in the late 60s, were built for a lifespan of about 20 years. And they’re still there and a lot of them have not been changed. We have some serious problems. One of the things we need to avoid is the subsequent liability of the City for not being able to inspect and ensure safe housing — like they’re doing right now in Richmond, like they’re doing in Oakland, and like they’re doing in Berkeley. There are court cases out there pending right now, that, if they go the way they’re looking at this point, will make the local jurisdiction liable for not doing inspections for public safety.”

Porsche Middleton: “I understand where our current council is coming from when it comes to the rental inspections, and also understand where candidate Treston is coming from also. And my concern is more so that by adding in these extra steps for these property owners that — to not deal with the hassle — they’ll take apartment buildings and they’ll just convert them into condos. And that decreases our rental housing stock. So basically they get renovated, they get to resell them, and it increases property values all around –but then we have to worry about the end effect of that which is people getting priced out of the area, getting priced out of their homes. Rentals increasing in price, and these individuals end up homeless, essentially.

“I think the more reasonable thing to do is to encourage uses of our community grants, of people going out there and helping to clean up neighborhoods. The old Sylvan school, that’s right across from the community center on Sylvan road, the operating engineers come out there every year and they do development. Rotary goes out every year and they find projects that need to be done within our community.

“We can’t legislate our way out of this problem. We have to be that community that we were 20 years ago that started to fix these issues as a group. And that’s core, but trying to legislate, and make laws and create more issues for our property owners is just going to turn them away and then we won’t have the development that we want.”

Jeannie Bruins: “We start by recognizing who we are today, and what we have to live with, and work with. We are a community that has aging housing stock, and a small level of ability to create new housing from the ground up. So most of our improvements are going to be on redevelopment and development of our neighborhoods. One way to improve our neighborhoods to attract new residents, is to continue to grow the programs we already have.

“We have a first-time home buyer program for people who have not been homeowners in the last three years. It’s a loan assistance program that provides them the ability to make a down payment. It’s a program that they don’t have to pay back until they sell the house. In addition, we have a home repair program that’s very vibrant. We need to continue to grow these programs so that people who are in substandard homes have the ability to pay for repairs that they need to elevate the quality of the home that they live in.

“We also need to continue to offer options in housing. We have over half of our homes are rental homes, and yes, rental homes are necessary. But for a community to grow and to improve, we need more home ownership. And so the programs that we’re offering are a piece of the puzzle that will help make that possible.”

*To read more about the candidate forum or watch a full-length recording of the forum, see story: Citrus Heights candidates tackle homelessness, schools, economy, blight

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