On the issues: Candidates for Placer supervisor Shanti Landon, Paul Joiner, Scott Alvord

The following interview was conducted by members of The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board and the three leading candidates for the 2nd District Placer County supervisor seat: Roseville City Councilman Scott Alvord, Placer County Board of Supervisors district director Shanti Landon and Lincoln City Councilman Paul Joiner. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The Sacramento Bee: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us why you are running to be a Placer County supervisor?

Joiner: I’m a Lincoln City Council member and have been for 14 years; served three terms as mayor of the city of Lincoln and was a planning commissioner prior to that. My family has been in the area since the 1940s, very, very deep roots in Placer County. My wife’s family eclipses that: They’ve been here since the 1890s – multiple generations on the same rice farm. And they’re getting their rice crop in again this year. With respect to why I’m running, I don’t know if all of you out of Sacramento know this, but Placer County is projected to grow by 30% over the next 10 years — 120,000 new residents in the next decade, 12,000 a year, and most of that is happening right in District 2. The impacts of that are significant. We’re doing very good work. We’ve gotten out in front of most of that. I’ve been on the Sacramento Area Council of Governments for 10 years. I’m the immediate past chair of Placer County Transportation Planning Agency and the current chair of the South Placer Regional Transportation Agency. The impacts of that population are stressing our transportation system greatly. We need to widen Highway 65, rebuild the interchange at 80/65, build Placer Parkway, widen Baseline — all those projects are significant and are shovel-ready but need funding sources. So we’re working very hard on that. Preserving public safety and growing it to meet that challenge is absolutely essential. Economic competitiveness is essential within the region — we need those jobs coming into Placer County. That’s a big part of why I am running. I take a look at Placer County growth, and, frankly, my background and my experience leads me to believe I’m the only candidate that can hit the ground running on this — who already is working on all these issues and can continue that work at the county level.

Landon: I have lived in Placer County for 17 years. My husband and I have been married for 24 years. We have five kids; they range in ages from 19 down to 13, so it’s always pretty loud and crazy at our house and super-fun. About six years ago, my husband and I had a series of conversations, and we were just talking about the future of Placer County and where it’s going to be in 50 years and whether it’s going to be a place where our kids would want to raise our hopefully potential future grandkids. As we started talking, as our kids were getting older, I thought, “I’d really like to get more engaged, especially at the local level.” Because I think growing up I always had this perspective that if you want to make a difference in politics, you have to be an Assembly person or a congressperson, but really the more research I did, I realized it really is about the local level, the decisions that are made right here. I decided that I wanted to run, and a couple months later I reached out to the sitting supervisor, because I knew I didn’t have experience in the local government realm, and asked if he would be willing to let me shadow him. Initially he said I could shadow him but that my access as a volunteer would be limited, and so I asked if he’d be willing to hire me as his district director. So he did, and now it’s been five years, so I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside him — Supervisor (Robert) Weygandt — as well as the other supervisors and really glean a true understanding of what county operations are. I had no idea until I got my job what I didn’t know. I came in thinking, “Oh, this is easy, I got this.” But it took me a couple of years to really get a grasp of how broad-based county issues are and the amount of responsibility that lands on the Board of Supervisors for the decisions they make. Looking forward, a couple of things I’m really focused on are, first and foremost, the long-term fiscal sustainability of our county and making sure we’re making decisions that are going to be good for us fiscally in the long-term and not just making decisions that might feel good today. Secondly is public safety. As we grow — and, as Mr. Joiner mentioned, we’re going to grow by leaps and bounds over the next few decades — and as that happens, making sure we’re funding our public safety services to make sure we’re meeting the needs of our constituents. And thirdly is, small-business support and economic development is key for me. Small businesses comprise 91% of business in Placer County. Doing everything we can to streamline processes and take some of that burden off of our small businesses is really important to me.

Alvord: My story probably starts back in college. I started a software company before I graduated; I had a computer science degree for my first degree. I went back later and got an MBA. My wife and I moved to Placer County — we’ve lived here most of our lives — and shortly after we got married, we inherited four children that we ended up adopting later, and we had three birth kids. So we have a big family — seven kids, 13 grandkids — and we started a restaurant in downtown Roseville, and that’s when I started getting more involved in the political arena. I realized that some council members did not understand economic development, which is such a key issue in government because it’s the economic development that supports your general fund, that pays for your police and fire and your road repairs and parks. I became president of the Downtown Roseville Merchants when we started our restaurant down there, and all my kids work through it. I was president for nine years, and in the process, we revitalized the downtown area. And that was a very eye-opening experience — watching a few generations of council members come through and realizing that most didn’t understand the process of who they were representing. They acted like they were your person during campaign season, and then they disappeared after that. When I ran for office, that was one of the things I promised: I’d be a real representative; I wouldn’t disappear. I’m very involved in the business community. After I got my MBA, I started doing a lot more business consulting and started a consulting company. For 12 years, I’ve run a Christian networking business group called Advanced Business Roundtable. We meet every week. Just small-business owners, supporting them. Roseville has a really unique neighborhood association set up — it’s very communicative and it’s at the ground level of the community, and that’s where I’ve had a lot of the connections with the community in terms of hearing what their issues are and learning how to be a representative because I understand the constituents; it’s not just the business community but the constituents themselves. On council, I’ve learned a real important lesson about making friends with the staff because the staff are who help us push back on development and enforce regulations. This is an area that’s been lacking sorely at the county level — developers run the show. We need representatives who can push back and enforce the things they’ve set up, enforce development agreements instead of letting things change over time. And that’s one of the reasons I’m running is I really think I can do that.

The Sacramento Bee: Placer is expected to grow significantly in the next few decades. If elected, what specific ways would you ensure that District 2 keeps up with that growth in terms of housing, education, transportation, job opportunities, business development, et cetera. And what would your funding priorities be?

Landon: Housing is a critical issue for anyone who’s starting out as well as families who have been in the workforce for a long time. Partnering with Housing Trust Placer has been a focus of the county, and last year they put about $500,000 into that fund. I believe Placer can do a better job of getting sticks up in the ground and making sure that we have housing for a wide variety of income levels. When it comes to transportation, I have been fully supportive of a transportation measure, and that likely won’t come forward this year but hopefully will be here on the ballot in 2024. I think it’s important that elected officials are getting out in their communities and being vocal, especially when it comes to educating the public on why this is important. I think people in Placer County — myself included — hesitate when it comes to increasing taxes. But that is so critical to the future of many things, including economic development and business as well as housing and the workforce as well. When it comes to education, I’ve been able to participate in the conversations to get a CSU campus here in Placer County, which is super-exciting. I’m very thrilled that they are going to be here, and I think they anticipate a full-blown campus, hopefully within the next decade. Being involved in those conversations and making sure that I’m an advocate for those projects is really important to me. When it comes to funding, it’s my opinion that it’s not the government’s role to be putting in money for a project like that. However, putting in some of our ARPA (federal American Rescue Plan Act) funds to infrastructure to really be a catalyst for the Sac State campus, I think, is really important.

Alvord: One of the interesting things with development is developers are in the business to make money. We understand that, that’s part of the process. The benefit of being a Roseville council member is I’ve gotten to watch how things are done right. We actually set up specific plans far ahead. We lay out development agreements that include affordable housing; we make the developers build affordable housing. We’re the only city in the county that actually does that and have traditionally done that. It’s been frustrating kind of watching how it happens, especially at the county level. They lay out a nice agreement, but then they let changes happen. They take out the affordable housing, they take out the medium-density housing, and pretty soon you’re left with the most profitable pieces, and the supervisors have allowed this to happen over time. We have a crisis going on in the top of our county, up in the Tahoe area, where it’s just really difficult for workforce people to even find a place to live. They’re trying to fix that, but it’s after the fact — it’s really late. One of the things I really think we need to do at the county level is we need to work with the staff closely, we’ve got to get the staff to push back on the developers to keep those great designs that originally had a nice variety of mix — a lot of workforce housing, parks — and stop letting them change it. It just perpetuates an ongoing problem. I’ve watched what’s happened around Lincoln; the Bickford Ranch project was a beautiful project, but it’s become just single-family homes. The idea of the county putting commercial (developments) around the borders (of cities) is just horrible without tax-sharing.

Joiner: I just want to touch on what Scott said about Bickford Ranch. That’s happening in the unincorporated county, not in the city of Lincoln. And it’s the county that is a little fast and loose on a lot of these issues. With respect to housing, the planning that it was important to provide (for) this project type moving forward happened years ago. We’re ahead of the curve on that. These projects have been approved. We have gotten to a point, economically, where they begin to pencil (out), which is why you see this surge of growth throughout the region. There’s also the Bay Area migration that is driving it as well. But we stay ahead of planning for housing, regionally and within my city, Lincoln. And I know Scott does as well. This stuff is coming into the pipeline 15 sometimes 20 years ago working its way through the process. What we can do is we can streamline permitting. We’ve done so. I was on the the ad hoc committee for many, many years for something called the Placer County Conservation Plan that brings a lot of the federal and state permitting back to a local level and allows us to move through some of the environmental permitting much more swiftly. Economic development is a big one. Our transportation issue affects our ability to bring in new businesses — the congestion on Highway 65 is a direct impact on my ability to promote our industrial areas around the airport. We’ve got to solve the transportation issue. As I said earlier, it’s fully planned. We have to seek funding that’s on a state and federal level. The challenge is it used to be a 10% match for state and federal funds, but it’s now a 50% match, and we don’t have a local source for the half a billion dollars that needs to be raised for the transportation infrastructure.

The Sacramento Bee: There is this housing deficit statewide, which is why we have such high prices and disproportionate homelessness. How would you make sure the county takes responsibility to fill this housing shortage and that you’re not impeding development, while at the same time balancing that with your obvious obligations to make sure everything’s done the right way?

Landon: I believe that the majority of urban development should take place within the city. There are projects that have been approved long before my time — Placer Vineyards is one of the biggest ones, as well as Bickford Ranch — and those are what they are. And I think as those move forward and develop, we need to make sure, as Scott mentioned, that we’re holding the feet to the fire when it comes to making sure that we still are doing really good planning and development and being conscious of that affordable-housing element. I’m a free-market person, so I’m very much a fan and in favor of doing what we can at the local level to relieve some of the cost burdens when possible. I don’t want to give a free pass to developers. I always like to say that I’m all for streamlining processes without compromising our standards, so making sure that we are regularly checking our fee schedules, that we are well-engaged with the building industry to make sure that we’re not being an impediment upon building and development, while at the same time, with the conservation program in Placer, knowing that we have this blueprint for Placer County, we know where development should be happening and we should be sticking with those plans. In my opinion, there shouldn’t be a whole bunch of general plan amendments and rezoning in the unincorporated areas to take that from the cities and put that into the county jurisdiction. Housing, in general, is going to be an unfolding issue as we move forward. Development should be happening in general in the county.

Joiner: I think this is going to be an issue for all of us. It’s one I brought forward early on, and it’s good to see that we’re all engaging in that conversation. The majority, whenever possible, of large development should be happening within the cities, not within the unincorporated county, and unfortunately Placer County has, as Scott mentioned, dropped a very large project, Bickford Ranch, on Lincoln’s eastern border. And Placer Ranch, a huge project with 9 million square feet of commercial and retail development, they’re dropping right on my southern border in direct competition with what we can do in the city. That harms the city’s ability to have the revenues they need to provide the service levels residents expect and deserve. With respect to housing, what can the county do? The county doesn’t have a lot of influence within the municipalities. They can obviously incentivize, in some form, developers to build more affordable housing. We’re all familiar with the RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) numbers that are handed down by the state. They specifically tell us how many units we need to build within an eight-year period, or at least to plan for. Developers build it; it’s very, very rare that a local government will do that. Roseville is a local exception — they’re doing some interesting things around affordable housing. I’d be very curious about what we can do in the city of Lincoln, and as a county representative, to drive some of that in a broader way. But it really is the developers who build housing, it’s not government, so any way we can incentivize it — whether it’s partnering with land or with some form of subsidy to allow them to keep their costs lower and build affordable housing — we should be doing that. We work very directly with the BIA (North State Building Industry Association)all the time on fees, on ways that we might be able to bring forward more affordable projects. A lot of times that might just simply be lot sizes. Single-family homes on smaller lots drive down the cost of that house — not significantly, but $40,000 or $50,000 might make the difference between somebody being able to get into a home and not. It really is a matter of working together — the county and the cities together planning and incentivizing developers to build this product.

Alvord: This is a huge issue, and it’s probably the biggest problem we have in the county right now. The county has become a developer — they’re the applicant — and it shouldn’t work like that. They really should be annexing into the cities and letting the cities do it. On the borders of both Roseville and Lincoln, the county’s put commercial properties without any kind of a tax share — nothing comes back into your own city. They’re competing with the cities. It’s antagonistic instead of synergistic. And when it comes to housing, this is something the county really should be working on. We know we need affordable housing. That is a big, big issue. And if the county wants to get in the development (business), maybe they should be developing affordable housing. Tonight at our council meeting, we’re putting forth several million more dollars toward affordable housing in our own city. We’re working on trying to meet our RHNA numbers; the county is so far behind on their numbers, it’s embarrassing. This is the kind of thing they should be focusing on helping us get these affordable housing units out there. It’s the biggest issue we’ve got — it’s causing all sorts of problems — yet they keep doing these biggest projects, single-family homes, and meeting the market. It’s not so much the developers’ fault. They’re trying to meet the market, make money at it, but the county needs to be putting their foot down and understanding what’s actually needed (and) instead of hurting us as cities, helping us — being a synergistic partner to help work through these measures. This is by far one of the biggest issues in this campaign, and I think it’s going to be really important for voters to really understand their candidates and what they’re willing to do and what their track record is in the past, and not just what they say. One of the beauties of Placer County is we have a lot of rural assets — wonderful rural assets — and we need to protect those. Yes, we have a conservation effort, and that helps set aside areas of land, but we’ve got some very beautiful areas that we need to think about instead of just letting them convert over really quick. We’ve got an ag industry that’s astronomical — it’s huge — and they feel like they’ve been ignored by the county. This is a big issue as I’ve been getting out, meeting voters.

The Sacramento Bee: For years, Lake Tahoe has struggled with the housing shortage. It affects its lower- and middle-income communities and its tourist industry. In January, the Placer County Board of Supervisors voted to cap the number of licensed vacation rentals at just under 4,000 in the Tahoe region. Do you agree with this decision? What more could be done to fix the housing crisis in this region?

Alvord: It’s a tough thing because people that own homes up there, they like to rent them out, and that’s part of the beauty of owning that home because it is more of your vacation home for you and you can make money at it when you’re not there. But this is something that they needed to bite the bullet on, and by doing that, it lets them have more of an opportunity to start doing some of the workforce projects. These are big undertakings because the land up there is very tourist-oriented, it’s very valuable, so just to buy land to do affordable housing on it is very expensive. But it’s something that needs to get done. That’s such a great asset to this county, and to not have a restaurant open during the week because they can’t get workers to come up there and work during the week, that’s a big deal. That’s an economic problem. They’ve got to start figuring out ways to allow these workers to afford to live up there in the region because nobody wants to drive a couple hours to work. I think that was a good thing for them to do. It’s raised quite a few issues of property owners, but they’ve got to do something, and that’s one step along the way.

Landon: I can’t reiterate enough how important this issue is for Tahoe. There have been so many conversations with employers and with people who are just trying to find a rental who are literally driving an hour and a half, two hours each way because they can’t afford to live in the Tahoe Basin. When it comes to the cap, I feel like it’s a big experiment. I’m a free-market person, so my general sense is that the amount of regulation in Tahoe basin from TRPA (Tahoe Regional Planning Agency) has made it incredibly difficult to construct anything in the Tahoe Basin, and because of that, that’s creating a funnel and makes it incredibly difficult — there is no free market anymore. Because there’s no free market, something like a cap is probably necessary to reevaluate and figure out where we are. And I’m glad that it’s kind of a pilot in the sense that it’s not forever; they’re going to do this for a few years and see where they are. I think it’s important, any time you’re doing some type of program like this, to make sure that we’re not committing to a 10, 20 year program if we don’t know that it’s going to work. I hope it works. I’m hesitant to feel like it’s going to solve the problem. I think it might take a little bite of the apple, and it might help a bit, but ultimately it comes down to, in my opinion, the amount of regulation and cost burden to do any type of construction in Tahoe. The county, recently, in the last couple of years, did the Dollar Creek Nahas project, where they are going to be constructing an affordable project right in Tahoe, and they have a number of projects that are also in the pipeline that they’ve been working on. This issue has been at the forefront of CDRA (Community Development Resource Agency), which is our development division, and they are working around the clock to get housing built, and I think Cindy (Gustafson), as a supervisor for Tahoe, has done an amazing job at being an advocate for that community, really being accessible and doing everything she can to make sure she represents Tahoe.

Joiner: This is a bit of a tough one for me. I am glad that this is a pilot program. I’m not sure, as Shanti said, that this is going to solve anything. These are privately owned properties that are second and third homes for these people, and if the intent is to cause them to say, “It’s not worth my while to hold on to a place that I might only be at a few weeks out of the year — I’ll sell it and put it back in the marketplace,” that’s interesting. But the price, the cost of that housing, is not coming down as a result of that. It would be an increase to the supply in the marketplace, and that could adjust things, but regulation and cost of building in the Tahoe Basin are the driving factors in this. It is incredibly difficult and incredibly expensive to build anything up there. A few years back, my folks had a place in Incline Village, and they simply wanted to replace a concrete patio, a preexisting concrete patio, that had fallen into disrepair. The regulations around tearing that out and putting in new concrete, the studies that had to be done just for a concrete patio, were going to cost them over $50,000. They just chose not to do it. Regulation is absolutely imperative — to get that under control in the Tahoe Basin. With respect to the action the county took, I hope it’s going to be effective. It’s an interesting experiment. We’ll see what effect that has on the marketplace, but the only way you’re going to get workforce housing is to either have government build it, subsidize it, or find a way that makes good sense for developers to build that. That’s an ongoing conversation we need to be having with the development community. How can we get this done?

The Sacramento Bee: Would you support government-supported housing financially if it were to come through ARPA (federal American Rescue Plan Act) funding?

Landon: My initial response is that that should be a last resort when it comes to government-subsidized housing. I would much rather find a way to reduce cost burden and regulation to allow for builders to come in and do something and make it more of a free market. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% opposed to something like that, but there are so many factors that come into play when you start doing government-subsidized housing. I would want to learn a lot more about what that might look like and what the cost would be, what the impacts would be, and I would rather go down other routes before going down that route.

Alvord: I think free market is not the option when it comes to housing, because the best housing right now in our region is going to be single-family, big lots, with everybody coming up from the Bay Area. Those are the most profitable, so it’s only going to exacerbate our problems. That’s not the solution. The government is going to require us to have a certain amount of housing, and if it doesn’t pencil out to provide some of that, they need to help fund that. Unfunded mandates are the biggest burden on local jurisdictions, and so I think if they’re going to require that — and our RHNA (state Regional Housing Needs Allocation) numbers have some pretty heavy things — they should help us with that funding, and there is some of that funding out there. And I know there is some of that funding out there. What we’re allotting for tonight in our council meeting is quite a bit of funding to go toward the extremely affordable housing that’s necessary in our city. And I’d like to see the county do a lot more of this — that’s a big opportunity. They are the government, they can get funding for that, and they should focus on the need, which is affordable housing. That’d be a great place for them to become a developer on.

Joiner: I would have to see it on a project-by-project basis, but I wouldn’t be opposed to it. What I think could be potentially more impactful — there are a lot of very large resorts up in the Tahoe Basin that are being expanded. I think it would be very, very useful to cause them to provide housing for their employees on site. So as Squaw Valley grows, as the others grow, how can we work with them to provide workforce housing for their very large resort entity? And if we can assist with revenues or with some type of streamlining, we ought to be doing that.

The Sacramento Bee: Both the Legislature and Governor Newsom backed down on requiring COVID vaccinations in California schools this fall. Do you agree with this decision from our state?

Alvord: The way the statistics have been changing, it seems to be appropriate, but I also want to say, I am not a health official, and I rely on health officials to make those important decisions. And I think a lot of the electeds forget that — that they need to rely on the experts. The challenge is trying to figure out who the experts are. But I think, at this point, there’s definite challenges. I know people who have died, and I know people who have had children bring it home and grandparents have died from that, so I do think it’s important, but I think our statistical infection rates are down enough that it makes sense to do that. And I know it kind of puts the burden now on the family, where if you’re concerned about your child, you need to make sure they can still wear a mask at school, and you educate your child on doing that. So I’m supportive of that decision.

Landon: Yes, I am very supportive of this decision. I’m a firm believer that individual families should have the opportunity to make those decisions for themselves. I am supportive of education campaigns and making sure that people have access to vaccines, that if someone is immunocompromised that they have it easily and readily available for their child or anyone in their family. But I am very, very supportive of the decision and glad that they did.

Joiner: Their decision to back down, I absolutely support it. I would have preferred to have not seen it come forward at all. I think it’s an individual decision. I’m not terribly fond of the mandates as they were coming forward. I don’t have kids in school, I’ll acknowledge that, but what I’ve seen locally is a whole lot of our residents pulling their kids out of schools out of fear of those mandates. And so, yes, I’m thrilled to see that they backed down and backed away from those mandates.

The Sacramento Bee: Over the past two years, we’ve seen a rise in extremism in Placer County, from Proud Boys at anti-vax rallies in Roseville to anti-mask and anti-vax fliers posted in parking lots after school board meetings credited to a group called the White Rose. Are you willing and able to definitively denounce neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys, and how would you, as a supervisor, address the rise of extremist thought in this area?

Landon: I have not heard of the group the White Rose, but this is an interesting one, because I’m a big free speech supporter. And whether it’s something I agree with or vehemently disagree with, I believe that everyone should have the right to state their opinion. Now, when it crosses the line into violence or threats, then absolutely I will stand up and speak out against those things. It was interesting over the last couple years to just watch the tenor of the board meetings at the county and City Council meetings and especially at our school boards, where good people who really truly are doing the best they can for their community and trying to balance and represent all of their community interests, from people who were very far on one side to all the way over to the people on the other side. The devastation that caused, especially the school board members, who were really just trying to keep our schools open and keep our kids in class and doing the best that they could. I would have to look up what that group is all about. I’m a mom of African American kids, so when it comes to standing up and speaking out against things — I’ve had people call my own kids racial slurs online before, and to me, it’s really about standing up and showing true leadership in my behavior. How am I going to be an example to people? A lot of times, pointing fingers and condemning people is not the best way to get your message across. The best way is to really sit down at a table and have a conversation if you can, and so my approach has always been reaching out to someone who disagrees with me and say, “Let’s grab coffee, and let’s have a conversation about why you think those things.” And you may walk away from that not feeling like we’re on the same page, but at least maybe having a little bit more mutual respect for each other. There’s been so much dehumanization, and people just are living in their echo chambers on social media. It makes it really easy to think that the whole world thinks the same way as you. Doing what we can to foster conversations with people from both sides of an issue is something that can be done at the local level. When it comes to coming out and condemning something, I will absolutely condemn violence and threats of violence, but when it comes to someone’s right to speak their mind, I’ll always stand up for allowing people to speak — as long as they’re not taking over a meeting and disrupting it so that they can’t operate.

Alvord: Yeah, I haven’t heard of that particular group before either, but I have definitely watched videos of some of those crazy meetings. Free speech is something that we cherish in our country, and I think that’s the right of anybody to have free speech. I think sometimes the electeds set the tone with their own behavior, on and off camera. I think we should come down a lot harder on people that are making threats. All the school board, city council, supervisors, these are nonpartisan people, these are our neighbors, they should never have to worry about walking out to their car. And I’ve seen some of the threats that have come across, and I felt like they weren’t handled strongly enough, because those are inappropriate. People don’t deserve that when they’re trying to serve their community. The white supremacy viewpoints, they can have those viewpoints, but a lot of that has nothing to do with the agenda that’s coming up. I’ve seen conversations come up that have had nothing to do with the jurisdiction of the body they were speaking against. It’s unfortunate that this happens. I do think one of the best approaches is to meet with groups. I’ve met with some people recently that have been actually protesting at some of these groups. And it was a very uncomfortable meeting but actually ended up being really good in the end. And I think those are the important things. You are a representative, and you do represent people you totally disagree with, and it’s important to hear them. People get loud when they feel they’re not heard, so I think it’s a valuable thing.

Joiner: I think we’re all going to agree that this is a freedom of speech issue. If any laws are broken, if anyone is being threatened, that’s unacceptable, that needs to be dealt with. I think Scott is right: Within the way you run a meeting, you can direct the conversation. If a meeting is getting out of hand, you can recess that meeting, give everybody a chance to calm down before you come back in. You can even clear a room. That isn’t necessarily a good move, because that could get people all the more agitated. But this is a free speech issue. Where laws are broken, they should be enforced without question. It doesn’t mean I agree with a lot of those opinions. Like my colleagues, I’ve not heard of these groups, with the exception of a parents’ group that was protesting vaccinations here in Lincoln. I’ve seen none of this in my area of Placer County.

The Sacramento Bee: Nobody here specifically condemned white extremist groups or neo-Nazis. That was part of the question — whether or not you could condemn that sort of hate speech. Does anyone want to correct that?

Joiner: Well, you framed it in such a way that you’re going to get an answer that sends a false impression. What we are all supportive of is free speech. What we are not supportive of is violence, rhetoric that would cause violence, law-breaking, that type of thing.

The Sacramento Bee: The question was: Are you willing and able to definitely denounce neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys?

Joiner: As an individual absolutely. But the First Amendment does still exist. As long as they aren’t breaking any laws, they do have the right to speak.

Alvord: As an elected official, I would not — unless that group was coming into the council meeting and doing something horrible in our council meeting, which we haven’t had in Roseville — it would be inappropriate for me to speak out in that situation. And it’s hard as an elected official to take your hat off and say, “OK, now I’m talking as a private individual,” which I think is the problem when you’ve got elected officials in a nonpartisan position going out and being partisan. People view that as the position speaking, which I think is one of the dangers. Elected officials have the right to free speech as well, but what happens is you start to alienate some of your constituents who feel you’re not representing them in a nonpartisan position. I would be a little nervous about speaking out against a group that isn’t attacking my city or doing anything in my city. I think it would be inappropriate to do that and drawing a line that’s going to get crossed.

Landon: I’m content with where I was.

The Sacramento Bee: Gun violence is a major issue, not just in Sacramento, but in our county as well. In June, House of Oliver waitress Vita Joga was shot and killed in broad daylight by her former fiancé in an act of domestic violence. As a supervisor, how would you balance the need for making our community safer while pursuing initiatives that address the root causes of gun violence?

Joiner: Violence is the challenge; the tool is not the challenge. The Second Amendment exists. California has some of the strictest gun laws in existence in the nation. But we have some issues with violence in general, and we’ve got plenty of laws in place that should be enforced. AB (Assembly Bill) 109 started releasing prisoners that should be housed for a very long time. Prop. 47 made the theft of a gun costing less than $950 a misdemeanor. From what I saw, one of the (legislative) committees the other day refused to make the theft of a gun a felony — chose not to. We’ve got to enforce our existing laws. It’s always troubled me that there seems to be a focus on a tool rather than the act of the individual. The individual is committing the crime, the individual is doing the harm, and that’s where we need to focus — on punishing those behaviors.

Alvord: I think that public safety is probably the number-one element for quality of life for a community. You’ve got to feel safe in your neighborhood — otherwise, nothing else really matters. The first responsibility that I think any of us have is to make sure our public safety is up to a level where we’re keeping crime down, where people feel like they’re safe. Again, a lot of it comes back to economic development, unfortunately. But being able to staff a full police department, a full fire department for responding, to make your community feel safe, that’s a big issue right there. And if you’re not fully staffed, then you do have more gun violence. You have a criminal element that feels more safe doing scary things in your community. And so that’s one of the basic elements. Our Police Department in particular has been really changing with the times, where we’re actually going to be adding more cops here real soon, I think eight more. But we have a social services unit. We have a unit that focuses on homelessness. We’ve got a family unit, and they’ve got probation and they’ve got social workers, and it’s a fantastic way to reach out safely in your community and provide a lot of support. We now have body cams on all our police officers, which really helps them and their own comfort level, and helps them be better officers and stop false accusations against them. I think that’s probably the biggest element when it comes to gun violence, is making sure you’ve got the staff to make the criminal element not want to participate and be as active in your community. That’s the biggest thing. As far as the laws themselves, those are really state laws that get carried down. I think it’s more just pushing on those decision-makers, legislators, trying to make rules that help your community out. And I would have to rely a lot more on our public safety leaders to find out what areas we need to change and fix. I do know we have a lot more of an issue with the criminal early release — that has actually been a real issue. I understand some of the thought process behind it, but we’re finding a lot of repeat customers that we take to jail, and they get right back out. That’s kind of frustrating for a community. A lot to do there, tough issue.

Landon: You mentioned the root causes of increasing violence, and the undersheriff recently gave an update to the supervisors of Placer County and noted that crime has decreased in Placer County, which is a good thing. To me, the real root causes of gun violence, or really any type of violent behavior, comes down to broken families and mental illness and drug addiction and cycles of abuse and neglect in families. That, to me, is truly the core cause of a lot of violence. I completely agree with Mr. Joiner when it comes to AB 109 and Prop. 47, but something I really want to work on if and when I become supervisor is, right now in the state of California, there are many services that are offered and programs provided for kids who age out of foster care — job training, mental health services, basic life services for getting these kids out on their own. Right now, 80% of people who have spent time in prison have also spent time in foster care. One of the things, as an adoptive parent, that I have seen and participated in with so many other adoptive parents, and I believe there is good data out there I’m hoping to gather, is kids who are adopted out of foster care tend to have a lot of the same issues that kids who aged out of the foster care system have. A lot of that goes back to early-childhood trauma. I would like to work with our Assembly to expand programs that currently exist for just kids aging out of foster care to include any child who spent time in foster care. As a fiscal conservative, I believe that true fiscal conservatism is investing in kids and families early on so we can break cycles of abuse and neglect in the future. That’s a deep passion for me and something I care deeply about and plan on spending quite a bit of time on. I’m very engaged with our HHS (Health and Human Services) Department just because of their wide variety of services that they offer and their engagement with the foster care community. So when it comes to the core reasons why we might have increased violence, it comes down to the root.