Six candidates across three Santa Ana City Council races faced pointed questions during a recent forum at Heroes Elementary School.
The discussion with the Ward 2, 4, and 6 council candidates was hosted by the non-partisan Communication Linkage Forum, or Com-Link, which represents more than 60 Santa Ana neighborhood associations.
It was preceded Thursday night, Sept. 24, by a mayoral candidate session with incumbent Valerie Amezcua and challengers Dwyane Shipp and Dan Shimell, who fielded questions on the city’s budget shortfall, development, public safety, and a contested county reentry facility proposal.
Among the council seats up for election in November, the Ward 2 race pits incumbent Benjamin Vazquez against Selica Diaz, while Ward 4 features incumbent Phil Bacerra facing a challenge from Sandra De Anda. In Ward 6, Giovanni Chavez and Isuri Ramos are running for the seat currently held by Councilmember David Penaloza, who is vying for a state Assembly seat.
Questions and moderation were handled by members of Com-Link, with questions individualized for each candidate.
Addressing his plan for long-term structural balance, Bacerra said he opposes the Measure X sales tax extension that is also before voters in November and argued Santa Ana has underperformed at economic development.
“We need to actually stop saying ‘economic development,’” he said, “and get to it.”
Asked to name an individual vote in his seven years on the council that he now believes was wrong, Bacerra said, “I don’t have any,” and cited his record of supporting reinvestment into the city, including $2.5 million in park funding, $3 million in fire stations and five new traffic signals.
On rent control, Bacerra — who opposed placing the city’s rent stabilization ordinance into the charter before voters approved it through a 2024 ballot measure — was asked whether voters had made the wrong decision, and what objective evidence would convince him the policy was either working or harming housing production.
“I don’t fault the voters for wanting rent control,” he said. “Rents are extremely high, not just in Santa Ana, but throughout California… of course people want to be here.”
His concern, he said, is the policy’s long-term effect on the city’s rental supply.
“What happens when property owners decide that they’re going to convert those apartments (to) for sale? We’re going to start losing apartments on the market,” said Bacerra. “I’m not worried about corporate landlords. I’m talking about mom-and-pop owners. What’s going to happen when they can’t afford to make certain improvements? And our fellow residents are in units that are not the quality that they deserve — dignified units.”
When asked how she would support the Police Department while addressing community concerns about enforcement, homelessness and quality-of-life issues, De Anda, the director of policy and legal strategy at the Orange County Rapid Response Network, called herself “a big data nerd” and proposed modernizing the department’s records division and public-records response, “so we’re able to actually get a PRA on time.”
Referencing Mi Santa Ana, an Instagram account that is not an official city account that often shares photos taken during enforcement sweeps by the Santa Ana Police Department’s Quality of Life Team, De Anda touched on the city’s current “offer services or face enforcement” approach to homelessness, adding, “my approach to homelessness is going to be humane. It’s not gonna be sweeps, and it’s not going to be IG reels with people who never consented to it.”
She said better data would let the city map who is actually on its streets — including people released from immigration detention and veterans, a group she said the city underserves, noting her brother is a veteran — and connect them more directly with resources.
Diaz said she immigrated from Mexico City to the United States at the age of 13 and became the first in her family to graduate from university. She’s worked as a property manager for 30 years before becoming a Realtor in 2006 after she said she realized many of her tenants “were being taken advantage of.”
“In order for me to speak real estate, I needed to get my license, and I started putting together all my seminars in order to educate the community,” she said.
On homelessness, Diaz proposed expanding the city’s Quality of Life Team, or QOLT, program from two teams to one per city district, partnering with nonprofits and billing the county monthly for the services the city provides.
Santa Ana has faced increased issues around homelessness partly due to its location as the county seat, she argued. “We need to hold the county accountable,” she said, calling for more shelter and rehab capacity and naming children living in cars with their parents as “top priority.”
“A homeless person should not be out on the street, especially during the rainy season and cold weather,” Diaz said.
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She also praised Amezcua for her approach to addressing homelessness with the QOLT, saying she’s doing “a great job” with offering resources to address individual needs. Adding, “I feel that we need to continue doing that. We need to also work with nonprofits.”
Asked how to protect core services such as public safety, libraries, parks and youth programs if Measure X fails with voters, Vazquez said the city should lean on economic development to generate new tax revenue by working to fill vacant buildings and lots, encouraging the fixing up of existing hotels and building a conference center or events programming to fill those hotel rooms.
“As long as every building, every lot is being used,” Vasquez said the city should be, “strong enough if we fill in all the empty lots and all the empty buildings to get that tax revenue.”
Vazquez, a high school teacher and son of immigrants, defended his progressive record when asked whether such policies become counterproductive, saying, “I don’t find that statement to be true,” and pointing to continued development alongside the rent control ordinance he championed.
He called for making Santa Ana “a business-friendly city” that gets businesses open within three months, with permit liaisons and listening sessions between the city manager and developers.
Asked to name two decisions where he prioritized residents outside his political base, Vasquez described interactions with elderly homeowners whose children and grandchildren can’t afford to move out. “We have to uplift — if the worst parts of Santa Ana were uplifted, how much better we would be.”
Chavez, a tenants attorney and Rental Housing Board commissioner, pledged to enforce the city’s rent stabilization ordinance “on day one,” describing a board that has been stalled by litigation, member turnover, and has at times struggled to reach quorum.
If elected, Chavez said he would not only ensure the board is fully appointed and enforcing the law, but said he would also work to strengthen it through county and state partners.
“People are hurting right now,” he said. “Rents, groceries, utilities are way too expensive.”
“This is an ordinance we have not been able to enforce,” Chavez said, noting that new members “come and go” without the board addressing the needs of Santa Ana residents. “We have to be able to enforce these laws if we pass them. It’s not just about passing them, beating our chest, saying, hooray, and that’s it. Residents want real results.”
He also backed the city’s more assertive posture on encampments while pledging to try to convert his endorsement network — which includes the lieutenant governor, the state treasurer and local members of Congress — into state and county dollars for housing and mental-health programs.
“Compassion is important, but compassion requires action,” he said, applauding the clearing of tents that once surrounded Santa Ana City Hall.
On housing and rent control, Ramos, the current Planning Commission chair, who noted she has been a city commissioner since age 16, challenged county-based affordability formulas.
“You look at the rents and you wonder, who are these affordable for?” she said.
Ramos referenced her past organizing work to push Ward 6 projects, such as Legacy Square, to be 100% affordable to people who are making 30% of the area median income, pointing to Crossroads at Washington and the Depot at Santiago as similar efforts.
She also provided clarification on a technical zoning question put to her about the pending industrial overlay zone update recommended by the Planning Commission.
The overlay zone covers pockets of Santa Ana where factories and industrial businesses, many of which have operated legally for decades under industrial zoning, sit alongside neighborhoods. The city is in the process of rewriting its zoning code, and some of those businesses could be reclassified as “nonconforming,” which can restrict their ability to expand, reinvest or rebuild.
“No industrial businesses are in danger of being closed,” she said. Lawful businesses “may become nonconforming, but they do not have to close,” she added.
On transparency, Ramos said she would revisit the city’s sunshine ordinance and consider widening the radius required for notifying residents of new development. She also proposed working with the school district to send city notices home in students’ backpacks.
Ballots for the Nov. 3 election are set to be mailed out to registered voters starting Oct. 5. The first vote centers are scheduled to open Oct. 24, though using one of the OC Registrar of Voters drop boxes or returning ballots by mail will be options as soon as ballots are received.
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