Pastor, promoter, ex-councilwoman vie to replace Kristi Ah You on Modesto Council
Three well-known candidates are running in the November election to replace Councilwoman Kristi Ah You, whose district encompasses central Modesto.
Ah You — who is completing her first term representing Council District 3 — recently announced she is running for mayor, making her one of eight candidates challenging Mayor Ted Brandvold, who is seeking a second term.
The candidates for Ah You’s seat are Jim Applegate, pastor of vision and preaching at Redeemer Modesto; Janice Keating, who served on the council from 2002 to 2009 and is a strong Brandvold supporter; and Chris Ricci, an events promoter who co-founded the Modesto Area Music Association Awards or MAMAs.
They are running during the new coronavirus pandemic, a public health and economic crisis. The city is facing steep declines in sales and the other taxes that make up its $140.3 million general fund budget. It primarily funds public safety.
Council District 3 is roughly bordered by Briggsmore Avenue to the north, Kansas Avenue-Needham Street-Scenic Drive to the south, Morse Road to the west and Rose Avenue to the east.
Jim Applegate
Applegate, 48, acknowledges that as the pastor of a Protestant evangelical nondenominational church there are some who believe he should not run for office.
But Applegate said he can have his beliefs while respecting the beliefs of others and meet the responsibilities of being an elected official. He said as a pastor he has developed friendships with people from a variety of faith traditions and with those who represent Modesto in all of its diversity, including members of the LGBTQ community.
“Whether I’m here at Redeemer, City Hall or hanging out with other groups,” he said “... I love them the way they believe. It does not matter what I believe. ... Co-exist does not mean co-believe.”
He said if elected to the council, he would continue as pastor of vision and preaching at Redeemer.
Applegate and his wife, Heather, founded Redeemer in 2007. The downtown Modesto church has about 400 members. Applegate said starting the church came during trying circumstances for him and his family. He had been an electrical contractor and lost his business to bankruptcy during the Great Recession.
He said that experience deepened his compassion for others and taught him that failure is not final. Those are lessons, he said, that are timely as Modesto deals with the pandemic.
Applegate said as a councilman he sees his role as bringing the entire community together to talk about the city’s future. That could include through informal dinners between council members and residents before council meetings.
And he wants to help bring more civility to the city, whether on social media, among people living in the same neighborhood or at City Hall. “The beauty is in finding the radical center,” Applegate said.
This is all part of building the city’s morale. Applegate said there is a lot of good work taking place in Modesto, whether it’s the capable leadership team City Manager Joe Lopez has developed, communitywide efforts such as Focus on Prevention to tackle homelessness, or the compassion of the city’s nonprofits and faith-based organizations.
He said community conversations and championing the city should result in residents seeing Modesto’s great potential. For instance, Applegate said the city has a big chance with the coming of ACE commuter trains to downtown in a few years.
Those trains will strengthen the link between Modesto and the Bay Area. That could mean well-paying jobs from Silicon Valley coming here, which would help in the revitalization of downtown and the rest of the city. It also gives Modesto the opportunity to look at creating affordable housing as well as housing for downtown.
Applegate wants to pursue economic development but with a twist. He said Modesto needs to find those cities that once were like it but have made the leap forward in economic development. Modesto officials then need to visit those cities.
Applegate said we need to ask: “How are they doing it? As public officials we need to learn and grow. If nothing changes, nothing changes. I don’t have the answers. But I’m a really good researcher and love to find people who have the answers and hang out with them and ask them a million questions.”
Applegate is the second pastor running for office in Modesto. Co-Senior Pastor Rick Countryman of Big Valley Grace Community Church is among the candidates running for mayor.
Janice Keating
Keating, 54, said her top priority is to take a deep look at the city budget with the goal of finding money to hire more police officers. She said she did not support the City Council’s recent decision to reduce the number of allocated police officer positions from 240 to 210 as part of balancing the general fund.
Police Chief Galen Carroll has said the practical result of this action is he will have about a half dozen fewer officers as he loses them to retirement and attrition. He told the council June 30 that he then had about 216 officers and about two dozen vacancies.
He is compensating by hiring more civilian employees to do routine work, freeing up officers to respond to crimes in progress and other urgent matters.
The council also froze or eliminated 18 open firefighter positions.
City Manager Joe Lopez said 78 percent of the general fund is spent on the Police (50 percent) and Fire (28 percent) departments. And the city had made deep cuts throughout its organization. He said making more cuts to free up money for public safety would result in shuttering community centers and big reductions to recreation and other programs.
“I was shocked by the emphasis on cutting mainly from public safety,” Keating said about the council’s decision. “We prided ourselves (when she served on the City Council) — the one thing citizens expected from us — on (providing) cops and firefighters. We held public safety harmless as best we could.”
She added that the last few years of her council service was during the Great Recession.
City Manager “Joe Lopez should have done a harder look at this budget,” Keating said. “Everyone is going to have to tighten their belts. Everyone. If there is one thing the public expects from us it is sworn officers.”
She said Modesto needs more officers to respond to the homeless people who are committing crimes. She said even if the crimes are minor, residents still feel less secure and safe in their homes and neighborhoods.
Keating said she is focused on bringing fiscal accountability to City Hall. She said that is paramount because Modesto can expect its budgets to continue to get worse before they get better as it deals with the pandemic.
That is why she supports the City Council hiring an auditor, who would look at the city’s operations and recommend to the council how the city can save money and work smarter. At Brandvold’s urging the council did hire an auditor, but she left after less than a year, getting caught in the middle of a bickering, divided council.
“Who better to help the city of Modesto than an auditor during these financially difficult times?” Keating said.
Keating owns Janice’s Bookkeeping and Tax Service. Besides serving on the City Council, she ran twice for the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors and once for the state Assembly.
She was among the local Republican officials who had endorsed former Turlock Councilman and Republican Ted Howze in his race against U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, to represent Stanislaus and southern San Joaquin counties in Congress.
But Keating said she took Howze up on his offer this spring when he released his endorsements after The Bee and Politico reported about defamatory posts on Howze’s social media that demeaned immigrants, Muslims and others. Howze has said the posts were made by others. “I’ve moved on to my own campaign,” Keating said. “That’s not my fight. That’s not my problem.”
Chris Ricci
Ricci, 48, said Modesto could see many of its mom-and-pop businesses fail in the next eight months because of the pandemic. But he said the city has the opportunity to do something if it’s willing to try new approaches.
He said as a councilman he would champion that. It’s part of the “100 Ideas For Modesto” on his campaign website that offers a range of ideas on making Modesto a better place to live for all of its residents, from creating community gardens and public art to strengthening the city’s forestry department and reusing more of the city’s waste water (the city now sends highly treated waste water to West Side farmers).
Ricci — who also does digital political marketing for Democratic candidates and causes — said many of the ideas can be grouped into broad themes, including helping restaurants and other small businesses, creating more housing and strengthening civic pride for all residents.
Ricci has lived in Modesto since 1999 and said he knows lots of local business owners. He said 20 percent to 50 percent of the mom-and-pops could close in the next eight months without help.
He said these businesses’ landlords have been very accommodating with giving them breaks on their rent but said that can only last so long. Landlords have their own mortgages and other expenses they have to pay. “The disaster that is coming is going to be absolutely brutal,” Ricci said.
He said Modesto can provide free or low-cost spaces for small businesses to operate to help them weather this economic storm. He said that might include space at Tenth Street Place, the city-county administration center in downtown, or letting a restaurant work out of a city park.
He said the pandemic is changing retail. And as stores and big boxes that once housed retailers become vacant, the city can make it possible for the property owners to convert some or all of these spaces into apartments or condos. Ricci said this could even work at Vintage Faire Mall. And Modesto can create programs for homeowners to put tiny homes in their backyards.
Ricci said this may sound ridiculous but Modesto is part of a global crisis and needs to look at new solutions. And he said this has been done in other communities across the country. “I want to open up the idea and the potential for people,” he said. “We need to make it legal, and let the people who own the property make the decision.
“... We know Modesto is struggling with housing. (These are) quick and easy solutions — adjusting zoning (land-use) regulations and offering incentives.”
The third theme is improving civic pride for all Modesto residents, from its people of color and LGBTQ community to strengthening the city’s love affair with cars through special events to holding marching band festivals, which builds off local school music and band programs.
Ricci said he was amazed by the recent Black Lives Matter protests in Modesto, part of a nationwide response to the death of George Floyd. He said he was deeply impressed by the young people who organized the protests and said they need to be part of the conversation of making Modesto better.
The BLM rallies were the “most impactful protests I’ve seen since I’ve lived here,” Ricci said. “They were lead by very young people, (who were) very diverse. That was really inspiring.”
The City Council has six council members, who are each elected by district, and a mayor who is elected citywide. Besides District 3, the seats in District 1, which encompasses northwest Modesto, and District 6, which encompasses northeast Modesto, will be on the November ballot. The filing period to run for council ends in early August.
