Turlock council candidates face off at League of Women Voters forum

Turlock candidates for two City Council seats spoke to voter concerns about failing roads, campaign finance, land use planning and other topics at a League of Women Voters forum. Candidates for city treasurer gave brief statements.

This election will be the city’s first with district seats, with residents of the two western sections of town not voting in the council race until 2018. Two political novices, Gil Esquer and Jaime Franco, are running for the District 2 seat, serving the southwest area of town. Incumbents Amy Bublak and Steven Nascimento, and challenger Donald Babadalir are running for the District 4 seat, serving the northwest quadrant.

All five candidates gave brief opening and closing statements at the forum, held Wednesday night in City Hall. The bulk of the event was spent on audience questions, with candidates given one minute to answer each.

City growth appeared to be on people’s minds, with questions on how candidates viewed preserving ag land around the city, protecting water recharge areas near the city, an industrial or commercial revival between A and D streets, and managing growth overall.

Franco, Esquer and Nascimento all reiterated support for maintaining the existing residential growth boundaries of Highway 99 to the west and Taylor Road to the north. Bublak said infill requirements in the city’s growth plan already limit residential growth, and she supports the plan. Babadalir said he believed in free enterprise, but did support preserving ag land as a buffer to urban encroachment.

Asked what they would do for their area, Franco and Esquer both said they would be a voice for a historically underrepresented area. Both spoke of a need to improve roads and streetlights, and increase public safety.

In the northwest area, Nascimento saw a need for curbs on auto theft and a connected network of bike paths. Bublak said crime and lighting by Pitman High were concerns. Babadalir said a greater emphasis on public safety and follow-through would be his hallmark.

The need to repair roads was cited by every candidate. Babadalir, however, was the only candidate to take a stand against Measure L, the county road tax proposed to raise funds for local streets as well as regional arteries, and qualify the county to receive matching state funds for transportation.

Farmers market flap

One question addressed the biggest political fray of the past year for the council: competing claims by two farmers markets to Saturday morning on Main Street. The conflict pitted supporters of the existing Main Street market, a community nonprofit, against a for-profit rival. Fallout from the controversy could be felt as the council considered and in June passed voluntary campaign finance reform.

In the end, the for-profit company received the Main Street permit but later reduced its footprint and its season for lack of interest. The nonprofit moved to the Turlock Fairgrounds and has grown.

Esquer and Franco agreed it was poorly handled and said a for-profit company should not have been allowed to compete against a nonprofit.

Council members Nascimento and Bublak voted on opposite sides of the issue. Nascimento, who backed the nonprofit, said Wednesday he wanted to delay consideration of a second bidder for a year to allow time to work out a better solution. “I think the impact (of the change) on the downtown, which was the question – it’s been very negative,” he said.

Bublak voted with the majority to switch the Main Street operator, though there was little choice after the nonprofit pulled its application. “We have to be accountable and have a transparent cycle of trying to figure out how to be fair to everybody,” she said.

Babadalir blamed bad policy for the fracas, saying the city should have done a better job of advising the community group about its lack of nonprofit status, information he said he got from the website Turlock City News.

The Internal Revenue Service, during the controversy and now, lists the Turlock Certified Farmers Market as a tax-exempt organization. It also appears on the California attorney general’s registry of charitable organizations.

Treasurer race

Candidates for city treasurer, incumbent Diana Lewis and challenger Alex Paul Kiehl, had no questions lobbed their way, but gave short statements before the City Council forum began.

Kiehl, 28, said he has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, 15 years of bookkeeping experience at his parents’ tax business, and has served as a grand juror. “Now I’d like to give public service a try,” he told the crowd at City Hall on Wednesday.

Lewis, 65, is retired after 30 years in the city finance department. She laid out her experience in overseeing city investments under two previous city treasurers as well as her own time in office, managed through city growth and recession.

One note on campaign finances: The Turlock police and firefighter unions’ political action committees had not endorsed any council candidates as of their last financial filings in June. Since then, however, the Turlock Associated Police Officers have endorsed Bublak. Turlock Firefighters Local 2434 has endorsed Bublak and Esquer.

This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Turlock council candidates face off at League of Women Voters forum."