Who's Running for Local Office in November

City Council and Martinez School Board will each have only one competitive race; also, updates on unhoused services, fishing pier renovation, new garbage rates, and other City Council tidbits

Friday was the deadline for candidates to file papers to run for local office (except in cases where it’s extended because incumbents didn’t file for re-election). Here’s a rundown of the races that voters will decide on Nov. 5:

City of Martinez

There will be only one competitive City Council race, for the District 2 seat currently occupied by longtime incumbent Mark Ross (because of redistricting, Ross no longer lives in the district and was ineligible to run for re-election). In District 3, incumbent Satinder Malhi, who was appointed to fill the seat in 2023 after the previous representative, Brianne Zorn, became mayor, was the only candidate to file papers to run and will automatically earn a full four-year term.

There will be a two-way race for Ross’ seat between longtime Martinez Parks, Recreation, Marina and Cultural Commission Chairperson Dylan Radke (who previously ran for City Council in 2012) and Greg Young, a consumer protection commissioner with the state Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. Click here to read Radke’s candidate packet and here to read Young’s.

In the only other city race up for election, incumbent Treasurer Carolyn Robinson was the only candidate to file for that office and will retain the seat for another four-year term.

Martinez Unified School District Board of Trustees

Although three seats are up for election, there will be only one competitive race for the school board, in Area 1 between incumbent Carlos Melendez and Logan Campbell. Melendez was appointed to fill the seat in 2021 when incumbent Jonathan Wright resigned after defeating Melendez in the 2020 race. Campbell, a small business owner and community activist, was an applicant for the vacant City Council seat that went to Malhi in 2023.

Incumbents Anne Horack Martin in Area 2 and Courtney Masella-O’Brien in Area 4 were the only candidates to file to run for those seats and will be automatically elected to new four-year terms.

Other districts

In the Contra Costa County Board of Education election for the Area 3 seat representing Martinez, the filing deadline has been extended to Wednesday because incumbent Anamarie Avila Farias (the Democratic Party candidate for state Assembly) is not running for re-election. Current Martinez Unified school board member Yazmin Llamas and former MUSD and Contra Costa Community College District trustee Vicki Gordon have both taken out papers to run for the seat, but neither had qualified for the ballot as of Friday evening.

There will be no competitive races for the open seats that encompass portions of Martinez on the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San) and Mt. View Sanitary District (MSD). Incumbent Tad Pilecki was the only candidate to file for the Central San Division 1 seat that includes parts of Martinez, and incumbents Julia Hasne, Brian Danley and Jared Ruddell were the only candidates to file to run for the open MSD seats.

All of the candidates running for local offices in Contra Costa County can be found at the following link: www.contracostavote.gov/wp-content/uploads/8-9-24_candidatelistsummary.pdf

CORE update on unhoused

The county’s Coordinated Outreach Referral and Engagement Services (CORE) team provided its regular quarterly update to the City Council on July 31 on services provided to the city’s unhoused.

From April 1 to June 30, CORE reported that 254 calls had been diverted from police dispatch to its team, freeing up police resources for public safety needs. During that period, CORE said it served 85 unhoused residents and made 269 warming center placements.

For the entire 2023-24 fiscal year, CORE said it served 410 individuals and provided 12,486 services. Of the 280 individuals who exited the program, CORE said 98% moved on to stable housing destinations.

As of July 1, the CORE team that has focused on Martinez’s unhoused full time over the past year has returned to a split arrangement with Martinez and Pleasant Hill, spending four hours in each city each day. The city of Martinez used one-time funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to contract with the county for full-time CORE services in 2023-24.

With CORE returning to half-time services in Martinez, its City Council updates will occur every six months, rather than quarterly, going forward.

Fishing pier renovation update

The City Council on July 31 gave the go-ahead to city staff to begin soliciting bids for the long-anticipated project to renovate the waterfront’s municipal fishing pier at an estimated construction cost of $2.6 million.

The city is awaiting the release of grant funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, expected this month, to begin the process of advertising for bids and awarding a construction contract, hopefully by next month. The “fish window” to complete in-water work on the project runs through Nov. 30, and Public Works Director Joe Enke said he hopes the entire project will be completed sometime next spring.

The deterioration of the pier led to its complete closing in September 2021, and temporary repairs allowed approximately 60% of the pier to reopen to the public in fall 2022.

Given the length of time the pier has been partially or fully closed, the council and staff expressed urgency in getting the project completed as expeditiously as possible.

“It’s been an all-hands-on-deck effort to see what we can do to push this through,” Enke told the council.

New waste collection rates

The council approved new maximum residential and commercial rates for Republic Services solid waste collection effective Sept. 1. The new rates can be found in the following table:

The city staff report explaining the increases acknowledged that they are large but spelled out the following “mitigating factors”:

• In 2021, Republic Services skipped an eligible rate increase due to services challenges, and this has had a compounding effect. Republic’s last rate adjustment was a 4% increase effective Jan. 1, 2023.

• In 2022, the city and Republic amended the franchises to include new services to meet Senate Bill 1383 requirements, which focused on methane reductions through increased collection and processing of organic waste.

• The increase aligns with significantly large rate increases seen in other Bay Area communities because of inflation, worker-retention issues, supply chain challenges in commercial trucking, and increased costs specific to organics and recyclables processing. “Even with this large rate increase, the compounded, annualized rate increase over the past 25 years is 3.52%.”

• The city negotiated a separate, lower rate adjustment for the commonly used 32-gallon service level, balancing the rates between the 64-gallon, 32-gallon and 20-gallon service levels. “This special adjustment for the 32-gallon service level provides a more balanced cost incentive for customers to choose the appropriate service level and encourages proper recycling practices.”

• Recent “positive performance improvements” following a major shift in the company’s regional and local management.

• At the most common 32- and 64-gallon garbage service levels, customers are paying $1.59/day and $2.02/day, respectively, for weekly removal of garbage, recyclables and organics, along with two bulky item (i.e. large appliance or furniture/mattress) pickups per year; two on-call garbage cleanups per year; four on-call recycling and green waste pickups per year; holiday tree collection; special cardboard and Styrofoam recycling “post-holiday” collection events; compost giveaways; and a pre-scheduled “Neighborhood Clean-Up Day.”

The new agreement also provides for residents to receive a “service credit” if a collection problem is not resolved within 24 hours, something that Councilman Satinder Malhi called a “significant win for the residents of Martinez.”

Mayor Brianne Zorn also pointed to what she called significant benefits that will come to Martinez from the new franchise agreement with Republic Services, including the missed-pickups credit; dump vouchers for multi-family residences; additional compost giveaways; cleanup of illegal dumping on Marina Vista Avenue; citywide cleanup volunteer coordination; and additional sustainability resources.

“There are a lot of good things coming out of this, so I don’t want the message going out to just be that rates are increasing,” she said.

A look at how Martinez waste-collection rates compare with other jurisdictions can be found in the following table:

Councilman Mark Ross pointed out that jurisdictions update their contracts with Republic Services at different times, and where Martinez ranks after the latest increases may not be true down the road.

“They are in different phases of their contracts, and they will be jumping up above us fairly soon, too,” he said.

Other City Council tidbits from July 31 meeting

• The council awarded community grants totaling $14,250 to 12 local organizations. The total grant amount was down considerably from last year, when the city used a one-time supplementary allocation of $85,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act to boost the program and provide unhoused support services in Martinez. The grant amounts and organizations for the 2024-25 fiscal year can be found on the following staff report: https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/2758890/Staff_Report_-_Community_Groups_Funding_Program_FY_2024-25.pdf

• The council approved public art applications for a proposed mural on the southern wall of the Universal Sports Academy complex, located at 330 Ferry St., and a Martinez Art Pianos temporary installation, with an initial pilot for one piano at Main Street Plaza. More information on the mural project can be found by clicking here, and more information on the piano project can be found by clicking here.

• The council gave the go-ahead to two new pedestrian safety projects: crosswalk improvements at Pacheco Boulevard and Arreba Street and the upgrading of six traffic signals. More information about the projects can be found on Page 3 of the following staff report.

Hometown Olympics wrap-up

Martinez’s Jewel Roemer and the rest of the USA women’s water polo team came up just short of winning a medal at the Paris Olympics, suffering heartbreaking losses to Australia (in a shootout) in the semifinals and to the Netherlands (11-10) in the bronze medal game. Roemer had a big goal to give USA the lead in a 5-4 quarterfinal win over Hungary. This was the Stanford star’s Olympic debut, and hopefully she’ll be back in 2028 to go for gold in Los Angeles!

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