By Roel Godinez
On Monday, October 22nd, Christopher Rodriguez held a town hall meeting at the El Corazon Senior Center from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. This was Rodriguez’s second town hall meeting of his first term as a city council member of Oceanside’s Second District.
“Please try to leave partisan politics out of this,” said Rodriguez’s aid, Micheal Murray. “This town hall is all about the betterment of Oceanside, nothing more and nothing less. If you have concerns about Democrats or Republicans, if you have something to say about Trump on Twitter, this is not the quorum for that. Tonight, it is all about what’s going on here in our city.”
This evenings’ discussions were based on two of Oceanside’s’ most pressing issues: the threat of wildfire and the growing homeless epidemic.
Following Murrays opening statements, Oceanside Fire Chief Rick Robinson introduced himself and the Oceanside Chief of Administration, Pete Lawrence.
“We were very fortunate to have a wet winter, a winter that delayed this year’s fire season,” said Lawrence. “This ultimately prevented us from experiencing those catastrophic conditions that affected us up north. However, we have reached the end of our dividend and we are seeing that our environment has dried up. What we really want to stress is that it’s really critically dry out there.”
Lawrence went on to say that southern California will continue to experience Santa Ana winds as the year progresses. In addition, this winter is expected to be relatively dry, meaning that next year’s fire season will begin early.
The Oceanside Fire Department is diligently working to prepare for any uncontrolled fire and is well aware of existing geographical advantages. The San Luis River, for example, is an excellent natural barrier that can prevent a fire from traveling.
“We’re doing our best to protect our city, but it’s really important that you are also prepared to defend your family and your property. You should always be prepared, that doesn’t mean figuring everything out when its time to evacuate, it means knowing what you’re going to bring and what route you will use to get out before the fact”, said Lawrence.
Following the discussion on fire safety, the topic moved on to the issue of the increasing homeless population. With many Oceanside’s residents concerned about the growing encampments, the municipal government is feeling pressure to act. For this reason, CEO of Solutions For Change, Chris Megison, was invited to speak.
“When I first saw this problem in the early nineties, one of the first things I said to myself was, ‘this system is woefully unable to respond to this homeless problem’ and here we are twenty-seven years later and it’s gotten worse,” he said.
Solutions for Change is a nonprofit organization that is at the front lines, fighting to reverse the wave of homelessness by stabilizing members of the community. With over 850 families that have recovered from extreme poverty, Christopher Rodriguez has endorsed it as one of the leading programs that operate in Oceanside.
Solutions for Change is an intense 1,000-day course that aims to permanently end the destitution of families and individuals by teaching them financial and personal responsibility. Megison states that support programs that only provide food and temporary housing perpetuate homelessness by keeping those in need satisfied with the bare minimum of care.
Rodriguez is an advocate for community based private recovery programs. Being a Conservative city council member, he prefers a state government that refrains from pushing one-size-fits-all policies and instead leaves the responsibility to smaller, local governments.
“We’ve been talking a lot about homelessness, we’ve had a lot of questions. One of the big reasons I ran for office was homelessness. Enough is enough. We have to stop. Stop spending more money, stop giving excuses, it’s time to get to the bottom of this. We are spending billions right now on this crisis. Oceanside’s budget for the next seven years is close to six million dollars. With that money, we could be building fire stations, parks, or anything that will improve our quality of life. Government has failed us.”
Rodriguez went on to argue against several state policies that he believes are detrimental to affordable housing in California. One of which is the Assembly Bill 1482, recently passed by Governor Gavin Newsom, which is designed to place caps on the amount a landlord can raise rents. Rodriguez stated that this policy will result in an adverse effect that will force landlords to find alternative ways of increasing rents. This means rents will be higher from the onset, less availability of affordable housing, and more in-depth scrutiny of prospective renters.
Another is Proposition 47, the Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act, which reduces drug offense crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. The council member passionately denounced this bill for “rendering the police force impotent” and letting “drugs spill through our legal points of entry”.
On this Monday night, Oceanside residents peered into some of California’s most pressing issues. Both the threat of fire and increased homelessness are very real concerns to us all, and addressing these issues begins in our community.
