Hi, I'm Crawford Coates,
and I'm running for District 1 City Council.

Communicate!
The folks at City Hall talk to each other. Rarely do they speak to the people, unless it's a social media campaign aimed to driving our behavior. But what about policy questions? What about items under consideration? When do they field our feedback and actually listen? Hardworking families rarely have time for city council, committee, and School Board meetings. As your councilor, communication is my top priority.  

Embrace our natural ecosystems. We are surrounded by beauty: farms, hillsides, the ocean, and the Ventura River. We must embrace and steward these resources. I will work with the Ventura Land Trust, Merito Foundation, Surfrider, and others to bring this nature into our community through trails and opportunities. We need to bring these various groups together. The Thomas Fire should have been a wake-up call. The time to prepare for emergency is now. 

Keep the the Westside working. This is a working neighborhood, with companies that have been here decades. OST Trucks & Cranes, for example, has been here since 1947. I will support, listen to, and grow local businesses, ensuring our residents have job opportunities close to home. What we don't need is another out-of-town developer building luxury condos where a solid business once stood. We don't want our neighbors driving great distances for jobs. Dignified work is essential to human flourishing and the first step toward affordable housing.

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Consolidate and empower our approach to problem-solving.
From supporting our struggling neighbors to restoring our ecosystems to evaluating economic development decisions, we would benefit from working with the same data and toward the same vision. Bringing stakeholders together and getting everyone paddling in the same direction is key in times of uncertainty and budgetary pressure. 

Make Main Street work. Downtown is struggling. We can't deny that. The Westside has lost a major thoroughfare for connecting with the rest of the city, as well as complicated egress in the event of emergency. We need to follow the data, shield the city from expensive liability, and explore a hybrid model that preserves our historic character and grows our tax base.  

Rental protections. We need to finally pass a city-wide ordinance that outlines basic renter protections that align with state laws and regulations. State law prohibits raising the rents over certain thresholds year on year. It protects renters from eviction for minor rennovations, followed by unreasonable increases in rent. We must keep our neighbors from being displaced unfairly and illegally. Our Housing Service Division should be the hub for these resources and data.