The candidates for Santa Cruz County Board Of Supervisors District 2, how they plan on tackling the county’s issues

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Calif. (KION-TV) — Focusing on the the candidates for Santa Cruz County Board Of Supervisors District 2. This competitive race features two candidates to represent Santa Cruz County. 

On the ballot for Santa Cruz County Board Of Supervisors District 2 are Kristen Brown and Kim De Serpa. 

"I've been on Capitola city council for eight years and I've been the mayor twice," Kristen Brown Capitola Mayor said. "I've been working in public policy for the last 13 years, including working for congressman Sam Barr and Congressman Jimmy Panetta. I just have a passion for community and want to be of service to it and that's really what's driving me to be able to serve a wider range of residents in our community."

"I've been somebody that helps people across my lifetime," Kim De Serpa Healthcare manager and trustee said. "I'm a social worker, licensed clinical social worker, and i've devoted my career to helping people. I've been elected onto a school board for 14 years and have been in that purview governing a budget of $331 million and making huge improvements to the school system. 

The primary issues each candidate plans to address if elected.

"The three main issues that i really want to start working on right away are housing, transportation and climate change," Brown said. "In relation to housing, that means looking at our permitting process and how we might be able to streamline it so that affordable housing development is easier. Just working to address the needs of those who can't afford to live here and ensuring that we have more affordable housing being developed around transportation. I want to work on continuing investment in our transit system system. The metro transit district continuing to plan for electric passenger rail, while we are also already and will continue to build the trail and just just bringing using our local dollars to bring more state and federal dollars in for our infrastructure improvements."

"Road the roads we start in, the road conditions in Santa Cruz County are disgraceful, frankly," Serpa said. "The grand jury just came out with a report that said I think 60% of our roads are in poor, very poor condition, so road repair is one of my very most important things. The second thing is housing affordability, we live in an area that is the most expensive in the country and we really need to be able to offer young families, nurses, doctors, first responders, teachers and an all kinds of staff. We need to be able to allow them affordable housing because we need a workforce in our county. I think the mental health system in our county needs to be improved and so with my background as a clinical social worker, I know I can help to improve that."

Addressing the homelessness crisis in our community.

"It's the need to create a system flow where for every unit of shelter we are funding or building, we need 2 to 3 units of deeply affordable housing and 4 to 6 units of homelessness prevention," Brown said. "Eviction prevention or rental assistance and in that way, we're creating a system flow in which people can become housed and stay housed and I think that's something that I'd like to look into."

"My hope is, with my expertise, that I can actually help remove some barriers to helping people in a real way," Serpa said. The second thing is we need we need to just build more affordable housing, and the reason that people are unhoused because there's nowhere to place them and the third thing is there's a new senate bill that was passed, Senate Bill 43, which allows us to actually conserve people who are gravely disabled because truly, the people that are living on the street in many cases are seriously mentally ill and they cannot take care of themselves."