Three seats on the seven-person Woodland City Council will be up for grabs on Nov. 3, and residents will have the option of voting for a familiar face for each seat.
Position No. 4 will see Karl Chapman go up against Woodland Mayor Grover Laseke; Position No. 5 is a race between former Councilor John “JJ” Burke and Councilor Susan Humbyrd; and Councilor Mike Benjamin will face off against Matthew Jacobs for Position No. 7. Each seat is a nonpartisan position with a four-year term.
Many of the candidates spoke about the city’s police services. Some feel the Woodland Police Department is understaffed, and needs to hire more officers.
Funding is an issue in trying to bring in more officers, but some candidates are worried that troublesome contract negotiations between the city and police are also scaring off potential applicants. The city and the Woodland Police Officers Association have been working on a contract for three years, including the last two-plus with help from a Public Employment Relations Commission mediator.
Laseke said that there are applicants for the department, and the delay has more to do with available funds than labor relations. He also said that a tentative agreement was reached Oct. 19, and the contract will be brought to a vote at the Nov. 2 council meeting.
Laseke said finding increased funding for public safety should be a top concern for the new council. He also thinks the council needs to do a better job of working together and with the mayor, something he had issues with the last four years while mayor.
“The city council’s support for the mayor and administrative branch has been lacking,” he said. “That has been one of the most difficult things that I’ve faced. Less picking things apart (and) less acrimony. More productivity.”
It’s something the public has noticed, as well.
“(With) city workers, fire department, police department and the council and mayor, there’s no cohesion,” Chapman said. “They’re like balls in a jar just bouncing around, but they don’t intermingle.”
Chapman said he decided to seek office to help get a voice for the people on the board.
“This stuff ain’t going right,” he said. “We need to get the voice back to the people. The government is doing one thing, telling the people what they’re going to do, but not doing it all. The voice of the people is getting lost, and it needs to be heard again. We need to see if we can get this ship right.”
Benjamin, who was appointed to the council in May after Scott Perry resigned, agreed that it’s important for the board to be open and communicate with Woodland residents. He also said Woodland needs to be prepared for growth in the city.
“It’s going to be important that we manage the growth, opposed to the other way around,” he said. “If we just allow the town to grow without trying to accommodate with proper infrastructure, we’ll get a lot of people here without the ability to manage any of it. We need a plan for the growth.”
Burke served on the council from 2002 to 2012, serving as mayor pro tem for four of those years, and he doesn’t agree with the city’s plan to hire an administrator to take over some day-to-day responsibilities from the mayor.
“I believe that Woodland needs some professional guidance, but I’m not sure we can actually afford it,” he said. “I believe we need to hire more police than pay a person to do what the mayor wants, and is elected, to do.”
Laseke decided not to seek re-election for mayor because he’s retiring soon. He still wants to be involved with public service and has projects he’s interested in getting done, and thought he’d have more time to focus on those projects without the daily responsibilities of being mayor.
Some of the projects Laseke is interested in seeing through are the Scott Avenue Reconnection Project, implementing a strategic plan to be approved by the city council, maintaining funding for current city services and finding a way to hire more police officers.
Humbyrd and Jacobs didn’t respond to multiple attempts to contact them for comment for this story.
