Monterey Bay Central Labor Council 

 Committee on Political Education Candidate Questionaire 
 City Council Elections - Nov. 5, 2002 

1. Name: Thomas Leavitt Address: P.O. Box 7095, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7095 Work and Home Phone: 408-591-3342 (cell)

2. Office Sought: Santa Cruz City Council

3. Committee name: (etc.)

4. Current Occupation: Entrepreneur/Systems Administrator
   Employer: As of 8/18/2002, unemployed

5. What elected or appointed positions have you held?

   • Member, Homeless Issues Task Force, City of Santa Cruz 1999/2000 - appointed by Christopher Krohn
   • Member, now Chair, Living Wage Advisory Committee, City of Santa Cruz, 2001-present (appointed by a majority vote of the City Council as a whole)

6. Have you ever been a union member? If so, which union, for how long, etc.?

   I have never been a union member, however, my father was a member of AFGE Local 490 when he worked for the Federal government; he was a shop steward for 15 years, 1st and 2nd VP of his local, and elected chaplain. I grew up in a union household, and have always been pro-union.

7. Will you respect an AFL-CIO sanctioned picket line? Yes
   An AFL-CIO sanctioned boycott? Yes

   *** I would also respect any other picket line or boycott organized by a legitimate non AFL-CIO affiliated union.

8. Do you support collective bargaining rights and the right to strike for private sector and public employees to the extent allowed by law? Yes

   *** And I'm for repeal of as many restrictions on the right to strike as possible, and for binding arbitration where permitting strikes is not possible for legitimate reasons.

9. Will you/did you support a Living Wage Ordinance in your city? Yes

   *** I'm Chair of the City of Santa Cruz's Living Wage Advisory Committee.

10. Will you oppose and publicly campaign against a ballot measure that would repeat the utility tax in your city (if applicable)? Yes

    *** Front and center on the home page of my campaign web site.

11. Will you use the influence of your office to help settle labor disputes if called upon by the Central Labor Council or the union involved? Yes

12. Will you make yourself available to labor's authorized representatives when they request to meet with you, including leaders of unions representing city employees? Yes

13. Will you seek suggestions from labor and make labor appointments to commissions, official bodies and advisory committees? Yes
    Will you try to achieve a balance between labor and business? Yes

14. Will you oppose the privatization or contracting-out of work now being performed by city employees? Yes

    *** And I will support in-sourcing currently contracted out activities whereever possible.

15. Will you support a prevailing wage ordinance in your city? Yes
    Do you agree that Project Labor Agreements serve the interests of both working people and local governments? Yes
    Do you support Local Hire Ordinances? Yes
    Do you know what a Local Apprenticeship Policy is? Yes (initially no until research done)
    Will you support a Local Apprenticeship Policy for your city? Yes

    Please make any comments you wish to about these programs:

    Prevailing wage ordinances are a basic tool for ensuring that workers being paid with our tax dollars are adequately paid and can support their families and community institutions.

    The City of Santa Cruz has a prevailing wage ordinance, and I would oppose any attempt to repeal or weaken it.

    The City of Santa Cruz has a local hire ordinance, and I would oppose any attempt to repeal or weaken it, and would work to strengthen it to the maximum extent possible. I would work with labor to encourage other local government entities (such as school boards) to establish strong local hire and local goods ordinances.

    Regarding "Project Labor Agreements"

    I support H.R. 1360, "To ensure project labor agreements are permitted in certain circumstances." I oppose H.R. 99, the so-called "Open Competition and Fairness Act of 2001".

    I oppose President Bush's Executive Order 13202, and support the lawsuit by the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO to overturn it.

    I do think, however, that while this is a good tool, the concessions that PLA's require (loss of the right to strike, permitting the use of non-union labor) are a sign of the weak legal position that labor unions have been put in by decades of anti-labor legislation dating back to Taft-Hartley. I would work to ensure that the strongest possible version of a PLA would be implemented on any projects the City contracts for, and to maximize to the greatest extent possible the use of union labor.

    Regarding "Local Apprenticeship Programs":

    Apprenticeship programs are a crucial path to skilled employment. They are essential to replenishing and growing the local skilled labor force, and provide a vehicle for those entering (or re-entering) the work force to develop the skills to move beyond low wage employment.

    I would support using whatever City resources are appropriate to help implement such a program.

16. Will you support employer neutrality and card check recognition in union organizing campaigns? Yes

17. Will you publicly support workers who are trying to unionize or who are involved in a labor dispute? Yes

18. Will you make every effort to patronize unionized establishments? Yes

    *** And to buy American, and/or from countries where unions are strong when that option is not available.

19. Within the limits of the law and the ethical codes of your office and profession, will you use the influence of your office to support the positions of organized labor? Yes

    *** A seat on the City Council can also serve as a bully pulpit, and be leveraged to generate community attention to important causes and issues; I intend to use that ability to the fullest extent possible.

20. Why is the endorsement of organized labor important to you?

    The endorsement of organized labor is a crucial validation that the person endorsed is truly on the side of the worker. I have spent my entire "career" as a public advocate working on issues of justice and equity, and the endorsement of organized labor would be a strong foundation on which to establish my campaign.

    In my last year at Santa Monica High School, I was elected as one of two Senior Class representatives. This was part of a revolution in student government that shifted control from an elite group of wealthy white students to a much more diverse group of students that better reflected the majority minority status of the school - including election of the school's first Latino Student Body President (who, today, is running for Santa Monica School Board and endorses my campaign for City Council).

    I am still very proud that I was able to persuade the student goverment to relocate our Senior Prom from a high priced hotel ($150/ticket or more), outside of Santa Monica city limits, to the Museum of Flying (inside of city limits) - which cost approximately $50/ticket, thus vastly increasing the accessibility of the event.

    My most recent round of local activism was initiated when Christopher Krohn appointed me to the City of Santa Cruz's Homeless Issues Task Force in 1999. In addition to participation in many groups and organizations outside of City government (include election to the Steering Committee of the Santa Cruz Action Network this year), I also serve as Chair of the City of Santa Cruz's Living Wage Advisory Committee, and have worked very hard to ensure that the ordinance is fully implemented and that staff's understanding of its meaning agrees with that of the community.

    The endorsement of organized labor would be a powerful tool for communicating the strength of my commitment to the rights and interests of working people, as well as a welcome addition to the strength of my campaign at a grassroots level.

21. Please describe three activities, votes, and/or positions you have taken in the last three years that you would describe as pro-worker or pro-union.

    While I see the entire spectrum of my activities as pro-worker and pro-union, I've selected the following three items that demonstrate how this has been carried out in different areas of my life:

    1. In 1999, the company I founded in 1994 (Web Communications) was sold by my partner (after I had left) to Verio Communications. Out of the approximately $1,000,000 I netted from my share (almost none of which remains at this point, due to the dot.com collapse), I gave over $100,000, without any legal obligation, to my former employees (both those employed at the time, and those who had already left the company), even including something for employees who had only been there for a few weeks or days and that I had no personal association with. The motivation behind this was simple - we had promised to share the benefits of any sale with the employees (although my partner failed to carry out plans to formalize this after I left), and that every one of them had contributed in some way to making the company a success. The employees of my company told me repeatedly that "This is the best place to work I've ever been employed." I am far more proud of that achievement, than the money I received and lost.

    2. The first thing I did when appointed to the Living Wage Advisory Committee was to read the entire ordinance in full, and to query staff about how the various sections had been implemented. I immediately discovered that the "notification" provisions had not been implemented at all, and spent the first few meetings of my term working with staff and other committee members to get a standard notification document written (and translated into Spanish) that employers are now required to post with all other employment related materials (Minimum Wage Notifications, etc.). Recently, during a review of the non-wage provisions (labor peace, etc.) of the Living Wage Ordinance that I initiated, the committee determined that staff was operating under the assumption that these did not apply to social service program providers, and was able to confirm that the City had in fact passed a clarification that they do apply.

    3. During research for the GLBT Alliance on local non-discrimination ordinances, I came across an on-line copy of SEIU 415's contract with the City of Scotts Valley. Commendably, it includes protection for sexual orientation among its provisions, but not "gender identity and gender expression" (which, in addition to the obvious effect of protecting transgendered folk, also protects workers from abuse that results from a failure to conform to gender expections - such as "masculine" appearing women, or "effeminiate" men, straight or gay).

       This resulted in a polite letter from the GLBT Alliance to SEIU 415 chairperson Cliff Tillman (who sits on the Living Wage Advisory Committee with men) requesting that the SEIU's contract be modified to include these provisions, and thus extend the protection of a negotiated labor agreement to even more workers.

22. Please give your view of the relationship between unionism and a community's standard of living.

    Strong unions result in healthy, vibrant communities. When workers have the comfort and protection of union representation, they have the time and the financial resources to invest in their community - this results in stronger schools, stronger community institutions, and greater participation in the core functions of democracy. Strong unions raise the standard of living of all workers in a community, by setting an example for other employees (and employers) of what is fair and just, and by enabling workers to support local businesses, and purchase homes in the community where they work. This, along with union benefits, provides a strong foundation for enabling workers to stay in their community after retirement, which in turn results in a strong and capable pool of volunteers to help support community institutions.

    Union activity also stands as a counter-balance to the ever present demands of local merchants and other business people, as a vigilant voice on behalf of all workers, and a strong force for grassroots organizing, worker empowerment, and putting "feet on the street" when needed.

23. What can and should be done to increase the supply of housing that is affordable to low, very low and moderate income people?

    Everything humanly possible.

    This is a key provision of my platform. If you think of the housing market as a "ladder", Santa Cruz is missing the first few rungs... a homeless person, a young person just starting out, or a family in transition (divorce, loss of one income, etc.) must come up with at least $3,000 in most cases to afford even the most basic housing. This presents an insurmountable barrier to very low and low income workers and those dependent on government benefits - when people are already struggling with the high cost of being poor, saving is often almost impossible. In many cases, families and workers wind up in a Catch-22 situation where they actually spend more on housing that others, because they are forced to utilize motels and weekly rentals that don't require deposits. This often results in a yo-yo effect where they are homeless one day, and "housed" the next.

    What can we do:

    1. expand funding for programs such as the Community Action Board's emergency housing assistance vouchers - the best way to address the problem of homelessness is to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place due to crisis

    2. expand loan programs that provide assistance in obtaining housing - this helps people escape from the Catch-22 situation described above

    3. expand down-payment assistance programs and work with the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union to broaden access to home ownership programs

    4. make meaningful changes to the Accessory Dwelling Unit ordinance that will result in significant increases in the rate of construction of ADUs (the recent revisions are a tiny first step on this path). These units help expand the available housing stock without requiring development of open space, and leverage and improve the efficiency of existing infrastructure (such as public transportation); they are also nherently more affordable, and provide housing suitable for single people, couples, and small families, as well as enabling graceful transitioning of residence utilization from one generation to the next without displacement of either; ADUs serve as entry level housing and are thus are a critical compenent of the "ladder of housing"

    5. make meaningful revisions to development regulations that strongly encourage the construction of more SRO facilities (recent revisions are unlikely to result in significant amounts of construction, in my opinion); Santa Cruz has an acute shortage of housing suitable for students, entry level workers, and low income single people and single parents - this shortage results in students and others occupying housing that would normally be available to families; SRO units are also one of the first steps

    6. continue working with current owners of affordable housing projects to do whatever it takes to keep existing affordable units from converting to market rates

    7. encourage and facilitate the establishment of a family shelter at River Street and Coral; this is vitally important to women fleeing domestic violence and violence on the street

    8. encourage the development of alternative forms of housing that cost under $500/mo., such as:

       1. contruction of short and middle-term residential campgrounds;

       2. legal places for people living out of their vehicles to park;

       3. domitory/hostel style housing projects;
       All of these are inherently more affordable, require little public subsidy (important when state and federal government funding is scarce and comes with many restrictions), and while they provide only the most basic level of housing, properly designed, they give people access to resources associated with housing (storage of personal possesions, access to cooking and personal hygine facilities, and most importantly, *personal security*) required to stablize their lives, obtain or retain or expand employment, and move out and "up" the "housing ladder".

24. What are your primary campaign issues and what are your goals if elected?

    1. Restoring access to Downtown Santa Cruz for all members of the community, by working to repeal the "Downtown Ordinances" and associated policy positions, which unjustly target youth and the homeless, and result in streetscape designs which are deliberately unfriendly to non-commercial uses (removal of benches, privatization of public space, etc.).

    2. Reverse the ongoing privatization of public space downtown, by repealing the "Downtown Ordinances", restoring benches, altering streetscape design to be more pedestrian friendly, reversing the enclosure of public space (such as in front of New Leaf) and restoring the "kiosks" to their original mission of serving as a vehicle for people to establish small businesses and then transition out to larger spaces.

    3. Preserving the character of our downtown by preventing further construction of large scale, architecturally characterless buildings (such as the University Center and new "Cooper House"); an especially egregious example of this is the City Council's 7-0 vote to override the Zoning Board and approve Louis Rittenhouse's project, which grossly violated the Downtown Recovery Guidelines.

    4. Establishing "Safe Sleeping Zones". The first, and most fundamental step towards getting people off the street and into normal housing, is providing them with a SAFE and LEGAL place where they can spend the night. The sleeping ban effectively makes it illegal to be homeless in the City, and forces people into a furtive, marginal existence that renders them vulnerable to assualt, seizure of possessions, and damages the environment.

    5. Establishing a permanent, multi-block downtown pedestrian plaza. This would provide the citizens of the city with a public gathering space at the center of the City, as well as help alleviate the existing collision of uses between "hangers out" and "commercial users". This works, and in fact, has been so successful in Santa Monica, that the owner of the existing three story indoor shopping center has petitioned the city to tear it down and append the property to the existing pedestrian mall.

    6. Facilitating the construction of affordable housing, as described in question #23.

    7. Supporting and expanding the Living Wage. Currently, the City of Santa Cruz has 894 vendors, of which nearly 600 meet the $10,000 threshold established in the Living Wage Ordinance. Yet, only approximately 30 of those vendors were required to comply with its provisions last year. To date, staff has taken the most conservative interpretation possible of which vendors this ordinance applies to (those explicitly listed in the ordinance), and has expressed a concern that any attempt at a more expansive interpretation has been met with strong resistance.

       Further, when push came to shove, the current City Council not only failed to follow up on its 7-0 vote to increase the Living Wage by 4.6% (indexed to the CPI for this area) by failing to provide funding for social service program providers to implement it, but actually CUT funding for SSPs by 5%! This, after the SSP community made truly extrodinary efforts to raise wages to the levels specified in the Living Wage Ordinance. Not only did they do this, but they also IGNORED the Living Wage Advisory Committee's request that they specifically mandate that the resulting budgets not be balanced on the backs of those paid the least - workers who currently earn less than the Living Wage.

    8. Cut the "military budget" and restore funding for social services, including the 4.6% increase needed to meet the requirements of the Living Wage. As a percentage of the total police budget, this would be trivial. Chief Belcher stated during the budget hearings that over 60% of the Police Department's arrests are for public intoxication (many of which are repeat arrests) due to the proximity of the County Jail. I say, cut the budget for police enforcement, and put that funding into alcohol and drug treatment programs to end this pointless cycle of wasted lives. Ultimately, this would result in more resources for both law enforcement and social programs. Fund prevention, not detention.

    See my web site at http://www.thomasleavitt.org/cc/platform.html for a more detailed exposition on these issues.

    My goal, if elected, would be to implement the above agenda (as well as those additional items described on my web site) and to act as a strong and consistent voice for the progressive agenda and the interests of working people throughout the city.

25. Who are the top five contributors to your campaign?

    See web site or contact me directly.

26. What individuals and organizations have endorsed your candidacy?

    See web site. As of 8/18/2002, Pat Clark is the only relatively high profiel local to endorse, but I haven't actively sought out endorsements yet.

27. Other comments you wish to make to labor about your candidacy?

    Thank you very much for taking the time to consider endorsing my campaign.

    I am committed to the progressive agenda, and you can see from the attached document (also on my web site) listing a few of my activities, I have a solid record of leadership in almost every organization I've participated in. Your endorsement of my campaign would be a tremendous boost, and I believe I would be a powerful and effective advocate for the issues that your membership cares about.

    I'll close with the following extract from my ballot statement:

    I promise to stay true to the policies and principles which I profess during my campaign. I promise to cut the "military budget" and prioritize funding for social services; to not endorse or accept policies which target the poor and oppressed for harassment and criminalization; to loudly and passionately dissent from the passage of hypocritical and unjust laws; and to push for positive change that empowers and engages all sectors of the community, not just the rich and powerful.

    Again, thank you for your consideration. For more information about my campaign and updated information, visit http://www.thomasleavitt.org/cc/

I hereby pledge to hold true to and carry out the positions set forth above.

Signed and dated: Thomas Leavitt, 8/18/2002