Candidates for election and re-election in Seaside this year all seem to have one thing in common: they don’t know quite how they feel about Flock cameras.
At a recent forum in Seaside, the two mayoral and six city council candidates discussed everything from affordability to illegal fireworks. Yet the use of surveillance cameras manufactured by Flock was an especially hot topic, and one where all eight candidates struggled to take a hardline stance.
“Gosh, I knew this question was going to come up,” said city council candidate Lacey Raak. “I honestly am of two minds when I think about this…I think that we need to keep our community safe, but we need to do that in a way that protects our individual freedom and security as well.”
Cal State Monterey Bay is located along the border between the cities of Marina and Seaside, which mostly follows Inter-Garrison Road as it cuts through campus. That means students living in any of the nine on-campus residence halls are eligible to register to vote in Seaside, while those living in North Quad, Promontory or East Campus fall within the city of Marina.
With CSUMB itself broadly considered part of Seaside, the city has been involved in development projects directly adjacent to campus that are designed with the school in mind – including Campus Town, a complex 10years in the making that, once completed, promises to bring housing and businesses to the CSUMB community.
Unlike other cities like Marina and Monterey, Seaside elects its four-person city council using an at-large system. That means all Seaside voters vote for candidates seeking any open seat.
Of Seaside’s four city council seats, two are up for election this year. One of them is currently held by Alex Miller, who gave up re-election in order to challenge incumbent Mayor Ian Oglesby. That leaves six candidates – Kenneth Fittro, Karla Lobo, Annalisa Mitchell, Lacey Raak, Dennis Volk, and incumbent councilmember Rita Burks – vying for the two open seats.
While candidates were asked to focus on the questions at hand and to avoid responding to each other, some were able to weave rebuttals into their answers. Fittro, for example, seemed eager to come off as less ambivalent than Raak on the Flock camera issue, but even he was ultimately unable to clearly define his stance.
“If you asked me this question four days ago, I would have sounded like Lacey,” said Fittro. “But I…was talking to these two gentlemen that were running their business…they convinced me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and what I mean by that is I need to continue to investigate and to create an opinion that is my own, not just what other people say, and that’s what I’m doing now.”
Volk, meanwhile, mainly pointed to his experience as a small business owner and 70-year residency in Seaside. When asked for his stance on Flock Safety cameras, he stated that he is “really not sure” about them and that he hasn’t “investigated enough to make a comment on it.”
A conversation about how to increase the profile and success of the downtown neighborhood around Broadway Avenue brought the CSUMB community into focus, with some candidates seeming more eager than others to bring students into the fold.
“Students are about sports and about music, and though we love our downtown Broadway, [it] is inviting for us that have been here from generation to generation,” said Mitchell. “For our students over at CSUMB, downtown Broadway is not as inviting. We have to build up what’s there to get our students there, and the only way we can build it up is to have a conversation with them.”