A Voice for Residents, Not Special Interests, in City Hall
By Joel Day
Over the last months knocking on doors, attending community meetings, and listening to OB residents, I have heard a clear desire for new leadership in District 2.
I am running to be your council representative because we need a council that works for working families, not special interests. For me, that commitment isn’t just talk – it’s deeply personal. My father went to prison for 25 years when I was 6 years old. My sister and I grew up in a household of serious economic, addiction, and mental health challenges.
But we had a lifeline at our public library – where I learned to read and which set me on a path to be first in my family to graduate from college. We have to get back to investing in the basics that make our city a place of opportunity, grounded in the public promise of neighborhood infrastructure, community parks, and libraries. I know how important those things are, because those investments gave my family a chance at success. I’m running to make sure that every individual, family, and neighborhood gets the same opportunity.
Right now, that opportunity is slipping away in OB. STVRs and speculators push families out of the neighborhood, the cost of energy is skyrocketing, and crime is rising. The city plays whack-a-mole with homelessness instead of offering real solutions. For so many families in OB, the wolf is at the door and the city is nowhere to be found.
I am best qualified to bring serious change to our city. I hold a PhD in Comparative Government and teach public policy at UCSD. Both my education and profession are focused on identifying global best practices, from international security to local city planning and everything in between.
I have a passion for policy rooted in the circumstances of my childhood and what I hear from our neighbors. In addition to helping found an international non-profit fighting human trafficking, I served as a department director at the city of San Diego, leading initiatives on public safety reform, pandemic response, and immigrant and refugee integration. I’m intimately familiar with the bureaucratic structures of our government, so I can begin collaborating for solutions to our pressing challenges on day one.
My wife, Lauren, and I are raising our kids Bobby and Wesley, who are the 4th generation of our family to call District 2 home. Lauren and I both attended Point Loma Nazarene University (the university in D2), and our family still attends First Church in Point Loma. I understand the issues we have to solve, I have experience tackling them at City Hall, and our roots run deep in D2.
Councilmembers should be a delegate from the community to city hall, not the other way around. I’m not here to prescribe you policies manufactured by lobbyists behind closed doors. I’m not here to please other elected officials at the expense of the community I represent. I’m here to listen and find solutions with you. Here’s the priorities I am hearing about and how I’d work to address them:
We must get serious about investing in our beach infrastructure.
San Diego is known for our pristine beaches, but the city has abandoned this community. I spoke with another dad at Ebers Street Park, who has to check for needles in the grass before he lets his 2-year old play. A walk by the crumbling OB lifeguard station is another case in point. I’m going to fight for additional personnel and capital improvements in the heart of OB and hold the mayor and bureaucracy accountable for the state of our town.
Long term, we need serious climate resiliency plans for our beaches and cliffs. Following other cities around the world, I believe we need a Chief Resiliency Officer, who would work with the community to plan for sea level rise, fortify our coastline, oversee flooding mitigation, and implement the Climate Action Plan.
Citywide, we are hemorrhaging public safety personnel. San Diego lifeguards take home less pay today than they did in 2008, which has contributed to retention and recruitment problems. I would start with a comprehensive plan to bring lifeguards, fire, and police up to parity with peer jurisdictions, and put a full-time park ranger in every coastal park. Budget incompetence and poor planning have resulted in the crisis we see playing out on our streets, parks, and beaches. I have a comprehensive plan for rebuilding public safety, paired with my experience balancing multi-million dollar budgets. We can build a safer city, but we need new leadership that the community can count on.
Homelessness and housing costs are crushing OB and so many other neighborhoods.
I am the only candidate on the record with clear plans for both of these issues. I wrote recently about my plan for homelessness, which would build safe camping sites, create a city-led master-leasing program, and create a public land bank to leverage public assets to build deeply affordable housing.
I am committed to building subsidized housing on public parcels, homes that teachers, fire-fighers, and other middle class workers can actually afford. We need housing, but we also need infrastructure to go with it, which is why I would lock-box developer impact fees to address the communities impacted by development and boost capital improvement projects to align with any new development.
To combat the touristification of our family neighborhoods, I would also propose a 1% cap of STVRs in every planning area, scrapping the “Campbell Compromise” which unfairly dumps thousands of units in OB, and was predictably backed by AirBnB’s lobbyist.
I hope to see you at your door or a community meeting soon. You can email me directly at joel@joeldaySD.com to chat about issues important to you. I’m here to put my experience to work for working families, to be an advocate and partner, and to lift up your voice in city hall.
I hope to earn your vote on June 7th.
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See who else is running for District 2 as a Democrat.