Ellen Beraud slams Debbie Arnold for ‘failure of leadership,’ on housing and cannabis
Saying “we cannot risk our future with four more years of inaction,” former Atascadero mayor Ellen Beraud heavily criticized incumbent Debbie Arnold on her approaches to cannabis and affordable housing at a forum Wednesday night.
The comments worked to underscore the differences between the candidates competing for the District 5 seat on the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors in the March 3 election.
Throughout the night at the New Times forum, Beraud repeated a consistent message: There’s been a “failure of leadership.”
“Debbie Arnold has let us down. She’s partially responsible for where we’re at today,” Beraud said at the forum, “Citizens have zero trust that Debbie Arnold will make the right decisions and support their issues.”
In response, Arnold dug down that she’s confident “we are going to continue to work toward viable solutions to the challenges we talked about tonight: housing, homelessness, the cannabis, the water, the road repairs.”
That last point echoed a sharp criticism Arnold faced during the debate, when Beraud blamed her for prioritizing spending money on roadwork over homelessness.
Arnold did win board support to prioritize road improvements with $3.5 million in the 2018 budget over some protest, including from Supervisor Adam Hill, who said homelessness should be a bigger priority.
On the topic of affordable housing, Arnold said she supports creating housing by reducing building fees and creating opportunities for developers to “build by design,” a reference to the concept of pursuing housing that is “affordable by design,” which assumes that smaller homes are more affordable.
Beraud responded that housing is a crisis and employers are losing employees out of the area due to a lack of affordable housing, but “we can’t build our way out of this.”
Government needs to step in and help, she said, which will take political will to make decisions that go against “rigid thinking” that some hold onto. For example, she suggested private-public partnerships and creating a revenue stream for low-income housing projects from building fees on larger developments — something Arnold opposes.
Cannabis is one area where Arnold swiped back at Beraud.
Beraud has criticized the board majority’s handling of cannabis, saying “we need to go back to the drawing board” and that Arnold’s approach and the slow, limiting process hurts potential small-business owners and slowed economic growth from the industry.
Arnold did recently vote to force more than a dozen cannabis operators to close down business while the permitting process stalled.
“I am the business candidate here,” Beraud said. “We need to be thinking of future possibilities when it comes to our economy. We cannot just be turning our backs because we don’t like something.”
In response, Arnold said the permitting process does take a long time, but that’s true for any business. On cannabis, she said, “we took kind of a measured approach.”
Then, she went for the attack.
“I have to say, I was really disappointed to see the other day that in the 497 state reporting that my opponent actually accepted a very large amount of money from one of the cannabis growers that is being sued by the state,” Arnold said, referencing Calcoastnews.com.
District 5 includes Atascadero, Santa Margarita and parts of San Luis Obispo. The district leans right, with 12,757 voters registered as Republican and 11,574 registered Democrat. Nearly 8,000 are registered with no party preference.
The election is March 3.
