Tribune endorsements: Our choices for SLO mayor and City Council

First, the easy choice: Mayor Erica Stewart, is clearly the best-qualified — in fact, the only qualified — candidate for San Luis Obispo’s top elected position.

Stewart was elected to the City Council in 2018 and appointed mayor after Heidi Harmon resigned last fall. In that short time, she has done an outstanding job and deserves to be elected to a full term.

She is an effective leader dedicated to achieving city goals that include reducing homelessness, increasing the supply of affordable housing, meeting climate action benchmarks and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

The mayor has a gift for diplomacy; when she disagrees, she does it in a way that gets her point across without butting heads. You can trust this mayor to represent the city well in routine matters, and to also bring people together in times of crisis.

Plus, she’s not afraid to go it alone. For instance, when the City Council took an initial vote on an ordinance encouraging all-electric buildings in 2019, Stewart cast the only no vote. She said she agrees with the vision for climate action but argued the city should offer more building incentives to help bring down costs to construct new homes.

The mayor has three challengers: retired firefighter Richard Orcutt and repeat candidates Jeff Specht and Don Hedrick. None has experience in elected office.

While Stewart is the clear frontrunner, she’s taking nothing for granted; she’s out there campaigning — another sign of her dedication to the city.

City Council candidates

When it comes to filling two City Council seats, voters have a tougher choice.

Three candidates are neck-in-neck: Michelle Shoresman, who was appointed to the council to fill Stewart’s seat, Planning Commissioner Emily Francis and attorney Joe Benson.

All three are excellent candidates. Voters will not go wrong in choosing any one of them — so much so that we hesitate to choose only two.

In the final analysis, though, we believe experience in local government should be the tiebreaker and for that reason, we support Shoresman and Francis.

Both have served on the city Planning Commission, which is excellent preparation for City Council service.

Over the past couple of years, the commission has dealt with a variety of issues, including safe parking for people living out of their vehicles; the draft plan for citywide parks, the redesign of the Motel Inn, which is one of the city’s most significant landmarks; state housing legislation as it relates to the city; as well as plans for numerous new developments.

More about the candidates

Michelle Shoresman has more than proven her mettle. As public information officer for the county Health Department, she was front and center during the height of the COVID pandemic. On top of that, she’s served on the City Council for the past year, tackling some tough, divisive issues.

Take allowing night hiking on Cerro San Luis, which split the council. Shoresman, who had only recently been appointed to council, voted in favor of permitting it.

“We have over 7,000 acres of land that we have conserved, and I don’t think that allowing night hiking for four months out of the year essentially puts us in complete conflict with our with our record on conservation,” she said.

Agree or disagree, it was a well-reasoned response that speaks to Shoresman’s ability to balance competing interests.

In Emily Francis, the city would gain a dynamic new council member who would bring fresh energy and new perspectives.

Francis, a social studies teacher, raises important issues that have yet to come to the forefront. The lack of childcare, especially for infants and toddlers, is one of her focuses. Unlike homelessness, it’s a largely hidden issue, yet it’s a growing national crisis that affects everyone. And it’s everywhere.

“In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the scarcity and high cost of childcare has become even worse and is a notable factor in the ongoing worker shortage crisis,” writes the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.

Francis is advocating for more incentives for childcare workers — the city currently provides $5,000 grants to new childcare businesses — as well as help with guiding new providers through the regulatory process.

Joe Benson, a senior business attorney with Carmel & Naccasha, is heavily involved in the community; he provides pro-bono legal services to the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and has served on the SLO Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.

Politically, he describes himself as a moderate Democrat and while he aligns with Shoresman and Francis on many issues, he believes he would bring a diversity of views to the City Council.

“I have a lot of respect for everyone up (on the council) but I worry about some homogeny of thinking,” he told New Times.

He also told New Times that the council voted unanimously 80% of the time in 2022.

That may sound disturbing, but it’s not unusual for members of political bodies to agree. Even the much-divided Board of Supervisors routinely votes 5-0 on noncontroversial issues

.AIso, it’s one thing for a candidate to critique past decisions during a campaign, and another to actually make the hard decisions on the City Council.

There are many good reasons to vote for Benson, but it should not be with the expectation of changing the council’s voting patterns.

‘I’m not super-bougie’

The fourth council candidate, architectural historian James Papp, is a polarizing figure — to some, he’s a pain in the neck and to others, he’s a local treasure.

Papp is smart, articulate and not afraid to stir the pot. For example, he’s adamantly opposed to building a fourth parking garage downtown, which he’s dubbed the “Garage Mahal.”

And when the Chamber of Commerce asked which part of its economic vision deserves the most focus, he responded: “Well, that’s hard. They’re all super-bougie, and I’m not super-bougie.”

Every city can use an intelligent, “not super-bougie” iconoclast, but they often are more effective working outside the system.

Again, voters cannot go wrong with any of the other three candidates, but on balance, we believe Shoresman and Francis have a slight edge with their experience in city planning.

The Tribune strongly endorses Erica Stewart for mayor and Emily Francis and Michelle Shoresman for City Council.

This story was originally published October 19, 2022 at 8:00 AM.