u/Fit-Baker5016

PEast Palo Alto voters have a real choice this November.

For decades, Gail Dixon Wilkerson has lived, worked, owned businesses, and served this community. She brings more than 40 years of real estate experience and has served on the Senior Advisory Board, Rent Stabilization Board, Public Works & Transportation Commission, and Sanitary District Rate Advisory Committee.

Her message is simple:
“Nothing is getting done by going along, simply to get along.”

While Ruben Abrica and Carlos Romero represent decades of the political status quo, Gail is running to shake things up at City Hall and focus on practical results.

Her priorities include reducing cut-through traffic, protecting longtime residents from displacement, expanding senior and family housing, attracting grocery stores and other businesses, finding smarter solutions to our parking shortage, and addressing pollution and quality-of-life concerns.

You don’t have to agree with Gail on everything to recognize that competitive elections are healthy. After decades of the same political leadership, voters should ask a basic question:
Are we satisfied with the results, or is it time to try something different?

Gail has made it clear where she stands: East Palo Alto first, accountability at City Hall, and results over politics.

What do you think? Is Gail Dixon Wilkerson the change East Palo Alto needs?

East Palo Alto voters deserve to know the record behind the rhetoric.

Ofelia Bello served as an elected director of the East Palo Alto Sanitary District and supported dissolving the district and transferring its responsibilities to the City. Today, she holds a senior program role with EPACANDO/PAHALI.

That connection matters.

Bello has been a strong supporter of strict inclusionary housing policies. Those policies can generate affordable units and housing in-lieu funds, and EPACANDO has been involved in affordable-housing efforts in East Palo Alto. At the same time, I believe our requirements have become so burdensome that they discourage the very housing construction our community desperately needs.

Her record goes beyond housing. She supported the Opportunity to Purchase Act. She opposed ALPRs and other public-safety tools. She opposed the parking solutions I believe residents have been demanding. And on the Woodland Avenue creek, she supported an approach that I believe put maintaining encampments ahead of finding solutions that protected both unhoused residents and the surrounding community.

There are also serious questions about rhetoric and positions from her years of political activism. Those issues should be examined based on her actual public statements and actions.

This isn’t personal. It is about accountability.

When someone seeks to influence public policy, voters should look at who benefits, where the money goes, what policies were supported, and what results those policies actually produced.

East Palo Alto doesn’t need more ideology and political maneuvering. We need housing that actually gets built, safer neighborhoods, functional streets, transparency, and leaders focused on delivering results.

Examine the record. Follow the money. Ask questions. Then vote.

Ruben Abrica’s history in East Palo Alto deserves respect. But voters should also examine his recent record.

On parking, he delayed action while residents were asking the city for relief, supporting an approach that put the burden on residents to gather signatures from their neighbors.

On housing, he supported years of work on the Opportunity to Purchase Act, a policy that would have complicated property sales without addressing the fundamental question of who had the financing to actually purchase the properties.

He opposed a temporary exemption designed to make smaller mom and pop housing projects easier to build.

On public safety, he opposed ALPRs and Flock technology, a tool intended to help police investigate crime.

He also supported allowing homeless encampment along the Woodland Ave creek rather than prioritizing a solution that addressed both homelessness and the impacts on the surrounding community.

This is not about founders versus newcomers, and it is not about diminishing anyone’s contributions decades ago.

It is about the record today.

East Palo Alto needs leaders who make difficult decisions, solve problems, and deliver results.

The Euclid Development Agreement amendment hearing lasted roughly three hours and ended exactly where it started: with no decision.

Whether you support or oppose the project isn’t really the point. The bigger issue is how the meeting was managed.

Residents, applicants, staff, and community members spent their evening waiting for a resolution that never came. Meanwhile, extended council discussion by Carlos Epstein continued for hours without any clear indication that the item was actually headed toward a vote. As chair, Ruben Abrica had the responsibility to keep the meeting focused, manage deliberations, and recognize when a continuance was becoming inevitable. Instead, the discussion dragged on while the public waited.

At some point, respecting public participation means respecting the public’s time. The public shouldn’t have to sit through a three-hour marathon just to find out the item is being continued.