Santa Ana voters will choose between two candidates running to represent Ward 5, the northern part of the city, on the City Council.
Mario Alvarado, a local business owner and city commissioner, said he decided to run for City Council this year to bridge the divide he sees in the current council by getting city leaders to work better together.
“My professional life, the success that has brought me has been through negotiating and bringing people together,” Alvarado said. “I don’t see that happening now in the city, and the residents are being affected with safety and programs that we’re not promoting because everybody has different ideas for housing, community safety and economic development.”
Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, the incumbent on the ballot, is wrapping up his first term in office. He said he is most proud of bringing more parks to Ward 5, four have opened since his time on the council, and represent young people’s voices on policy discussions.
“When I got elected, there were a lot of people who just thought this 27-year-old kid is not gonna win. And boy, were they wrong,” Hernandez said. “Young people deserve a seat at the table, and I fought for young people to have that seat.”
Alvarado said he thinks the biggest issue in Ward 5 is public safety and lack of policing. The Santa Ana Police Department is currently struggling to fill nearly 43 vacancies, according to an SAPD spokesperson. As a council member, Alvarado said he would like to see those positions filled by showing more friendliness toward police officers.
“If there’s a huge emergency, and you call 9-1-1, you see officers come in, and they get here in three or four minutes, which is great timing,” Alvarado said. “However, when residents call for the lower levels, it’s a couple of hours and the reason we’re told is because we don’t have enough people on the streets.”
Potential police officers are discouraged from working in Santa Ana because current leadership does not embrace policing, Alvarado said.
“I want to make sure that we create that trust with our Police Department again,” Alvarado said. “There’s bad apples, there’s amazing apples. So as much as we want to celebrate our PD, we also have to hold them accountable for actions they may have done.”
Hernandez said true public safety can be achieved while being compassionate and creating spaces in Santa Ana that build community. Hernandez specifically pointed to Santa Ana lives lost due to gang violence.
“You cannot over-police a community and arrest your way out of these tragedies,” Hernandez said. “There certainly is a justice system that exists to hold people accountable, but at some point we also have to hold ourselves accountable as a city, to ask ourselves, what are we doing to uplift these people in neighborhoods where they’re experiencing tragic loss like a young boy being shot?”
Public safety concerns cannot be solved only by police, Hernandez said.
“It has to be inclusive of our schools, our gang interventionists, our community centers, our neighborhood associations, our neighborhood leaders, our children, and more importantly, our parents,” Hernandez said. “We need to have a continuity of care that goes beyond the classroom and into the streets, and that’s where I think the city needs to make a shift in protecting young people.”
Another pressing issue for the two candidates is housing.
Hernandez said in his time as a council member, he has pushed issues faced by renters to the forefront.
“I’m a homeowner, but I was a renter for most of my life. For me, as a councilman, I never forgot about the struggles I endured as a young parent and as a renter,” Hernandez said. “I was a part of the ad hoc that authored the language for rent control. I also fought to increase homeownership opportunities. It’s about creating housing opportunities for these residents and creating them in the most impacted neighborhoods.”
Alvarado said he would like to expand the city’s down-payment assistance programs to make homeownership more affordable for Santa Ana residents. He would also like to make Santa Ana more friendly to housing developers.
“We want to bring developers that do housing back to Santa Ana. We have a reputation of not being business friendly,” Alvarado said. “There are developers that will go somewhere else because they’re invited, because they have incentives to come and build in their city. We want to bring back that to Santa Ana, including the low income.”
Hernandez said if he wins re-election, he would like to ensure that the city continues to increase investments in the community and youth, such as with parks, libraries, and arts and culture, for example.
“I want to add value to my city. I want to add resources to this community, and I want them to be tangible enough that people can benefit from them in their everyday life,” Hernandez said.
Alvarado said his ultimate goal is to make life easier for Santa Ana residents, and make the city a place that people want to live and work in.
“I’m just a resident like everybody else. I just decided that I want now to make our city a bit better by running for office,” Alvarado said.
Read more about what the candidates think about budgeting, leadership and homelessness in The Orange County Register’s voter guide.
Ballots for the November election have already arrived in the mailboxes of registered voters. They can be mailed back, returned to an OC Registrar of Voters official dropbox or taken to a vote center. Vote centers start opening for in-person voting on Oct. 26 and Election Day is Nov. 5.
For more information visit ocvote.gov.
