Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua is up for re-election this November, and voters are deciding whether to give her another term or award the seat to current Councilmember Benjamin Vazquez.
A retired probation officer, Amezcua in 2022 was the first woman elected as Santa Ana mayor. Before that, she sat on the Santa Ana Unified School District board.
Vazquez is a high school teacher in Santa Ana and currently represents Ward 2, the center part of the city, on the council. He was first elected in 2022, and his term is not finished, however, he said he feels the city needs new leadership.
“What I want to see in my city is we build and come up together and do positive things,” Vazquez said. “This is why I came into government, so we can have a more conscious and nurturing city government that supports people, that supports Santa Ana.”
In her two years as mayor, Amezcua said one of her proudest accomplishments is working with the Police Department’s quality-of-life team, known as QOLT, to clear homeless encampments. One of her top priorities as mayor, she added, is to make it safe for residents to walk the streets of Santa Ana. Cleaning out homeless encampments and keeping sidewalks clear is one way of doing that, she said.
On the dais, the two candidates often take firm, but opposing, stances on issues such as rent control, policing and homelessness. Amezcua and Vazquez agreed addressing the homeless population and preventing crime in Santa Ana require complex solutions.
Amezcua said her past experience as a probation officer has made her look at homelessness and public safety through a different lens than some of her colleagues on the council.
“As the mayor, I do believe that you have to balance the restorative work with justice,” Amezcua said. “How do we hold people accountable, but at the same time, provide services for those who want it and are willing to take it?
“I do support holding people accountable,” she added. “But does everyone belong in jail? No. But if you’re willing to take a program, if you’re willing to change your life, I’ll be the first one to help you.”
Amezcua said she, as a leader, looks to find balance between compassion and accountability.
“As the mayor, I have a responsibility, and I believe that we again deserve to live in a place where we’re safe and our children are safe,” Amezcua said. “We need more police, but we also need programs.”
Vazquez said homelessness, poverty and crime are issues that tend to go hand-in-hand. Rent control, for example, is one preventative way to impact the vicious cycles of homelessness and crime. Fighting crime also means investing in the city’s youth, he said.
“With rent control, people are not going to have to rent out that extra room or the garage or even the sofa, which will deter violence in the home,” Vazquez added.
The overcrowding of homes, he said, “leads kids going into the streets or into alleys and finding trouble. To deter that, we have to build more community centers, parks, little leagues, any kind of organized sport, so the kids can get out and have a mentor and not go into crime.”
Vazquez said he wants to expand the QOLT team to improve outreach with people experiencing homelessness in Santa Ana.
“It takes us 40 visits to get someone off the streets. That’s a huge average, but if we double the size, we can do a lot more work with the houseless with a compassionate kind of tone, and not just the policy where you’re arresting people for being drunk in public,” Vazquez said of a policy last year he didn’t support in which the council directed the Santa Ana PD to detain people found passed out or intoxicated in public.
With the sunset of Measure X in a few years, which added an extra 1.5% to the sales tax on local purchases, the city is expected to lose millions in tax revenue. With that on the horizon, tough budget choices likely face the next City Council.
Vazquez said he would like to prepare for the sunset of Measure X by reviewing all city departments to find possible cost savings. He would also like to find ways to make Santa Ana more “business friendly” and for the city to generate more revenue.
“If we can be a business-friendly city, we can expand the tax base, and that’s how we increase our funding for whatever else we want to do. We want to market Santa Ana,” Vazquez said. “We have downtown Santa Ana. We have Main Place Mall, but we have this corridor on Harbor (Boulevard) that’s untouched. And I feel we can really find a space there to make it a marketing place, to make sure it highlights what we can do in Santa Ana.”
The key to bringing in more tax revenue, Vazquez said is to make Santa Ana marketable to businesses and visitors.
Amezcua said the council needs to start thinking about cuts to the city’s overall budget. But funding the city’s youth and seniors is crucial, she added.
“I think we should be open with the community and not just at a council meeting,” Amezcua said. “What does the community want? Where do they want us to cut? Where do you want us to allocate more funding?”
When it comes to extending the life of Measure X, Amezcua said she is a firm no vote.
“I do not want to take it back to the voters and say, let’s keep the taxes this high. Let’s continue to be the highest taxed city in the county,” she said.
Read more about what the candidates think about budgeting, housing and leadership 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.
