Editorial: Elect Hoffmeister and Nakamura to Concord City Council

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Concord officials have demonstrated excellent and awful leadership during the past four years.

The city has financially weathered the pandemic because of prudently cautious fiscal management. And it is tackling the city’s homeless challenge in a broad and thoughtful approach.

But the council’s decision last year to select a developer with a history of environmental violations for the massive Concord Naval Weapons Station project revealed how special interests still dominate Concord politics. That selection was the key issue in our recommendation for the two contested City Council races on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Voters who are troubled by the council’s decision should reelect Laura Hoffmeister in District 1, who supported another developer team, and elect Laura Nakamura in District 5.

Concord deserves high praise for its fiscal management since the Great Recession when it had to cut staff by over 100 people, or roughly 20%, as it nearly exhausted its budget reserves. Unlike many cities, it didn’t try to hire them back the following decade.

Instead, it’s been a leaner operation. City leaders have wisely tried to maintain a strong budget reserve of about 30% of annual general fund expenditures. That approach, along with more than $10 million of cuts, including staff concessions and freezing of positions, helped the city weather the early part of the pandemic. And it has left funding available to tackle homelessness and protected money that has been earmarked for needed road repairs.

But the developer pick for the Concord Naval Weapons Station project was troubling. The council caved to labor unions when it picked a consortium led by the Seeno construction family over two other development teams, despite the Seeno companies’ history of environmental and other legal violations.

Seeno was chosen on a 3-2 City Council vote after the last developer bailed because it said that the council’s demands for exceptionally costly labor agreements made the project financially unworkable.

The city and the Seeno-led consortium are now hammering out a term sheet for the $1 billion-plus residential and commercial project that covers an area half the size of the city of Pleasant Hill and would include 13,000 housing units and millions of square feet of office and commercial space. That part of the deal is supposed to come back to the council in January.

District 1: Laura Hoffmeister

Hoffmeister, who has served on the council for 25 years, is by far the best informed of the three candidates running for the District 1 seat in the northeast section of the city. She was one of the two council members who voted against the Seeno consortium, arguing correctly that the city had a better option in the three-company field.

She has been a staunch defender of the city’s smart budgeting practices and reserve fund, noting that it would enable the city to keep running in case of another economic downturn or an emergency such as an earthquake.

Her opponents are Quinne Anderson, a customer advocate at a biotech company, and Robert Ring, a mortgage loan officer. Neither have experience serving on any city boards or commissions.

Ring last viewed a City Council meeting more than a year ago. He defends the selection of Seeno as the master developer for the weapons station and questions the size of the city’s budget reserve. Anderson seems to just be figuring out the details of the weapons station deal and the city’s finances.

District 5: Laura Nakamura

The District 5 race in the southeast part of the city features two problematic candidates.

Incumbent Tim McGallian was appointed to a vacancy in 2017 and elected to a full term in 2018. He has a strong handle on city finances, is a staunch defender of protecting the city’s strong reserves and backs the current development of a strategic plan to help the homeless.

Challenger Laura Nakamura, a cardiac sonographer and a member of the city’s Community Services Commission, was less thoughtful in her answers, waffling between whether she wanted to maintain the 30% reserve fund or spend more of it. She impatiently pressed for more-immediate spending on additional homeless services rather than wait for the recommendations of the strategic plan that she also says she supports.

But the decider for us was the weapons station developer selection. Nakamura is clear that she would not have backed the Seeno consortium. McGallian voted for the consortium, saying he looked past the troubling environmental record of the family’s businesses because there are other members of the consortium. We find that logic unconvincing given the large role the Seeno family business will play in the project.

Certain votes are so important that they can’t be overlooked. McGallian does not deserve another term. Nakamura would have a learning curve, but at least she’s right on the city’s most important development decision of a generation.