Two face off for North Monterey County seat

MONTEREY COUNTY—Two candidates are vying for the District 2 seat on the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, an area that encompasses North Monterey County and parts of North Salinas, including the communities of Aromas, Castroville, Pajaro, Moss Landing, Prunedale, Royal Oaks, Las Lomas and Bolsa Knolls. 

John Phillips currently serves as District 2 Supervisor, but has reportedly said he will retire at the end of his term in 2022.

Both Glenn Church and Regina Gage say their prospective district is often overlooked in terms of resource allocation, with dilapidated roads and garbage piling up along roadways.

And both say that they plan to be accessible and accountable to the public, qualities they say are currently lacking in the District’s leadership.

•

Glenn Church

Church, 63, is a businessman and lifelong resident of North Monterey County, who owns and manages Church Christmas Tree Farms. He is the founder of Pacific Coast Soils, which has since closed.

He reckons he has knocked on 10,000 doors during the entirety of his campaign, from Pajaro to North Salinas in an attempt to gauge the state of the Second District, and the thoughts of the people who live there.

“I wanted to get out and talk to regular people, to listen to their concerns and see their problems,” he said. “And I’ve learned so much more, not just about the communities, but about the neighborhoods and the problems they are facing.”

Church says that Monterey County recently completed a $15 million facelift of the Leguna Seca Raceway, while the roads in District 2 go unrepaired.

Moreover, he says, there are only two animal control officers working the entire county. He also points out that many roadside culverts are unmaintained, leaving them prone to flooding during heavy rains.

All of this points to a need to take a look at how the County parses out its $1.8 billion budget, he said. 

“It really comes down to an allocation of where the money is going to go,” he said. “We need a keen eye to look at how we’re spending money.”

He pointed out that the county found $15 million to repave Leguna Seca, while rough roads such as Vega and Elkhorn were untouched.

“It really comes down to a list of priorities and what we’re trying to accomplish,” he said. 

If elected, Church plans to hold community meetings in every portion of his district.

“I want to try to be a face of county government, and try to help people address their concerns and feelings of alienation from their county government,” he said. 

Describing himself as a “reform candidate,” Church also hopes to look at the county’s ordinances such as the permitting rules that, among other things, require property owners to obtain permission to cut a fallen tree on their land. 

“To require a permit for that ties up county resources and hinders people from doing basic fire prevention maintenance,” he said.

He also plans to focus on affordable housing, fire safety, lack of social services, noise pollution, dumping, animal control, public safety and water. 

Church is president of the Fire Safe Council for Monterey County. He is also a board member of the Dan and Lillian King Foundation, the Monterey-based nonprofit with a mission of educating school children about the Constitution, and has sent thousands of eighth-graders to see the musical “Hamilton.”

He is married to journalist Kathryn McKenzie and between them, they have four adult sons. 

•

Regina Gage

Gage, 57, currently serves as executive director of Meals on Wheels of the Salinas Valley. She has also served as a legal advocate for domestic violence victims, and as chief financial officer for St. Andrews Residential Programs for Youth, a nonprofit that helps young people who have been removed from their homes.

She currently serves as Vice President of Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System Board of Directors.

“I have a lot of experience in leadership positions,” she said. “I know how to balance budgets, I know how to find money. I know how to bring resources and people together to create resources for people who need them.”

She believes District 2 has been “ignored” for many years, as evidenced by garbage left on the streets, dead animals left on the side of the road and unmaintained motorways.

She says the outgoing Supervisor has been “MIA” for the past two terms, and that he does not hold community meetings.

“I don’t think he is as engaged as he should be,” she said. 

If elected, Gage hopes to tackle the homelessness problem, but says that the current solutions—both regional and statewide—are not sufficiently addressing the issue.

“I don’t think that California is doing a very good job, considering we are going to be spending $12 billion on the homelessness crisis,” she said.

Stressing that she is not concerned with those who have simply fallen on hard times, Gage says her focus would be out-of-the-box thinking in addressing chronic homelessness, and those with drug addiction and mental health problems.

This includes an approach of more “intervention and enforcement.”

“I’m talking about the open-air drug markets and the people who just don’t seem to want to get help,” she said. “I think we need to start making some very difficult decisions. I don’t think that people can continually keep living on the street and breaking our laws when they have opportunities to get help for their drug addictions.”

She would also look for a different approach in dealing with homeless people with serious mental health issues. 

“We need to take care of those people so they don’t hurt themselves, and they don’t hurt other people,” she said. “But what we’re doing currently is not working.”

Gage would also look at the affordable housing issues that affect Monterey County, which she said would require buy-in from many entities.

“It’s going to take more than the county to resolve it,” she said. “It’s going to take people going into public-private partnerships, getting grants and obviously doing something to address this crisis, which has been decades in the making.”