Fort Bragg City Council candidates answer five vital questions

This five-part series of Q&As with Fort Bragg City Council candidates runs each weekday through Saturday. Each installment presents a key question alongside responses from the seven candidates who responded to the Mendocino Voice.

Saturday will wrap up with every candidate’s answers to all five questions.

What are the two most critical long-term challenges facing Fort Bragg?

Richard Ulveling I believe two of Fort Bragg’s most important long-term challenges are housing affordability and economic opportunity.

We need to make sure working families, young people, seniors, and people who have lived here for generations can continue to afford to live in Fort Bragg. I also believe we need to do more to support safe, stable, and affordable housing and shelter for women and children, especially families who may be experiencing difficult circumstances. No mother or child should feel that they have nowhere safe to turn.

At the same time, we need to strengthen opportunities for local businesses and create pathways for residents to find good-paying jobs without having to leave the community.

I also believe we need to protect what makes Fort Bragg special while planning responsibly for the future. Progress should not mean losing our identity. It should mean building a community where families can live, work, raise their children, and age with dignity.

Mary Ann Schmidt Creating a participatory culture of radically responsible adults that can work together to create the world they want to live in is necessary to solve our greatest challenges. I call this freedom and responsibility. 

The need for water and food unites us in connection to and dependence on Earth. These elemental needs are threatened by rising sea levels and rising prices. Recent food recalls illustrate the nation’s precarious food systems. A major earthquake turns Fort Bragg into an island. Creating food security is necessary to prepare for disaster, and to build resilience and care in our community. 

Another underlying challenge is unresolved personal and collective trauma. It causes depression, substance abuse and division that affects the entire community. Deeper reconciliation with all that has been lost here can unite us in grief including further acknowledging the history of genocide and the loss of bountiful food systems that were thousands of years old. The more recent loss of the mill and fishing industry also calls for a collective grieving process. Honoring these losses can bring us together to heal and create a regenerative future together. Crisis is always an opportunity if we face it together openly and honestly. 

Jason Godeke The availability and cost of housing is the biggest challenge most of our residents face. We struggle to find good housing, and we pay too much for what is available. It’s one of the reasons so many families, workers, and business owners have left the north coast. The kinds of employment that are generally available here do not meet the cost of housing. 

The economic diversity and resilience of our town (another major challenge) will benefit from housing development. If employees, professionals, and entrepreneurs are able to find and afford housing, it’s easier to recruit and keep staff in businesses, health care, education, and other crucial services. Housing development will also support the growth of businesses that are not linked to a tourist economy. 

The City has joined the state of California in making changes to laws and policies in order to make it easier to develop housing of all kinds. These changes have resulted in Fort Bragg recently receiving the state’s Prohousing Designation. 

Tess Albin-Smith The answer is easy, the solution is complicated.

1. Skilled jobs creation and

2. Building affordable housing to accommodate people working in those jobs.

The GP mill supported 125 good jobs with benefits. When it closed in 2002, the domino effect of having a one-company town close was devastating. The hospital, banks, contractors, garages, grocery stores lost business. The county, city and schools lost about $380,000 in tax revenue.

Since then, our City has done a great job enhancing tourism to keep the government doors open through bed and sales taxes. But tourist jobs don’t pay your rent. Without good paying jobs, people are forced to leave or take two to three tourist jobs to make ends meet. We have to fix this.

In 2019, myself and councilwoman Morsell-Haye championed the idea to install high speed internet in this city to facilitate light industry jobs coming to town. Eight years later, high-speed internet is in place. Now what?

We will invite light industry and entrepreneurs to establish themselves in Fort Bragg. But we also need affordable housing for workers in these businesses, and for people in the service industries that support the city—the teachers, the police, the medical staff, the stores and more. That’s our next challenge.

Scott Mayberry The two most critical long-term challenges facing Fort Bragg are protecting the safety and livability of our community and creating genuine economic opportunity for local residents.

First, Fort Bragg must respond more effectively to drug activity, crime, and deteriorating neighborhood conditions. We must restore basic code enforcement and address neglected streets, alleys, abandoned vehicles, weeds, and deteriorating buildings.

Second, Fort Bragg needs more year-round jobs that allow working- and middle-class residents to build stable lives here. Tourism, fishing, and logging are important, but they cannot carry the entire community. The city should make it easier for responsible businesses to open, grow, and hire locally; encourage the productive reuse of vacant storefronts; support workforce training; and pursue employers and services that meet residents’ everyday needs. We must also advocate forcefully for timely access to physicians and medical specialists.

Fort Bragg should be compassionate without allowing unacceptable conditions to become permanent, and welcoming to visitors without overlooking the needs of the people who live and work here every day.

Marcia Rafanan The first is the inadequate supply of local housing, particularly market-rate housing for our working families. As a single mother with school-aged children and fluctuating income, I have faced these struggles myself. Currently, a two-bedroom house or apartment in our area is at least $2500 a month, which is not affordable for most people I know. We need to do whatever we can to get more housing built and to ensure that existing housing is used for long-term residents rather than being converted into AirBnBs.

My other top concern is economic development and long-term growth. We need to fill our empty storefronts, attract new business and industry to provide employment for locals, and keep our tax base healthy so we can fund all of our government services and infrastructure instead of relying on grants that might not always be available. That said, we need to be careful about how we plan for growth because we want to protect what makes Fort Bragg special.

Mary Rose Kaczorowski #1 We need more housing that fits local incomes —not simply more market-rate housing. We need a range of housing options, and we should make better use of land and infrastructure as in infill development. Where can we add housing without building new roads and other infrastructure? Don’t forget the homeless. working single parents and seniors living in their cars.

Before any major development, we need to know whether our water, wastewater, roads, emergency services, and other infrastructure can support it. Who will pay for the improvements needed? Look at traffic, environmental impacts, coastal resources, and long-term maintenance costs.

#2 The Mill Site is an opportunity. It is also a responsibility. Future development must address contamination, cleanup, monitoring, and protection of public health and coastal resources. The site can provide public access to the coast, trails, and open space—priorities residents have already identified through community surveys.

Good planning means asking not only “Can we build it?” but “Does it make sense for Fort Bragg, and can we sustain it?”

Most importantly, what does the community get in return for development? Public benefits should include improved infrastructure, affordable housing, better transportation, open space—without shifting costs to existing residents and businesses.

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Levi Cooke did not respond to requests to participate.