Three Vie For Sacramento District 5 Seat

Three are vying for Sacramento's District 5 City Council seat.

Jay Schenirer is running for a second term. He has implemented or supported neighborhood initiatives including health screenings for children, rebuilding abandoned homes, and starting community gardens. But he says more needs to be done.

"How do we build a youth infrastructure to support our young people to be successful?” he asks. “How do we really support our neighborhoods? And we've been relatively downtown centric for a while now, so how do we look back out at the neighborhoods and the business corridors in the neighborhoods and support them? And I really think we need to step up on homeless issues. That is a pre-eminent marker of who we are as a community and we need to do better."

Schenirer voted for a publicly-funded arena. Schenirer and District 5 candidate Ali Cooper have support from different labor groups.  

Cooper was –but is no longer- the union political director for SEIU Local  1000.  He has attacked Schenirer for voting to privatize Sacramento High School and for using corporate dollars to fund inner city health and welfare programs.  Cooper is against using any public funds to build an arena.

"I want our city to thrive, but I am not in favor of the $300 million subsidy to help billionaires build a basketball arena,” he writes in his campaign statement. “Thirty-five years from now our kids will still be paying for this arena. I would rather see an ongoing investment spread across our neighborhoods." 

Candidate Joseph Barry resigned from his job with the California Employment Development Department to run a write-in campaign.  He supports the arena if the positive and negative impacts are shared equally throughout the city.  He says he wants to be part of a council that improves schools and city services.

"There's all kind of things going on within the community that, I wouldn't even say can be improved or need to be improved so much that they are in a bad state, but, can be improved and need to be improved to make them even better. I care about my community," says Barry. "I've been here a long time and my main thing is just making this community a better place."

The district is split by 24th street with Broadway to the north and Florin Road to the south. It includes the Land Park, Lawrence Park, and Oak Park neighborhoods.