The three candidates vying for Columbus City Council's District 7 seat discussed their positions on cost-of-living, policing and other issues at a Thursday night forum.
Kate Curry-Da-Souza, Tiara Ross and Jesse Vogel are running to fill the seat currently held by Otto Beatty III. The district covers much of downtown Columbus and the core neighborhoods surrounding the downtown area.
The candidates faced an early question from moderators about how to improve the quality of life in Columbus.
Vogel, a housing and immigration lawyer, got to answer first. Vogel said making sure everybody in Columbus has a safe and affordable place to live is his first concern.
Vogel said he's heard from people about affordable homes being bought up by out-of-state LLCs and people being displaced because of increasing prices.
"Our city is at risk because we're losing communities. And we're losing communities because we lack a strategy to deliver affordable housing for all," Vogel said.
Ross, an assistant Columbus city attorney with the Property Action Team, said she thinks the city has gotten away from creating a real community and providing a government for the people. She said she thinks the city needs to go out and talk to real people about the problems in the city.
"It is my goal... to make sure that I am ever-present in every community. To make sure that the privileged few are not the ones we're always listening to, but we're listening to our entire community," Ross said.
Curry-Da-Souza, the former chair of the Near East Side Commission, agreed with Vogel that housing is a big part of the quality of life problem in Columbus, but said food insecurity is also an issue she wants to address.
"We have a lot of areas that are food deserts, and so that is part of my policy... to have food hubs where we have community gardens, and we have local farmers, and we have access to clean and healthy food for individuals," Curry-Da-Souza said.
Curry-Da-Souza said she also wants to assess and re-evaluate the city's vacant homes so people can start living in them again.
Police violence and how to hold police accountable was also a topic discussed by all three candidates.
Ross said she serves as the general counsel for the city's inspector general for the police and serves as a liaison to the Civilian Police Review Board. Ross said officers need to be immersed more in the community and called for more accountability.
"We do too much recruiting in rural communities that don't look like the city of Columbus," Ross said. "The officers come back and they are indoctrinated for six months at our academy, and they're given a badge and a gun and say go to the library because it's dangerous there. It isn't."
Curry-Da-Souza said she is worried about her children's and husband's safety in Columbus. She criticized some efforts by the Columbus Division of Police when it came to community policing.
"I'm not really sure where community policing picked up and left off, but it left a long time ago," Curry-Da-Souza.
Curry-Da-Souza accused some police officers of "box checking" when interacting with the community.
"We want actual change for our police officers who are coming to actually work for the city of Columbus. And if they're going to come and work in communities, they need to be respectful of the communities that they're supposed to be serving and protecting," she said.
Vogel said he'd want to be an advocate on council for those affected by violence. He said he also sees room for police reform.
"When somebody is experiencing a mental health crisis, they get the right kind of response and support and not necessarily the police," Vogel said.
The candidates were also asked individual questions by the audience members.
Curry-Da-Souza was asked whether she agreed with the city's district system, where candidates are elected to represent a geographical area of the city, but are elected citywide.
Curry-Da-Souza was critical of the system, saying it would be easier to hold council members accountable and make it easier for more people to run for council if the city adopted a system where only people in the district get to vote for their representative.
"If you're going to have accountability and you want equity in elections, then it's really hard to run an election for 900,000 people versus 100,000 people," Curry-Da-Souza said.
Vogel was asked about his campaign's $70,000 fundraising haul early on in this race and to respond to concerns that his campaign is driven by larger donors rather than grassroots support.
Vogel pushed back on that assertion, saying he got that money from more than 600 donors and his campaign reported that the donations averaged under $170 per donation in a news release last month.
"I'm so excited about the work we're able to do in Columbus to build a grassroots campaign to support a goal of building something that works better for all of us. So in terms of that concern, I think that it's not warranted," Vogel said.
Ross was asked about her residency in the district, which is being disputed by the political blog "The Rooster" at a Franklin County Board of Elections Meeting next week. Under the city charter, a candidate for city council must live in the district they are running for at least a year prior to the primary election.
Ross provided WOSU with a copy of her apartment lease in downtown Columbus last week that shows she met this criteria by a mere three days.
Ross addressed her residency again at the meeting, talking about her childhood and familial roots in Columbus.
"I am so committed to this community that I drove for 19 miles every day for almost a decade to work at the city attorney's office to serve the people of the city of Columbus. And I moved into the district so that I can be able to continue to advocate on a bigger scale for the folks that I have served for the last 37 years," Ross said.
The primary is scheduled for May 6. The top two candidates will advance to November's general election for the open city council seat.
