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Watsonville City Council

Watsonville City Council Districts 1, 2 and 6 are up for election. District 6 is the only contested race. View an interactive map of Watsonville City Council districts or look up which districts you live in by your address.

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District 6 Watsonville City Council candidates

In District 6, incumbent Watsonville City Councilmember Jimmy Dutra faces off against Trina Coffman-Gomez.

A headshot of Trina Coffman-Gomez.

Trina Coffman-Gomez

Age: 61.

  • Coffman-Gomez served on the Watsonville City Council from 2012 to 2020.
  • She is a real estate broker, mortgage broker and owner of Integrity Lending and Allegiance Realty.
A headshot of Jimmy Dutra.

Jimmy Dutra (incumbent)

Age: 49.

  • Dutra has been on the Watsonville City Council since 2020
  • In a civil court in September, Dutra was found liable for $1.1 million in damages stemming from the sexual assault of a 12-year-old boy in 2005.

District 6 candidates quick comparison (full answers below)

Issue Trina Coffman-Gomez Jimmy Dutra
How should the city council address homelessness? Be an advocate for more funding. Continue to offer shelter and focus on mental health resources.
How can the city council get more city streets fixed? Leverage current funding and prioritize areas that are most in need. Continue discussions about whether each city council member should be able to prioritize streets within their district.
Do you support Measure V, remove a requirement that Watsonville commissioners are registered voters? No. Yes.
How should the city council facilitate the growth of affordable housing in Watsonville? Focus on opportunities for home ownership rather than below-market-rate rental projects. Find a way to prioritize current residents in new projects. “The rest of the county needs to pick up the slack as well.”
Would you support a law that allows rent control in Watsonville? “City law that supersedes the state would be a very difficult ballot initiative to support.” “I would have to do further work on how that would work. But I definitely think there needs to be some sort of ceiling.”
Do you support electric rail in Watsonville? Yes. Yes.
Do you support Measure Q, Santa Cruz County Water and Wildfire Protection Initiative? Undecided. Undecided.
How should the city council address high rents? Facilitate homeownership and work with developers to plan and construct new homes for sale. Continue to work with city staff to find a strategy.

How should the city council address homelessness?

Trina Coffman-Gomez: Be an advocate for more funding.
Jimmy Dutra: Continue to offer shelter and focus on mental health resources.

How can the city council get more city streets fixed?

Coffman-Gomez: Leverage current funding and prioritize areas that are most in need.
Dutra: Continue discussions about whether each city council member should be able to prioritize streets within their district.

Do you support Measure V, remove a requirement that Watsonville commissioners are registered voters?

Coffman-Gomez: No.
Dutra: Yes.

Would you support a law that allows rent control in Watsonville?

Coffman-Gomez: “City law that supersedes the state would be a very difficult ballot initiative to support.”
Dutra: “I would have to do further work on how that would work. But I definitely think there needs to be some sort of ceiling.”

Do you support electric rail in Watsonville?

Coffman-Gomez: Yes.
Dutra: Yes.

Measure Q, Santa Cruz County Water and Wildfire Protection Initiative

Coffman-Gomez: Undecided.
Dutra: Undecided.

How should the city council address high rents?

Coffman-Gomez: Facilitate homeownership and work with developers to plan and construct new homes for sale.
Dutra: Continue to work with city staff to find a strategy.

How should the city council facilitate the growth of affordable housing in Watsonville?

Coffman-Gomez: Focus on opportunities for home ownership rather than below-market-rate rental projects.
Dutra: Find a way to prioritize current residents in new projects. “The rest of the county needs to pick up the slack as well.”

District 6 is in yellow. View a larger map of Watsonville City Council districts. (City of Watsonville)

District 6 candidates on the issues

Santa Cruz Local interviewed and surveyed residents in Watsonville this summer about their priorities for city council candidates. The following questions are based on what we heard from voters.

What are you going to do about the 60% rise in homelessness in Watsonville in the past 12 months?

“Be an advocate. Because right now there’s zero advocacy when it comes to the city” trying to find money to address homelessness, Coffman-Gomez said. “We need more funding down here. There’s a desperate need of that.”

“It is a crisis in our community,” Coffman-Gomez said of homelessness. “I understand the complications and we have to do something about it.”

She said that a project to build 34 micro homes on leased property at Westview Presbyterian Church in Watsonville “will not be rectifying the issue that we have with many of the people that are experiencing homelessness in this community.” The project is funded by Monterey County and the state.

“The [Martin v.] Boise decision really prevented us from actually being able to address some of the issues that we were dealing with, people kind of living in our levees in our sloughs, throughout our community. So now that that has been changed, it’s making it easier to move people along and try to get them into shelters. We give them the resources that they need, we don’t force people because we can’t do that but we’re trying to guide them where they need to go,” Dutra said. “People like saying housing is the issue. To me, housing is not the issue. It’s definitely a component but it’s not the issue. The issue that we see and that we’re dealing with out on the streets is the addiction and the mental health issues that these people are experiencing.”

Dutra said family members of people struggling with mental health and homelessness have said to him, “‘My child or my relative is unable to make these decisions for themselves, and it’s destroying me, watching them deteriorate on the streets and dying.’ That’s just the reality. They are not getting the help. They’re living on the streets and they’re eventually dying. So we have to make sure that we get those resources for mental health and addiction to these people. And right now, that’s not happening,” Dutra said. “It’s happening in a small, small level, but it’s not happening at the level we need it to be happening at.”

How will you increase funding for road improvements? How will you push county supervisors and the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to fix roads around Watsonville?

“What we need to be able to do is to leverage some of the money that we’ve got — that we’ve taxed ourselves in using — to prioritize where the areas are in most need and to make sure that the community is invested in the conversations of where they see that the funding needs to be prioritized. I do have a meeting set up with the [Watsonville] public works director as well, so we can find out a little bit more about that and having an open channel of communication for those priorities that we need to set — as well as a safety component for the stop signs that we need,” Coffman-Gomez said.

“We’ve got people asking, ‘Why don’t we have a stop sign? It took me eight years to get a stop sign.’ And that’s not acceptable. When a community comes together and needs something for those resources, we need to be able to be a lot quicker in our response time. Same thing is the streetlight on the [Watsonville Municipal] Airport. I was advocating for that for many years. It was a $1 million project. Unfortunately, it came too late for a few people that have been in some serious accidents in that location. But we finally got it, and it’s been a tremendous relief for our community, for the public’s safety.”

“The roads are getting worked on in the city of Watsonville. I’ll tell you that. We just redid Freedom Boulevard from Alta Vista [Avenue] to Green Valley Road,” Dutra said. “We’ve done several other roads, especially in my district. We did Arthur Road. We’ve gone through, we’ve been re-striping all the roads. We’ve been adding crosswalks, flashing crosswalks. So we have been putting in a lot of investment into our roads — yes. We need to do more. But they’ve been neglected for so many years, it’s like, you only can do so much a year. And I think we do 1-2 miles a year of road. So, we’re on it in the city of Watsonville. When it comes to the county, I get it. I don’t know what they do with their money to be honest with you.”

South County roads in unincorporated areas are neglected, Dutra said. “But we do have a plan in Watsonville, and I’ve been working on it and hopefully I’m re-elected so I can continue working on it. As a council, the current council, we would like to have designated amounts of road to be reconstructed or resurfaced in our own personal districts. So this is a conversation that we started already, and I want to continue.”

What will you do to bring more activities and entertainment to Watsonville? What kinds of businesses would you recruit in your first two years?

Coffman-Gomez said it has been “a little bit difficult” to draw businesses that provide activities and family entertainment. “If we don’t have the ability to pay for the services — with the limited resources and income that we have here — it makes it very, very difficult for business development, for larger firms to come in,” Coffman-Gomez said.

“We have very, very limited resources for our business development in this community. So we do need to think outside of the box,” Coffman-Gomez said. “We do need to open up our schools to allow those to be our open access area for the parks. I know that that’s in the works for some areas. It doesn’t really address indoor recreation use.”

Coffman-Gomez is the Loma Prieta district chair of Boy Scouts of America. She also serves as president of Pajaro Valley Arts’ board of directors. “I am a youth advocate when it comes to the scouting organization, being a district chair. We have a business model that’s really advocating for the youth that are here that would not have otherwise had an opportunity to engage in the scouting.”

“We’re investing millions of dollars into Ramsay Park. We’ve actually just demolished it. And we’re going to be putting in brand new soccer fields and a baseball field and a dog park and an all-inclusive playground and a nature center. It’s going to be just wonderful for the entire community. We want to get people out there moving and active,” Dutra said. “We’re a community that’s faced with diabetes and weight issues. And this is something that we need to address. So investing our money to keep our families and our kids healthy is something that’s really important to me.”

“We’re going to put in a stage so that people when they experience our summer programs like our Music in the Park or our Movie in the Park or all of these great events that we do downtown for our families and people, they’ll have a stage,” he said.

“We want to have an economic development focus and bring somebody on board who will be going and doing outreach and trying to bring in the businesses that we want,” Dutra said. “When it comes to private businesses, these businesses have to want to come into the community. And yes, we do try to bring them in and offer incentives for them to be here, but at the end of the day, it’s their decision,” Dutra said.

Where in your district would you support denser housing? What policies do you plan to propose in your first two years to address the city’s rising rents?

Coffman-Gomez said more new housing projects should be for sale rather than for rent. “We have a tremendous number of people in need and qualified borrowers within families that are here that want to buy, but there’s nothing that they have the tangibility or feasibility in terms of purchasing. So we need to work on that business model,” she said. “I’m a broker where I do mortgage originations. I work really well with the city, with their program, and then I also do real estate. The business model is broken. What we have is the inability of homeownership.”

“There’s no opportunity for anybody to gain wealth in any way. If we’re going to continue to perpetuate rental situations that are here, we need to support a different business model that allows the subdivisions and these housing developments to sell,” she said. 

She said city council members should discuss potential housing projects with developers before they are up for approval in a city council meeting. “The state business model for the nonprofits to come in is really set up primarily for the rental opportunity for affordable housing. And when I was a council member before, I expressed that concern I had with the nonprofits that were coming in here and building the high density, low-income units. There is a place and a time for that, but there’s also a place at a time that we need to have the ability to have a conversation with them of a different business model for this community,” she said.

“We need to do more with public private partnerships. We need to do more that allow the ability to sell, because those that are making profit are the ones that are receiving the $4,000 a month rent with their large complex. And that money needs to be flipped so that we have the ability for more opportunity for homeownership.”

“We build a lot in Watsonville. Out of any city or jurisdiction in the entire county, Watsonville is the one building the housing.”

(Editor’s note: This is false. Housing construction in Santa Cruz was more than triple that in Watsonville from 2014 to 2023, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development.)

“People don’t understand when this funding comes in to build these housing, let’s say, like the Section 8 Housing Authority gives funding for a project, they’re going to get a certain number of people that they get to put into that housing. So it doesn’t go to Watsonville people, it’ll go off their list,” Dutra said. “So I’ve been fighting like if we build affordable housing in Watsonville, they need to go to Watsonville residents.”

“There’s a lot of affordable housing in my district,” Dutra said. “My district has received the lion’s share of affordable housing so I’m supportive of distributing that affordable housing in different areas of our community. But to be honest with you, the rest of the county needs to pick up the slack as well. It’s not fair for Watsonville to be having to do it all.”

How will you attract more high-paying jobs to Watsonville?

“We have been a bedroom community, and this is something that I have said on a platform many years ago, decades ago,” Coffman-Gomez said. “We’re building a lot of housing, but where are the jobs for them?” she asked.

“There’s discussions of career growth and opportunity and keeping space that we know we need to create job opportunities for people that are in our community now,” she said. “You have to balance what you’ve got for the housing you’re putting in with the kinds of jobs that are created.”

“We’re working with our economic developer, hopefully soon, and continue to bring in businesses that offer opportunities across the board whether you have a college education or you just have a high school education but you have training. We want to make sure that there’s going to be opportunity for you,” Dutra said.

“Covid really changed things. People, businesses moved. We lost a lot of major corporations in Watsonville. So West Marine, Fox Shox, Whole Foods had their corporate office here for produce, they left. So we’ve seen a loss of some major, major businesses out of Watsonville. So now it’s time to start attracting and I’m on board for that.”

How will you improve multilingual communication and in-person engagement with residents?

“We need to have more multicultural, multilingual languages and the accessibility for that in our community,” Coffman-Gomez said. She said interpretation and bilingual resources should be available, including to Watsonville residents from Oaxaca, Mexico who speak languages other than Spanish. 

“That would definitely be something that I will be having the conversation about with our staff and resources. We have lots of priorities here, and whenever there’s an opportunity for it to be brought up in the right context, with the right staffing, that I will be bringing that up as well. I unfortunately do not have some of that language. But I know that that isn’t an inability for me to communicate, and I always make sure I do have the resources available for those that I’m trying to reach out to in our community,” Coffman-Gomez said. “Whatever I am doing for my materials will be bilingual. When we’re going door to door and advocating and communicating with the constituents in the district that are here, so that they know that their voice is heard, whether it’s a primary language of English, Spanish, or when it comes to some of the other multilingual languages.”

“I feel like we do mostly everything bilingual. Maybe in the indigenous language, you know, I could see we probably don’t do it,” Dutra said. “We have a lot of cultures here in Watsonville and in the Pajaro Valley. There’s Filipinos, there’s Portuguese, there’s Italian, there’s Irish. And then, of course, there’s Latinos, there’s Mexicans, there’s the indigenous people from Mexico. And so I feel like we’re doing a pretty good job at that. When I send out, when I’m flyering, I have it bilingual,” Dutra said. “If somebody has a specific situation or event that they saw that was not bilingual, let me know.”

District 6 candidates on their record

What were your major accomplishments during your last city council term 2016-2020?

“Housing that we’ve been able to put together. Several hundred jobs that we were able to allow to get created by working with many of the companies and businesses.”

Coffman-Gomez said she worked on ballot measure campaigns. “Working with the school district, getting the Measure D, getting the Measure G, getting the Measure U — which is also the expansion of the city tax for ourselves to be able to provide more resources. So there were quite a few accomplishments that happened within my tenure of council.”

She added that she was a founding board member of Central Coast Community Energy. 

In 2020, you voted against a symbolic resolution to request that the County Agricultural Commission publish notices on the city website when farms are going to apply some pesticides known to harm human health. How can voters expect you to approach the issue of pesticide safety?

“I’m going back four years on something that I vaguely can remember when it comes to that because that particular component would have been something that would have been the Department of Agriculture, and it would be under their purview not under the City of Watsonville,” Coffman-Gomez said. “I don’t remember even what the motion was to clarify where my opinion is as of today on this. But if it is an agricultural issue, we do have an agriculture [commissioner] that’s here that knows that better in their purview than policyholders, than council members.”

What local issues affect you that make you want to run for this office?  

“Primarily housing is one that I have a great deal of experience and have some strong feelings for what we need to be doing in this community to affect or to impact what we have here — a big housing crisis,” Coffman-Gomez said.

Dutra was found liable for $1.1 million in damages on Sept. 17, stemming from the sexual assault of a 12-year-old boy in 2005. A civil jury found that Dutra committed sexual battery, annoying or molesting a child, and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 14. Because the trial was in civil court and not prosecuted as a criminal case, Dutra will not face jail time.

Since 2022, you’ve been fighting a lawsuit from Stephen Siefke, who has alleged that you sexually assaulted him as a preteen. Should this impact voters’ decisions?

“I did not molest him. I think that this was a political attack at the beginning. People are involved in it that are political rivals of mine and a disgruntled ex-girlfriend of my dad’s. The fact that it’s still going on is crazy to me,” Dutra said. “People should look at the work that I’m doing and not on some bogus allegations. That’s just how I see it.”

What were your major accomplishments during your last city council term?

“I’ve been a big advocate for Ramsay Park, and I’m making sure that gets done. When I first got here 10 years ago, there was only $2 million or maybe even less that they had already saved for that project and we had tens of millions still to go. So I worked hard to make sure that we got that funding,” Dutra said. “I was also behind helping get the Covid memorial, which is the Monarch Butterfly down in the Sloughs.”

“I helped raise, when I was the mayor, thousands of dollars, and I put on an event for an Evening with the Mayor and we raised money and put holiday lighting back down on the light poles down Main Street,” Dutra said.

Why did you vote against an 80-unit below-market-rate housing project near Atkinson Lane in 2021? The council approved it and it opened this year. Should voters expect you to vote against other below-market-rate projects in another council term? 

“These projects, unless they’re going to be putting Watsonville people in there, I’m going to have a hard time supporting it,” Dutra said. “I don’t think people really understand. I think they see affordable units and it sounds good but for me, I want to make sure that people in my community are getting housing. Watsonville is not going to be the affordable capital of the world so that everybody can come here just to move to get affordable housing. We need to put our people first.”

“I’m also here to fight for the middle class,” he said.

Read more about Dutra’s record from Santa Cruz Local’s Nov. 8, 2022 Election Guide:

  • Voted against a townhome complex on Airport Boulevard.
  • Called on a fellow council member to retire during council meeting.
  • Voted against a 100% affordable housing project at 1482 Freedom Blvd.

What local issues affect you that make you want to run for this office?  

“Economic development,” Dutra said. “It was back 10 years ago when I started and it still kind of is today.”

“I’ve lived in New York, I’ve lived in other parts of California like San Diego and Los Angeles and the Silicon Valley, and there was just so much opportunity for the residents and the community. And when I came back I was like ‘Woah, what happened?’ We’re still stuck back in the 1990s when I left. And so I wanted to definitely kind of help push that development along. I was a little naive at the beginning. I thought, oh, we can make this happen quick. But over the years I’ve learned that government is really slow,” Dutra said. “But from what I hear from people, I mean people are like ‘I want to spend my money locally’ — so let’s create things and spaces that we can spend our money here locally. And so I’ve been really pushing for that, that’s been one of my major issues that I’ve been focusing on.”

District 1

In District 1, incumbent Watsonville City Councilmember Eduardo Montesino is running unopposed.

Eduardo Montesino

Detailed candidate profile
A map showing the boundaries of Watsonville City Council District 1.

District 1 is in red. View a larger map of Watsonville City Council districts. (City of Watsonville)

District 2

In District 2 incumbent Watsonville Mayor Vanessa Quiroz-Carter is running unopposed.

Vanessa Quiroz-Carter

A map showing the boundaries of Watsonville City Council District 2.

District 6 is in blue. View a larger map of Watsonville City Council districts. (City of Watsonville)

What does the Watsonville City Council do?

The Watsonville City Council is a seven-member elected body that creates city laws, sets the city’s budget and oversees city functions including Watsonville police, fire and Parks and Community Services. Watsonville City Council members serve four-year terms. The mayor is appointed each December.

The council has the power to:

  • Decide where and how much housing gets built in the city.
  • Set policies to address homelessness.
  • Hire and fire the city manager.
  • Propose taxes and other ballot measures. In this election the Watsonville City Council placed two measures on the ballot, Measure V and Measure W.

Qualifications and salaries

Watsonville City Council candidates must be a registered city voter for at least 30 days and live in the district they represent. Other desirable qualifications for candidates include:

  • A willingness to work with other council members to craft policies.
  • An ability to understand complex budgets.
  • Broad interests: The council’s oversight includes the city’s water and wastewater systems, contracts with city employee unions, planning for growth, and public buildings and facilities.

In February the Watsonville City Council raised pay for council members to $1,600 per month, the maximum allowed by state law. The new pay goes into effect when a council member begins a new term. Measure W on Watsonville voters’ ballots Nov. 5, would give the mayor a 25% raise, among other changes to the city charter.

What we heard from Watsonville voters

This year, Santa Cruz Local talked to Watsonville residents in a focus group and an online survey. Their most common questions and issues were taken to the candidates.

The top themes raised by Watsonville residents were:

  • A need for affordable housing.
  • A need for more businesses that cater to young people and families.
  • Help with rent.
  • Safer streets for walkers and cyclists.
  • Better quality jobs and higher wages.

Santa Cruz Local guides to Watsonville area elections

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