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Jimmy Dutra, candidate for Watsonville City Council District 6

Jimmy Dutra is the incumbent District 6 Watsonville City Council member and is running for reelection in the Nov. 5 election. Voters in District 6 will choose between Dutra and challenger Trina Coffman-Gomez.

A headshot of Jimmy Dutra.

Jimmy Dutra. (Contributed)

Jimmy Dutra

Age: 49.

Occupation: Watsonville City Council member.

Experience: Dutra was elected to Watsonville City Council in 2020. He ran for Santa Cruz County supervisor in 2022 and lost to Felipe Hernandez. Dutra has worked in education and in business. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Santa Clara University and a master’s degree from the University of Southern California.

Jimmy Dutra and Trina Coffman-Gomez quick comparison

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.

Read about Jimmy Dutra’s positions on local issues

Dutra on sexual assault allegations

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.” 

Dutra on addressing homelessness

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

“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.”

Several Watsonville residents said the poor condition of roads in Watsonville and surrounding areas is a top concern. How will you increase funding for road improvements? What will you do to push county supervisors and the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to fix crumbling roads in the Watsonville area? 

“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.”

We’ve heard from young people and parents that they want more activities in Watsonville. What will you do to bring more activities and entertainment to Watsonville? What kinds of businesses would you recruit in your first two years?

“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.

Several Watsonville residents told us affordable housing is their top concern. 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 cost of rent.

“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 bring more high-paying jobs to Watsonville? 

“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.”

Several residents have said more city outreach is needed in Spanish and indigenous languages, and that outreach done online is inaccessible. What will you do to improve and expand multilingual communication and in-person engagement with residents?

“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.”

Jimmy Dutra on his record and running for reelection

Dutra on his accomplishments

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 councilmember 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.”

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.”

Santa Cruz Local guides to Watsonville area elections

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