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Trina Coffman-Gomez, candidate for Watsonville City Council District 6

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

A headshot of Trina Coffman-Gomez.

Trina Coffman-Gomez. (Contributed)

Trina Coffman-Gomez

Age: 61.

Occupation: Real estate broker, mortgage broker and owner of Integrity Lending and Allegiance Realty.

Experience: Trina Coffman-Gomez served on the Watsonville City Council from 2012 to 2020. She ran unopposed in 2012 and defeated a challenger in 2016. Coffman-Gomez also ran for state assembly in 2018 and was defeated in the primary election. She has been president of the Rotary Club of Freedom and is an advisory board chair for the Watsonville Corp of the Salvation Army.

Trina Coffman-Gomez and Jimmy Dutra 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 Coffman-Gomez’s positions on local issues

Coffman-Gomez on addressing homelessness

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.

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?

“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.”

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?

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

Several residents have said more city outreach is needed in Spanish and indigenous languages, and that online outreach done online is inaccessible. What will you do to improve and expand 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.”

Coffman-Gomez on her record and running for office

Coffman-Gomez on her accomplishments

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.

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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