Andrea Cardenas
DISTRICT 4 CANDIDATE
1. How will your professional experience help you serve the city of Chula Vista?
I’m fortunate enough to have a unique blend of experience that will allow me to serve the residents of Chula Vista with a holistic perspective. I started my path to civic service as a community organizer at the age of 14, and since then I have had the honor to work for the Mayor’s office in the City of San Diego where I focused on issues relating to binational affairs and the communities of District 8. In addition, I had the opportunity to work with a local non-profit that provides critical social services to the underserved communities of South County. During my time working for this non-profit, I helped establish San Diego’s “Ventanilla de Asesoria Financiera”, a financial help desk based out of the Mexican Consulate that assists, educates, and empowers immigrants and Mexican Nationals with financial decisions and planning. I believe that this combination of diverse experience makes me the best person to lead my district in a positive and fruitful direction.
2. What is the most pressing issue in your district and how will you address it?
My district is suffering. From a rise in housing costs and homelessness, to a lack of investment and economic development. At a basic level, District 4 needs to receive more attention and resources to address our crippling infrastructure. It’s unacceptable that we have streets with no sidewalks or lighting. I will help address this by not only being a strong advocate for my community, but also by fighting to prioritize the areas of my district that are in dire need of revitalization. In addition, our district is home to the majority of all illegal dispensaries in the City of Chula Vista. We have not been able to adequately address this because our leadership has failed to have a hard hand and increase the embarrassingly low fines that these illegal shops receive. I commit to working diligently to shut down these bad operators and make it harder for them to resurface just days after closure.
3. What should the city’s overall priorities be and how will those priorities impact your district?
The city of Chula Vista needs to work on bringing more job and economic opportunities for all of our residents. Current and past leadership worked for years to bring the bayfront to our city – now it’s time to see this new opportunity unfold and seize it. We need to appeal to a more diverse spread of businesses to come to Chula Vista and help retain those who are already here. My district is inundated with liquor stores, empty warehouses, and towing yards. We deserve more. We shouldn’t have to go outside of our district, or even city to have access to basic goods.
4. In the last year, Chula Vista became certified as a Welcoming City. It was ranked the second in the New American Economy’s list of cities across the nation that are most supportive of immigrants. How can Chula Vista continue to uphold these standards and be a welcoming place for immigrants?
We need to continue our work and empower community organizations to become safe places for our immigrant community. As the child of immigrants, I’m well aware of the challenges families face when they come here for the first time. It’s not just about basic social services, but it’s also about education and accessibility. We need to engage immigrants and welcome them as a part of the fabric of our Chula Vista community.
5. How will marijuana dispensaries impact your district? Do you think maximizing the total number of allowable stores per district is a good move?
As noted previously, marijuana dispensaries are already gravely impacting my district. The City’s bottleneck in granting licenses for legal dispensaries to open has opened up the market for an incredible amount of illegal shops to operate. Cannabis is here. Nonetheless, we can choose to have good operators who are mandated to follow regulations, pay taxes, and work with the city to ensure that we are not placing vulnerable communities at risk, or we can continue allowing illegal dispensaries with no oversight to pop up every other day. However, that conversation is moot until we understand the need to invest in our City Attorney’s office to close down every illegal shop.
6. Do you think the current salary for a city council member is fair? Should it be a full-time job?
I do think that the salaries are reasonable. In order for City to be adequately represented we need to have a Council that is dedicating 100% of their time on ensuring that Chula Vista is strong, and our residents are thriving. However, I truly believe that we need to invest our resources on having more City staff that will bridge and open up the communication between the residents, and City Hall. Chula Vista is not a small town, and we need to stop acting like we are. As the second largest city in the County, we need to start operating as such.
