Hello, this is Laura Thomas with the Island City Beat. And I'm back again with our candidates, City Council candidates interviews. And today we're going to talk to Thushan Amarasiriwardena.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:You got it. You got it.
Laura Thomas:I have learned your name and I can write it without thinking, yes, can.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Wow.
Laura Thomas:Thushan, no, that's part of being a good, always good at English and being in journalism that, as you know, if you spell people's names wrong, you're put on probation. Anyhow, so Thushan, you're running for counsel and we're going to ask you lots of questions. So, but first we'll give you the opportunity to tell us a little bit about yourself, why you're running and do you have a platform?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:yes, yes. Thanks Laura. I am running for City Council. I'm running it again, ran two years ago. And that process led me to only one conclusion that this place is amazing and that my decision to run was the absolute right one to do.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And that's why I'm doing it again because I really want to serve Alamedans. I'll rewind to when I got here into Alameda. Maybe I'll even rewind even further. I was born on an island. Yeah.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:The island of Sri Lanka.
Laura Thomas:Yeah, tell us a little bit about that.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I was born on the island of Sri Lanka and my parents came here to go to grad school. And to me, that was like one of the many signals of what a great country can do is take people and integrate them and be stronger because of it. So I think the role of government was a very big thing early in my life. My parents got their PhD at it.
Laura Thomas:How old were you when you came?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Nine months old. So, hence why probably don't hear Hear your that same accent, accent or yeah. I'm as American as it gets because I grew up through everything. We moved up to Massachusetts. I grew up in a college town called Amherst, Mass.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:My parents are professors. And there I just saw the impact of what an amazing community can do. All my best friends I'm still friends with. I have like group chats with probably 15 of them on a regular basis. Like we go to friends' weddings all the time.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Having lifelong friends is such a critical part of who I am. My views on politics, religion, everything was formed a lot by my friends. And that's what I want for my kids.
Laura Thomas:Wow.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Here's the problem.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I've seen my kids already, first and third grade, lose friends because their families can't make the math work here in Alameda because of cost of housing. That's why I'm running.
Laura Thomas:Right, well thank you because that was going to be my first question. I remember you writing a piece in the Alameda Post about that and I was so pleased to read that because you know, Doyle Saylor and I were both part of Renewed Hope and he worked maybe ten years on it, but I worked about twenty years on trying to get affordable housing in Alameda. Actually the first thing that started Renewed Hope, I'm not going to go on too long but I think even for our listeners it's important, was the .com boom in 1999 when rents shot up and that was the first time people were pushed out wholesale out of Alameda. And we would go to the Council and say things like, Do you really want to lose these important people from this town? They build the fabric of this community and I don't think people really thought about it a lot then.
Laura Thomas:I mean they just didn't put that together and I think a lot has changed in twenty years. However, we still seem to have this problem so I want to so the question I'm going to pose to you is we have the housing element which requires the city to zone for affordable housing, but that's all it requires. So what should the city do to actually facilitate the building of permanently affordable housing? Right.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I'm going to rewind to actually two years ago. Doyle went with me door knocking and we came across someone who lives just maybe two blocks from here. He said a line that has stuck with me for a long time, If people leave a neighborhood, what do you have left? The hood. Right.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:When your neighbors leave and all you have left is the hood. And it is so vitally important that we ensure that Alamedans can stay in Alameda. My kids go to Love, which is again, just a couple blocks from here. If half of the students there are eligible for school lunch, that means most likely that their families are what we'd call rent burdened here. And if we didn't have our rent stabilization, imagine if their family had to move.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:That means changing schools. That means commutes change. All these ripple effects just from where they live. So I think this is why it's important for us to have those protections in place.
Laura Thomas:The rent protections.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:The rent protections.
Laura Thomas:Okay.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:But I am really focused on the notion of how do we build more.
Laura Thomas:Okay.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Again, just a couple blocks from where we are right now, Clements Street is a good example of us taking land or the community transforming land from industrial into housing. Now, a lot of those houses are definitely outside of most people's price range, but we do have this 15%. And I want to say a house is more important than zero houses in a perfect situation. And so I will never let perfect be the enemy of good. I think when we build those, we are getting affordable houses coming online because of it.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And conversely, if you went to City Council about two weeks ago, we had a thorny situation where we're trying to build a lot of significantly below market rate, supportive housing at the point. And the funding is stacked like Jenga blocks to the degree that one little slip up could mean a whole project goes away. A project that's been working on it for decades. So I will admit most of my interest has been towards just driving production period across the stack so that when those get built, get affordable housing in the mix.
Laura Thomas:But
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I would like for us to also look into notions of public private partnerships where we may fund the land, as in we have excess land, put a deed restriction on it, but then have private developers go figure out how to go build it, but now we can have those permanently deeded in that affordable zone.
Laura Thomas:Well I think you are kind of edging into the issue that I think is crucial, which is that we create the all affordable, permanently affordable housing. And I guess maybe you've heard of social housing?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I have, yeah.
Laura Thomas:Okay, so how can we take the steps towards that here in Alameda?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:That's a great question.
Laura Thomas:Because maybe we need to define for our listeners that social housing is housing built by municipalities or non government like non profits where the land is held or deeded in continuity for affordable housing. And you go without private equity, you find some other way to build it.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah. I think
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:those are things that I would love for us to explore and innovate on. I think the funding is where the issues tend to come from. That's why maybe I'm pushing a little bit on like, how do we figure out how we can bring private capital in? And we bring the land, someone brings the capital in and that here's a guaranteed profit margin
Laura Thomas:because we're going do That's kind of how it works in Vienna where social housing has been done. But the city controls the level of profit
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:that the
Laura Thomas:private developer gets and they put things out to bid. But it's still there, they control the program.
Laura Thomas:I wanted to just draw your attention in this regard to the fact that in the housing element there is a section, I have it right here, where the City has committed itself, probably the Council has forgotten this, but the City has committed itself to funding infrastructure improvements without reliance on private capital and and market rate a certain amount of land banking. I'm wondering, in other words, holding the land for people that will do all affordable, I'm wondering if you would support that.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah, yeah.
Laura Thomas:Yeah, because there's always that pressure sell land at the point. So I want to know what you think about land banking as a
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:When it comes to the commercial properties, I am for selling. I think that's the way we can get companies in quickly. But for the residential parts, I think that notion of selling but putting deed restrictions on, because ultimately homeownership is about that slice of ownership, right? And so, I think there are non, sorry, what's the best way? There are paths that are pretty well trodden elsewhere that we can go map to and that we should explore because, you know, I'm going to scale up just a little bit of when I have discussions about rent stabilization, for example, people share, like, how some people are concerned about it, but then when I say, are you a homeowner?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah, and they often say yes. You have rent stabilization. Or the homeowner, it's called a fixed rate mortgage.
Laura Thomas:Right, right.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Effectively fixed rate property taxes and I feel like that's something that we should be able to ripple to everyone. I think the notion of home ownership and the equity that you build and all those kind of things, those are really important. And so, when I look at how we transfer property, want people to own a stake because that means they're long termist on things. That deed restriction zone, I think, sort of stems the
Laura Thomas:Well, you know, another part of social housing models across the world is that when you create a rental project that you give a certain amount of control to the tenants. Yep. And so that in some ways gives them a stake. Very good. Well let's talk about rents too.
Laura Thomas:We do have a rent program and we have heard that landlords can find ingenious workarounds such as charging and upfront fees to use laundry facilities. And I'm wondering what you would do about these sort of schemes by local landlords to get around our rent control.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:That's been the first time I've heard someone doing that. Yeah, that's, in my eyes, a home is, there's some basic parts of it, not only what the habitable situations are, but if you are even providing on-site, then I don't think a charge on the front side makes much sense. Like, it's coin operated or whatever, seems reasonable. But I think every piece of legislation should never be set in stone. We should adapt and reflect on what the holes are and the unintended consequences, right?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Here's the inverse. I would love to see all of our homes and apartments switch to our green, clean energy, right? That's a weird situation where a landlord is going to have to make an investment that they themselves won't benefit from because of the electric rate will just the utility payer is the one who sort of benefits from that. Things like, you know, we have these amazing AMP rebates, but from what I understand of how it's phrased, it's really only homeowners that get to take advantage of it. And imagine if we could do those rebates for apartments so that that capital cost is defrayed for the landlord but then immediately clearly the resident gets a cheaper bill and a greener energy.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I think there's like win win situations that we should start looking into
Laura Thomas:Well I think, yeah, renters, some of the policies that the city you know, has instituted in terms of, you know, resource reduction, I mean I'm thinking of the bins, know, the recycling bins. I think Doyle and I months ago or years ago now went to a meeting where the renters complained that they didn't even know where their recycling bins were, that their landlord just threw out a couple of bins and kind of, you know, left it at that. It is a question of and these were people on the West End they were asking how in the world they might have even been at APC how in the world do these policies actually help us? So, yeah.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah, yeah. I think just to share how I would break down that is, admittedly some of these are new to me, but like, clearly if you're on City Council, think you start seeing those. I personally would want to start compiling those lists and trying to start stack ranking the hotspots of issues, and then how do we, where's our legislation now or ordinance now and where's the gap and try to address those Maybe if I could even zoom out one more level, it's like I want government to be proactive rather than reactive, and I think so much of what happens in City Council in a natural order right now tends to be reactive. How can we look at, hey, here's the year's worth of issues that renters have said, and let's go start working through those as just one whole city council meeting, right? That's another thing I would love to see is us make city council meetings issue based at times so that it's so hard to get somebody
Laura Thomas:Well, to also to have, I mean, I'll throw this out, shouldn't because I'm interviewing, but in my early days of reporting when I covered cities and counties, I remember work sessions, public work sessions, where there could be actual dialogue. None of this, you can only address the council and then the council can only answer you back. That seems very strange to me because it seems like in the past there was more dialogue, at least in smaller city council meetings. And I think we've thought that there's something missing at the council, the way the council functions these days. Anyway, I don't want to go on Let about me go mention another issue that we in Island City Beat think would be really interesting, and that is this grassroots effort that's actually happening in the East Bay with it's a how can I put it an organization that's formed a nonprofit, probably to push a public bank?
Laura Thomas:And I was wondering if you would what you think about Alameda joining that effort.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I think that's a really interesting idea. I love the notion of anything that starts building self fulfilling loops. For example, a bank that funds housing, those revenues that come from either selling or leasing gets fed right back into building more.
Laura Thomas:Yes, keeps the money local.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Keeps money local, yeah. So on that front, there's really nothing that's concerning me at a high level. I do think that there's a number of solutions that a city of our scale, I don't think it's primed for, but if we can figure out regional solutions that we can jump onto.
Laura Thomas:That's true. This could be, it's starting as sort of a regional effort and not sure really how much progress has been made. I'm interested in it, but Alameda could I mean, I know the city various City Council people and the other Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland have endorsed it and Lena Tam endorsed it. But beyond that, I know they're doing
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I think public this is something
Laura Thomas:Public information. I know they're doing, well how can I put it, presentations and Anyway, okay?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:But it's something that I hope someone like Lena Tam would drive from the
Laura Thomas:Well, accounting right. Problem, Yeah, would be good. We do need somebody, some leadership, I'm sure. Okay, also in this era of small business where, well this era when small business seems to be always struggling, not that they've never stopped struggling, but things seem even more dire for them with price instability and competition from big box stores and Amazon all that. What can the Council do to help the small businesses stay viable?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah, this is a big one for me. I live just two and a half blocks from Park Street, and it's why we chose that location. Love the dense feeling of a nice small downtown, but it pains me every time I see an empty storefront. It's one of those things that isn't just a zero into an equation, it's like a negative whenever.
Laura Thomas:Well, it's part of the thing you're talking about, about community. Going to small businesses and talk and going in and dealing with people is part of building community. Buying on Amazon doesn't replace that.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:No, no, doesn't. And I'm going to say I'm a sinner myself. I do it. What I've seen successful downtowns do is they switch from straight retail to what I call experiential retail. For example, the example I love to use is Walgreens.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Mega Corporation could not make it on Park Street. What's there instead is an urban putt putt place, right? Now that's experiential, right? You can't replace that online. You can't click to buy.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:You have to be there.
Laura Thomas:Right.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And if you look, it seems booming every time I go in there. Oh. What I think successful retail will be now, in reality of a click to buy world, is need businesses or businesses that are unrecreatable in an online world are the ones that are gonna succeed. But is that restaurants? Is that even boutique retail that is very much curated retail?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I think Books Inc. Inc. Is a good example. It's still thriving. But that's the top line direction.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:What I would love to see and what I will be doing and what I actually wrote this morning in is there's a planning board meeting about how we zone things and how can we streamline and even remove some of the barriers of what it takes to open. I had a startup. I can't tell you how much time I spent on things that I think the government would be better served on. For example, I had to set up healthcare accounts for my employees, right? But if we had universal healthcare, guess what?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:My employees would have taken, we could have hired people who were willing to take a risk on a small company because they knew, hey, some of your expenses are going to be taken care of. I think this is where government really can step in to help people. So, when it comes to businesses, I would love streamline permits. I'm going to take action on streamline permitting so that a business can, when they start, they know what they need to do. It's clear.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:They know how to do it. They know who to talk to. And it's a concise process so that they can open their doors earlier.
Laura Thomas:Yeah, know, just saw, you know, I don't like to sit on social media, but it's thrown at me, right? So I just saw a little reel about, again, our hero, right, Zoran Mamdami in New York. He's actually got a whole office of people that are going out to help. So I know that might be hard for Alameda, but maybe there's some way in which their people's hands are held a bit more by the city.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I accept that, yeah.
Laura Thomas:Instead of having to figure it all out at the front desk, you know?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah,
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I think we can make some structural changes of like, you shouldn't have to talk to four or five different departments. There's one person that will show have it like concierge programs in other cities that just, here's what you do. And I think we need to do that because we are living in the weirdest economic times. Some people are doing absolutely fantastic. Most people are not.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I don't, I can't predict. I don't feel like any of us can predict what's going to happen in the next three months.
Laura Thomas:Right.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And so what we can do here at a local level is like the, I like to say, the win behind a small business sale, which is we're to make it easy to do it. And that, I believe, will get around and attract more businesses here.
Laura Thomas:What about commercial rents? What could the city do? I mean, a lot of people just back off when you suggest that.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:One thing, particularly in downtowns that I'm very interested in exploring and pushing forward is what I call a very meaty vacancy tax. We have a lot of empty storefronts in our downtowns, or more so you see them. Not just a one off. Yeah, it is. You see them, you feel it.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And some of those have been there for almost as long as I've been here, right? And so, something is perverse about the economics that you can sit on a property for a and somehow it's still financially viable I know. For
Laura Thomas:That's a good question, isn't it?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah, they're extracting out value or taking away. It's dirty storefronts. It attracts graffiti, stuff like that. And we have to spend time hunting it down. I think a vacancy tax of like what San Francisco does, depending on your frontage, we're going to charge you and it's going to start escalating over time.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:But it'll be reasonable. You've got a year to go figure. That's a reasonable amount of time to go figure something out. And the inverse though, is all that money that we generate. I think we don't add it to the general fund.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:It is for downtown improvements. So it could be into two directions that I'm interested in is one, it's a small business startup fund,
Laura Thomas:which would be,
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:we're going to pay the first three months of your rent.
Laura Thomas:That would be great, I bet.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And so like that money isn't leaving, that money isn't probably even leaving that store owner. I mean, the landlord is coming back to them. And that way a company could, a small business could be like, yeah, I did a pop up for three months. I had to pay the rent because I have a startup fund and I know I can make it.
Laura Thomas:Yeah, that sounds like a very good idea. I'm amazed nobody's thought of it before. Maybe they have. Okay, well maybe we'll, that's great. Okay.
Laura Thomas:Again, in this economic crisis that we don't know, we don't know the side, well we just don't know. Because we don't know anything anymore, But it seems anyway, we know that some serious price jumps and food shortages and different things could happen that will definitely hurt people in Alameda. What could the city do if that starts to really bear down on us?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah. I was at a food bank event maybe two weeks ago. Thiel, the director of the Alameda Food Bank was saying that their food needs that they're supporting is like 50%. May be misquoting this number, but notably higher than even during the pandemic, which was probably one of the most acute, weird times Yeah, in
Laura Thomas:might be so. We interviewed her and she had all kinds of statistics. She
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:was very clear about that was only growing.
Laura Thomas:Yeah, you're right. But the whole idea that 12, the thing that stuck with us is that twelve percent of Alamedans rely on her.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Right. That means one out of One out of eight. Yeah, yeah, Like one of your neighbors is probably dealing with it. One of your kid's friends is probably dealing with it. Think this comes to the general notion of affordability here is broken.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Part one, I'm gonna rewind to housing. That's almost everyone's biggest expense. The more we build, the more I think the supply will maybe never drop prices, but at least stabilize or flatline. And so, housing is my biggest attack at But when it comes to food, I think I'll share. I like to believe in leaning into existing systems and just making them stronger.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:So as that becomes more acute, my personal belief would be is how do we double down on existing systems like the Alameda Food Bank rather than create anything new. Sure.
Laura Thomas:It is part of a really good system we discovered. So I mean, I was impressed with how it's booked into the County and how the County Food Bank supplies food for a number of city or not city, but smaller food bank operations all over the County. And it seems like they actually have a really good system. So I think the question in Alameda is what can we do right here in Alameda to grow more food, perhaps? I don't know, you know.
Laura Thomas:We have land that we could create little farms.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Maybe. Maybe, yeah. I will share that one stat that always surprises me when I hear it is how much a dollar given to the food bank goes through just their buying power. Than, if you're going to buy a can of soup at the grocery store and put it in a bin, actually just give that $3 or whatever to the food bank because they'll get effectively 10 times more than you would ever be able to buy those economies that of they're able to get, think is something.
Laura Thomas:As long as their sources don't get cut off in a crisis. That's what I guess we're aiming at, what kind of local food resilience we could have. Now the next juicy question. What about ICE and how do we protect ourselves if they show up for immigrants or on election day? And what should our police be doing if they do show up?
Laura Thomas:Right. Do they protect us do they just sit there and twiddle their thumbs?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:They should be protecting us. I mean, watching what was happening in Minnesota and who I don't like the notion of sides or anything.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:But,
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:yeah, who's protecting the Minnesotans in that I didn't see it from what I see from over here and I don't want that happening here if that was to happen. To note, last year we did have something that happened right here in Alameda. I went out to it when Coast Guard Island was being set up as a staging ground for Ice. I thought it was amazing to see our community, both the Alamedans but just general East Bay be very vocal and out there. And yet, and to note, I think that and other pushes effectively really changed course within that day, at least in how they were going to do it then, I do think that that visible presence was a meaningful thing.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:But that's not like a long term one. I think we have a rot at the top of the system that, to me, that's where I want to focus my efforts is like how do we get more progresses in Congress, like to be able to hold the line on these, not just be the minority party, but the one that is setting the tone, so that we can also do things in the future of restructuring our judiciary so that it's there as an actual firewall against these clear violations of the constitution, but bringing it back locally, how should Alameda police? I would want, I will be very clear with our police chief and our police departments is you are here to protect Alamedans. You're here to uphold the constitution. In my eyes that means ensuring no violence happens to an Alameda.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And that you aren't just a wall of allowing something to happen, like occur, but you're protecting this. Is like, you must be a presence that we're not allowing that here. Okay, yeah.
Laura Thomas:One way or the other, they've got to step up. Yeah, Yeah. Okay, good.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I would love to know if you've seen any cities actually where the police department has been the way that we're sort of circling around.
Laura Thomas:I don't know. I don't know. And I think that's the real question in people's minds is what side are our local police departments on? I mean in the big cities they seem to have backed off or helped the ICE. In Los Angeles say the sheriffs have, you know.
Laura Thomas:And I remember in the first song with way last summer, it really seemed to me that the mayor of LA was very hesitant to confront ICE. I mean, she came out and said things, but I didn't let the police. I don't know. It's all, well, we won't cooperate. Okay, well, you know, when someone I'm looking for more.
Laura Thomas:But when somebody's actually harming people that you've sworn to protect and serve, then why are you standing there? To me, it's very clear.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yes.
Laura Thomas:All right.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yes. I think this is why hiring matters so much in that hiring a department that represents, like on every front represents the community that they serve. This is why to me it's so important that we, that everyone who works for the city is paid at a level that they could live and work in the city that they're in. Because I think the minute you are
Laura Thomas:Yeah.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:If it's your genuine neighbor, that you're going to have to consider ramifications a bit differently than, Hey, I'm driving in from the Valley it's a Right, it's just a shift.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:It's a shift. And then I go back to my town.
Laura Thomas:Well, that I think has changed over the years where police maybe used to live more in the city that they worked in. Although it seems a lot of times this is a leadership issue more than an individual officer issue. Although I take your point. So it feeds into our next, I think this was my next question that again with police, crime is always a big topic in Alameda. To what degree do you believe that Alamedans are threatened by crime?
Laura Thomas:And is more policing the only answer?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:The crime stats that I've seen, that I don't feel like rattle it off right now, been on that downward trend and particularly on the violent side. There are definitely instances that are not okay that have gone maybe the direction that someone's been hurt. A couple of incidents near South Shore, for example. But I'm a believer of looking at root cause rather than just the acute situation. I want to be in a situation policing isn't the last line.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:We've fixed things upstream.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Again, that goes back to housing.
Laura Thomas:Is it the first line is probably what
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:you mean? Yeah, yeah. Okay. We fix so many things upstream. Think, for example, the care team is a good example of how do we shift stuff out of policing's mandate into the place where people are just better trained and maybe just by wearing a different badge, automatically are in a different situation, right?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:When you see a firefighter come or an EMT come, just a different situation. Think those are the solutions that I wanna I think those are the solutions that I wanna lean into.
Laura Thomas:So you like the idea of the care team.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I like the idea of our police actually walking beats towards more community policing.
Laura Thomas:Well, say that's what they're supposed to, they say they do community policing, but a lot of people that we've talked to say they don't seem to actually be doing community policing. What is, you know, So you're talking about a certain vision of
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah, a certain vision of the there is one form of policing that I think people hold in their heads of like, I remember when the police would come in and do DARE in school and it was like this significantly more relatable connection. That's what, as someone who's like talked to some of these officers, like that's what they want too, is they want to be able to make those connections.
Laura Thomas:Yeah. One would think that would be better. Yeah.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And so how do we double down on that kind of thinking is what I'm interested in exploring will be pushing for.
Laura Thomas:Okay. Okay, so let's talk about what we're interested in there's a lot to talk about in terms of climate resilience, but there's one issue that we are into in our Island City Beat group, that is energy independence. And so I would like to know whether you support a resolution that would outline the benefits of AMP building a large scale solar farm on the runways at Alameda Point.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:This is the first time I've heard someone push that. I don't know what the restrictions around that would be, but am I, I'm absolutely for us investing in Again,
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:investing in large scale work
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:think this is a situation where lean into existing systems, lean into scale. I know we had talked about putting one on Mount Trashmore, I think it's colloquially called, down in Bay Farm, but there were some issues with how the soil was. But yeah, this notion of us generating locally is great.
Laura Thomas:Yeah.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:As long, I think with some notable caveat, was like, as long as the cost isn't wildly more than like, if we could get two, three X more by doing it somewhere else, I think that's a reasonable thing to talk about, right?
Laura Thomas:Right, right. Well, what we understand from one of our members who was on the AMP board, that AMP is very reluctant to create or work on solar at all. And even doing like a more, can I put it, decentralized solar network around the city, like on people's rooftops? So we ask ourselves why AMP won't do it. Is AMP too much like a mini PG and E?
Laura Thomas:Is it too independent? What would you say? Do we need the solar? Should we push for it? Should we ask AMP to be less, more part of the city?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Right. I think there's a lot to like about how AMP works today, FYI. It's just like how it's, what, 40% less than PG and E. Service quality is platinum is what they call it and it throws off a couple million dollars to the city too. I do like the notion of how our rebate programs allow people to go do some of that energy independence themselves, putting it their roofs.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:But again, I think these are situations typically our rebates are only focused on homeowners rather than renters.
Laura Thomas:Exactly I mean, right there you're saying half the city doesn't get to Exactly, take
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:no. I would like to open that up. So Doyle, who's here, he's been quiet, but him and I effectively are, he's next door neighbors via the backyard. He's got a big beautiful roof up there. There's really no reason why that shouldn't be covered and how the residents in there couldn't capture some of the benefits or minimally it's just adding to our amazing grid.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I'm for that. I would love to figure out the economics of it, but like that just seems pretty damn reasonable.
Laura Thomas:Right. Right. Exactly. Okay. So, you know, I don't know if you've I guess you do know about the housing authority throwing up a And roadblock so we also have wondered over the years whether the housing authority should be independent of the city.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yep.
Laura Thomas:Do you have any thoughts about that?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I wrote in a week or two weeks ago about that issue. In one of the notes I said, one, I'm for it. I think the city did the right move by effectively putting some stop gap financing.
Laura Thomas:Well, say, yeah, they stepped in to save Because that APC project
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:not only does that, if that didn't work out, that's ten years of work that would have just
Laura Thomas:It is. It's been around. Fifteen years of work.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Fifteen, sorry. Yeah.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:But whatever. And you've just seen the price of construction just go up astronomically that it's very important that we do these things quickly so that we can capture cheaper rates and everything. But I was for it. And I think, you know, the particulars of the legal requirements around these vouchers are thorny. I've heard it from both sides.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I have a good friend who's on the Housing Authority Board, also just watching how the city is trying to ensure this thing happens. I think this is yet another case of how government has made itself so difficult in our way, and I would love for us to use this as a situation where we go talk to our congress people. We've got to make these vouchers way more streamlined so that we can, how can regulation stop a good thing from happening? Something's broken there. We should go use this as a
Laura Thomas:That's moment of true, but how do you think the housing authority should be totally independent
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:of Do I think, the yeah. Don't have an answer to that right now. I do have an answer. There's clearly a breakdown in communication between the two groups.
Laura Thomas:All right, they're not working together
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And we
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:should, again, be proactive. We fixed this reactive situation. But now let's take some time, let's do some investigation and how did these communications break down? How do we structurally change it so we're not back here in six months even when, you know, the stopgap funding is effectively just so that we can get the other funding.
Laura Thomas:Right. The housing authority works independently of the city and yet 150, no, 1,500 units
Laura Thomas:are under their control.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Right.
Laura Thomas:And they don't have rent control. No. No. They have whatever federal rules they manipulate. So this is the other thing to understand, yeah.
Laura Thomas:They don't get the same protection as the people in under the units governed by the city's rent control ordinance.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:That's news to me. Okay. Yeah, thank you for informing me on that.
Laura Thomas:I mean, guess because we've been in the housing arena and Doyle has been active with the renters over the years and we're talking a long period. We found that sometimes the housing authority is not, you know, doesn't work in the best interest of some of the renters. So, these evicted people on various grounds and I'm sure they have real legitimate grounds sometimes but other times not and there's no way that it's under the city's control whatsoever. Would you say this is my characterization is accurate, Doyle? I'm bringing you in for a moment.
O K Boomer:Lots of anecdotes.
Laura Thomas:Right.
O K Boomer:But this is for another time for us to discuss.
Laura Thomas:We thought we'd throw it in as a question because we were also looking at what does AMP do. AMP doesn't want to do solar and we just get to lie down and take it. These are questions that for us as activistspodcasters, we discuss. I think there's
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:some concrete things that I wouldn't change about both of those that I sort of stumbled upon It's like even how they do their meetings, their documents, all these kinds of things are not in the same system as our cities. Right. Which just makes it hard from a transparency Right. It's not like it's not there. It's just like you have to go stumble through.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I would want us to just standardize we do those for so both of those that we can look at what's coming up and poke at these things. So that's definitely one piece of standardization. But again, I would like us to have, as a net, a statement, less systems that we can focus on making better rather than a million seeds that we have to water independently. And so streamlining not only how the government works outside, but streamlining inside is something I'm interested in doing.
Laura Thomas:Okay. Well that's a big discussion about where that would lead with these two agencies. But good, good. Okay. Do you have a position on the proposed coal export terminal in Oakland?
Laura Thomas:Alameda should get involved in that.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Right.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I admittedly don't, no. I've paid attention to it. I think one thing that strikes me is pausing it here will mean that it probably just moved somewhere else. And so how, yeah, we have more, I think, stronger advocates for environmental policies and things like that. So how could we use our ability to at least make sure it's done right?
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:But like what's the equivalent? It goes to Long Beach where maybe there's not as strong advocacy. That to me doesn't sound like maybe that's how I'm going to phrase it. It's like, will the problem go away if we push it here? I don't know. Yeah.
Laura Thomas:Right. Okay.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And so our real goal is to make sure we switch off the goal, which
Laura Thomas:Right, I am probably right,
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And that in the interim, that it's done in a safe, clean way. That doesn't impact the community as it rolls through.
Laura Thomas:Okay. We've heard about this leasing of Building 24. Would you lease it to a data center and would you sign a non disclosure agreement with that company who would get the lease
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:So like my short answer is a data center isn't hitting those notes. But a company building electric boats absolutely is. A company that's trying to build turbines that salmon can go through, totally is. But I do think when I see what's working at the point, I really like to point to that one block of Almanac storehouse spots. And those are vibrant, filled with big businesses across the range.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:And we had one strategy across all is that we've sold the property to a developer that can like really up level the properties in ways that we clearly aren't with ours. So that would be my strategy. Sell, but sell to companies that are going to bring lots of jobs. Jobs Okay, across the economic
Laura Thomas:all right. Well, there's lots of land out there. There's room for housing and saving land and there's room for the commercial space that works. We could talk about it all another time. All right, well we're going to wind down a because this is a long interview.
Laura Thomas:So we're going to wrap up with a fun question which I know you love. Tell me the things you enjoy doing here in Alameda on your free time.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Yeah. I love walking and biking this place. No surprise if you know me, my pandemic project was with my daughters to walk every street of every block of the island. And we did that. It took us about four years of concerted effort.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:This weekend I just saw something that I thought was like exactly the combination of everything that I hope our community can be, which is Porch Fest.
Laura Thomas:Oh, that's right.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I missed it. Oh, it was beautiful. What you saw was like
Laura Thomas:It started during the pandemic. Yeah, saw those. Yeah, those are great.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I mean, there must have been three four hundred people around the Franklin Park area at different venues, which were porches and enjoying music by Alamedans. And what was so beautiful was like, here was a community enjoying each other. They were walking, they were biking, like nary a car around. We are flat. We should be able to do, we should be a town where that's a norm.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:That's the kind of place that I'm trying to make.
Laura Thomas:Yeah, where there's, yeah, there's activity and people can walk. And yeah, it always seems to me when I drive in Alameda, I'm really just taking my car out for a needless drive when I really could walk or most of the time. Yeah, we have a lot of ideas in Island City Beat about creating an Alameda culture and sounds like you're right there with us. Yeah. For which we're very happy and I think this has been a great interview.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Thank you.
Laura Thomas:Thank You. Thushan, I appreciate it.
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:I appreciate it too.
Laura Thomas:And we'll sign off now until we go to our next council candidate interview in a week or two or hopefully we'll get them all done before the election. Sayonara!
Thushan Amarasiriwardana:Thank you.
Laura Thomas:Bye bye.