by Yucheng Tang
Incumbent Dale Bennett has retained the District 3 seat, defeating challenger Monica McDaniel by only 93 votes in the closest race in the 2024 Chico City Council election.
The majority of the City Council remains conservative, but the number of progressive councilmembers has increased from one to three. A special meeting of the City Council will be held at 6 p.m. Dec. 4 in the Council Chamber at 421 Main St. Newly-elected councilmembers will be sworn in and the mayor and vice mayor selected.
The Butte County Clerk’s office released the official results of the Nov. 5 General Election this morning, with County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Keaton Denlay certifying the election result.
Former Police Chief Michael O’Brien won the District 1 race against Mike Johnson with about a 10 percent margin. In District 5, Katie Hawley secured a clear victory over Melissa Lopez-Mora. Bryce Goldstein won the District 7 race, unseating incumbent Deepika Tandon.
The winners – O’Brien, Bennett, Hawley and Goldstein – will serve on the City Council alongside councilmembers Kasey Reynolds (District 2), Addison Winslow (District 4), and Tom van Overbeek (District 6).
The progressive slate — Winslow, Goldstein and Hawley — are all under 30 years old.
“I feel like the reason I felt empowered to run was because I saw someone else who was younger running – Addison,” Hawley said. “I’ve been very vocal about how he had some influence on my decision.”
Goldstein thinks the three of them can bring diverse perspectives to the council.
“We’ve had a lot of people from older generations serving. We have people who are retired, people who have kids, people who are middle aged,” Goldstein said. “We bring a perspective to the council, not just from our age, but also as people who are renters, people who can sympathize with half of our city’s population, who rent their homes and have to deal with things like annual price increases that are more than their wage increase.”
Goldstein told ChicoSol she was glad she and Hawley won, but also expressed frustration over McDaniel’s loss.
“To me, balance on the City Council would look like people on the left, people on the right, and moderates,” Goldstein said. “And I think Monica would have brought a really good, moderate voice to the City Council, being able to work with both sides.”
“I’m worried that with the conservatives still in the majority, my ideas for how we should make progress in our community are all going to be an uphill battle,” she added.
Opportunities for progress
Goldstein hopes to create low-barrier shelters and managed campgrounds in collaboration with organizations like Safe Space and other shelter providers, but worries that it will be difficult to win majority support.
“When it comes to things like homelessness, I’m afraid that we’re going to disagree too much and not be able to make enough progress on an issue that’s really impacting our community.”
But Goldstein also sees opportunities for collaborating with conservatives on some of the more nonpartisan issues, like “improving our streets, improving walking and biking safety, improving the way that we grow as a community, such as by creating remarkable mixed-use corridors, revitalizing downtown and Park Avenue.”
Goldstein said she wants to establish an independent redistricting commission during her term.
“I just experienced running for council in a district that is so weirdly shaped that so many people don’t even know they’re in [the district],” Goldstein said. “It impacted the voters in my community and their voice was being diluted. I want our city to have districts that keep communities together.”
Goldstein criticized past redistricting practices by both liberals and conservatives, which she believes harmed local democracy. She plans to initiate the process to form a redistricting commission “that doesn’t just benefit Republicans or Democrats” before the 2030 census.
Hawley worries that rent stabilization for mobile home parks may be difficult to achieve. But she hopes to provide more small-scale managed shelters, and to make that happen her strategy would be to propose opening such a shelter in her own district first. “Maybe offering up my own district space for that would be more of an incentive for other counselors to be okay with it,” she said.
“I wouldn’t mind being one of the first districts to say, ‘Let’s try it out on a smaller scale somewhere in our district.’ Maybe Orange Street could be considered for that. But something small, just like maybe 10 to 20 shelter beds. I think it would be an incremental small step.”
Dale Bennett was unable to comment by ChicoSol’s deadline today and Michael O’Brien could not be reached.
Yucheng Tang is a California Local News Fellow reporting for ChicoSol.