Coffee with Candidates: Chad Vander Veen, Folsom City Council District 1

This article is part of Folsom Times’ 2026 Coffee with Candidates series, featuring one-on-one conversations with candidates in key local races. Through video interviews and accompanying digital coverage, candidates respond to a series of questions developed with input from the community, giving voters an opportunity to hear directly from those seeking office on issues important to the region.

In this segment, we sit down with Chad Vander Veen, candidate for Folsom City Council District 1. Vander Veen has called Folsom home for 23 years, living in three different neighborhoods across the city. For the first half of his career, he was a writer covering technology in government, publishing of articles about how state and local government can leverage technology to improve service while reducing costs.

For the past seven years, he has worked at Folsom-based Kiefer Consulting, helping state and local government clients implement those same cost-saving, service-improving technologies. Outside of work, Vander Veen chairs the Folsom Arts and Culture Commission, volunteers at the Winter Shelter, and has hosted Monday Night Trivia at Red Bus Brewing Company for the past four and a half years. He and his partner Alison have two sons.

Q: Folsom continues to grow, particularly south of Highway 50. While the city also faces aging infrastructure and maintenance needs in established areas, do you believe Folsom’s infrastructure is keeping pace with its growth? What would you do differently, if anything, and would you ever support slowing or delaying development until necessary infrastructure is in place?

Vander Veen: You know, infrastructure is a big issue for a lot of people and rightly so, especially for longtime residents who’ve seen the city change a lot. And, you know, I do think growth is important. It’s vital to the city, but it has to be done, I think, in a way that works for the entire city rather than just a particular group or a particular area of the city.

And what I mean by that is, you know, I represent, or hope to represent, District 1, which is an older district, and there’s not a lot of new growth there. It’s essentially built out. So in that district, I feel like a lot of people think that council sort of forgets about them, leaves them behind, and their needs aren’t being addressed as much as south of 50 and all the attention that that draws.

But I think what a lot of people are frustrated about, and what I hear when I talk to people, when I go door to door or just talk to people out and about in Folsom, the city’s infrastructure is not keeping up. And I think they’re worried that that’s starting to chip away at the essence of what Folsom is, that distinctive by nature feeling or belief that really drew a lot of people to move here and want to really become part of this community.

And I think what we can do as a city is say, you know, we don’t have to keep doing growth the same way we’ve always done it, which is, I like to say, it’s kind of like using last century’s growth principles to address 21st-century issues. And I don’t think that’s the best way to go about building a community that works for everybody.

So I think what the city can do and what I would like to do as far as infrastructure goes is say, hold on, we have some levers as city leadership. You know, we can delay this permit, or we can say, no, this X, Y and Z needs to happen before, you know, the houses get built.

The fact that there’s only one school south of 50 right now, where Folsom High, for example, has 3,200 kids in it, you know, we as a city can say, “No, no, we’re going to build these schools first before we do the houses. We’re going to build this extra road capacity. We’re going to make sure we have all the things in place first before we start building the homes.”

Because otherwise we’re playing catch-up all the time, and it just digs the city further into a hole, and you’re never able to get out of it when you keep conducting business that way. It’s not an anti-growth sentiment at all. It’s more of a, let’s do it smarter. We have the capability to do so, and I think we just need a different mindset and leadership in the city to get that done.

Q: Traffic congestion remains a major concern, particularly around East Bidwell Street and Highway 50. What do you believe the city can realistically do to improve traffic over the next four years? And where do projects such as the Empire Ranch Road interchange, Alder Creek Parkway, and improvements to existing roads rank among your priorities?

Vander Veen: I think if you were to grab anybody off the street in Folsom and ask what’s the number one problem in the city, probably a majority would say traffic. You know, it’s something people — it’s visceral. People experience it every day. It changes your thoughts on where you go in town.

For example, we live north of the river, and going all the way over to Palladio and fighting that East Bidwell traffic, you know, it changes where we decide to spend our money. So I think that is true for a lot of people.

So we really have to look at what our capabilities are. And I’m not going to say here I have all the answers. I’m not a traffic engineer, but we have traffic engineers that work for the city. And we have current modern technologies that I think we can find a way to maybe utilize to time traffic signals better.

For example, I’m sure everybody’s experienced this going up Blue Ravine by WinCo, and every single light turns red. You hit every single one. You know, is that system optimized right now to be the most conducive to traffic?

Of course, when you’re in the car and you want to go to a particular place, you’re the priority in that situation, so it has to work for everybody. But if I’m elected, I’d really like to work with the city and see where we’re at in utilizing traffic management technology. Are we utilizing the best? Is there something available that we haven’t taken advantage of? And really looking into what our options are.

Because it is a real issue that people deal with every day. And like I said, it kind of changes, like, if I need to go to the grocery store and we’re north of the river, am I going to go through the middle of Folsom, or am I going to take the easy way and go up to Granite Bay and go to the Raley’s there? And then I’m spending my money out of Folsom and in Placer County and not in town.

And I think that’s a real issue we need to deal with. And as far as the road projects you mentioned, I think those really do need to be a priority. We got to get those right. You only get one chance to do those things.

I mean, redoing those type of intersections and infrastructure projects is almost impossible. You know, people talk about, why don’t we have more roundabouts? It’s a major undertaking to redo a traditional four-way traffic intersection and put a roundabout there. They’re different sizes. It takes all kinds of reconfiguring, and it’s expensive.

So when we have the opportunity, we got to get it right, and that takes vision and thought. And it can’t just be, “OK, well, however you guys have done it before, just do it that way again.”

I think it’s really, really important for Folsom’s future that we say, “OK, let’s think about this. Let’s get community input, and let’s make sure people are heard and get their voices as part of the process,” because I think effective leadership is leadership that listens to people first and factors those voices into their decision-making and then is able to explain, “OK, here’s what we decided, here’s how we voted, and this is why.”

Q: Do you believe new development should pay for the full cost it creates for the city, including roads, parks, public safety and other services, as well as the long-term maintenance and eventual replacement of that infrastructure? Would you support adjusting development and permit fees if studies show current fees don’t fully recover those costs?

Vander Veen: Yeah, I’m actually going to answer the last part of that first. I think it’s prudent and it should be the case. I’m not saying it’s not presently, really. I know they do regular looks at what current fees are, but I don’t know if that’s good enough anymore.

I think that needs to be something that’s continuously monitored. With the way things are economically in this country, things keep getting more expensive. And I don’t know that, like, an annual check on development fees is good enough anymore. We need to constantly be looking at, is it keeping up with construction costs, materials costs, labor costs? And chances are it’s not.

So that’s a place where we actually do need to do some immediate work and look at some of the processes at City Hall. Are there ways to improve things? Are there areas we could do better? That being one example.

Who pays for development? That’s a great question. And I think what it comes down to, like most things in life, is finding the right balance.

I do think the public deserves to know what the deals the city has with developers are. You know, just making information public isn’t making things transparent necessarily. If you have to spend hours and hours going through things on the city website, for example, or a council agenda or a staff report that’s maybe 60 or 100 pages long just to find one particular piece of information, that’s not a good public service.

So I think it’s really critical that we become more transparent as city leaders so people can understand exactly what’s being paid for and what’s not, because the average person doesn’t know what the development deals look like. You know, maybe even the current council members don’t know exactly what they look like. It’s a lot of information to process and be able to articulate clearly.

But I think, going back to it, it does need to be a balance. The city has a responsibility as the city of Folsom to fund its own growth, but development, I think a lot of people feel like it’s just given a rubber stamp in Folsom.

And it just, you know, for longtime residents, when they were here where the city essentially ended at Blue Ravine and East Bidwell, and then they saw basically a straight line built out to the freeway and development all along with it without a lot of innovation or foresight, how’s that going to impact the future?

And we have tools to say, you know, “Look, you guys need to” — kind of going back to my previous answer — “look, you’re going to make a lot of money on this project as a developer. We’re going to make sure that we get what we need to serve our community as a whole. And if you’re not willing to do that, there’s another company that’s going to be willing to do that right behind you.”

It doesn’t have to just be what they say is what happens. And that does — I don’t want to get too far afield from the question — but it does kind of factor in. Well, if development groups are funding some council members’ campaigns or funding, you know, pieces against challengers, they’re going to be beholden to those people, and it’s going to make it much harder for a council member who has had funding from the BIA, for example, to say no.

And I think that’s why it’s important to have independent leadership in the city, so you can say no, so you’re not beholden to an outside special interest. So when it comes time to sign a new development deal, you can be independent and you can be fair and you can be accountable.

I think this is the most important part: be accountable to the residents of the city and of your district. But, you know, we do have these district elections, but I think it’s important — the council still represents the whole city, and they have to be the priority. It can’t be the money. It can’t be the growth. It can’t be the tax base. It has to be the existing residents. They have to be the priority. And if they’re not, then we’re doing the deal wrong.

Q: Folsom faces increasing costs for infrastructure and city services while also having to maintain a balanced budget. Would you support asking voters to consider another local sales tax or other revenue measure in the future? If not, how would you address the city’s long-term infrastructure and service needs without additional taxes?

Vander Veen: Well, this is a great question for me personally because it really gets to the heart of why I decided to run in the first place. When Measure G failed, you know, just out of my own curiosity, I started striking up conversations with people about, well, whether you voted yes or no, why do you think it failed?

And the vast majority of the answers was that they didn’t trust city leadership to do what they said they were going to do with the money that it would raise. And to me, that was really, really frustrating.

You know, I’ve been a student of government. I majored in government. I’ve written about government. In my current job, we work with state and local government all the time. And local government is the most important.

And if you don’t trust your local representatives to do what’s right by you as a resident of the city, then you’re never going to have the political capital to do anything like pass the sales tax measure.

So I started thinking about running because I don’t like the idea that people don’t trust their local government to do what’s right by them. So I think people did make their voices heard as far as it goes with a new sales tax measure.

I wouldn’t look at that right away. I wouldn’t rule it out. I think in the immediate term we look at things like some of the internal city processes, underutilized assets. Like we have the rodeo arena, for example, very rarely used. It’s a great facility. What could we do better or what more could we do there?

The pool, for example, it’s heated all year round. Is there a way to utilize that in a way that generates revenue? And obviously the pool is not going to fix the city budget, but a combination of a bunch of things where you think about things a little bit differently.

How could we better utilize this as a city and meanwhile protect those things like the zoo and the library, for example, that make Folsom what it is? Not outsourcing amenities like that, but finding ways to make them stronger.

Again, by listening to people in Folsom. What do they think? What do they want to see? How can we utilize citizen input to make those serve people that live here better and bring people from out of town in?

And then, you know, over time, maybe it’s a term or two that you have done a good job being a steward of the city and looking at innovative solutions to help make sure things at least are balanced for now. Then you build that political capital. You build that trust with people.

And then you come back to them and say, “OK, let’s try again on a sale. Maybe we’ll do a half-cent sales tax.” And if you’ve built that trust, then people are going to be much more likely to say, “OK, yeah, I think this is the kind of leadership that’s going to do what they say with those tax dollars that I value very much. And this time I’m in. I’ve bought in.”

And that sort of relationship building between city leadership and city residents is how you make that happen, in my opinion. Without that, I think it’s going to fail every time.

Q: Residents in established areas of Folsom frequently raise concerns about aging streets, parks, trails and other infrastructure. How should the city balance maintaining and improving existing neighborhoods with spending on infrastructure needed to serve newer development? What should be fixed first when there isn’t enough money to do everything?

Vander Veen: Yeah, that’s, again, if you grabbed anybody off the street in Folsom, you know, after traffic, it would probably be an issue like that. Hey, you know, we were promised this a long time ago in our local park and it hasn’t been done. What’s going on?

And the reality is there’s just not enough money to go around right now. And it ties into so many different things that we’ve touched on already. Development fees — are those promises that were made years ago when new developments were started, have they been fulfilled? And in a lot of cases, no.

And it’s tough because every year you defer that maintenance, it gets more expensive the next year. And if you’re not keeping up with your revenues, then you start seeing a situation like we have now, where we’re looking at a structural deficit for the next few years, five years maybe.

And it definitely circles back to the previous question about, you know, what do you do about that to keep those promises? Because that’s what people see after traffic when they’re out in their neighborhoods. You know, this hasn’t been fixed. We were supposed to have this amenity in this park and it hasn’t been done.

And it’s really a really hard thing to do, and you got to ask those tough questions. You know, as a leader in Folsom, you have to ask those tough questions. Have we let our people down? And I think in a lot of cases, the answer is yes.

Because if you’re moving numbers around, you’re basically doing a shell game to make sure the budget looks good on paper, but in practice it’s not really addressing those needs. Then, again, you have to find new ways to generate revenue because you’re not going to be able to get out of that hole you’ve put yourself in, which is, I think, where we find ourselves now as a city, just struggling to maintain that balanced budget and never being able to generate enough surplus to address those things.

I know people on the Parks and Rec Commission that have been fighting about this for years. Lembi Park has a bunch of needs. That’s just one example that there’s just not the money for.

So then, you know, some council members, their thought is, well, what if we start outsourcing city services because it’ll be cheaper? But then, you know, that gets into a whole other thing where you’re using city employees as basically pawns in a financial game of trying to find ways to cut costs.

I know it’s not exactly in line with the question, but I would never want to see city employees used as solutions to the budget problem. That, in my opinion, that kind of outsourcing thing should be a last resort, not a first.

So again, going back to what we were talking about earlier, trying to get creative, trying to get innovative. Where can we not cut things to save money, but improve things and provide support for amenities that will grow and become stronger so they generate more revenue that way?

Zoo, for example. What can we as a city do to invest in the zoo to make it more of a draw, bring more tourists to town who then do other things while they’re in Folsom?

I don’t like the idea of immediately going to cuts to try and solve deferred maintenance problems. I don’t. I think that’s a losing game. I think you need a different approach, a different outlook on what Folsom as a city should be and can be, and try and work to its strengths to generate the funds needed to do what has needed to be done for decades now, in a lot of cases, when it comes to parks.

So the problem is there’s no one simple answer to say, OK, you know, this is what we can do. Why are we not doing this? It’s a multilayered thing, but we also need to look at what we’re spending now.

Like the Castle Park situation is a really good one. This coming Tuesday, which would be September the 8th, there’s a council meeting where some issues with Castle Park will be addressed. It’s on the agenda.

But you look at the numbers there, and the initial cost for Castle Park was about $700,000 to rebuild it. It’s kind of ballooned out to almost more than double, to $1.41 million. What went wrong there?

Did it have to double? Could we have done things more intelligently and used some of that money that’s going to be spent on rebuilding Castle Park to fix things in other parks, for example?

So I think it’s going to take somebody willing to ask hard questions, to be accountable and say, “OK, here’s the reality of what it’s going to cost. Is this something that we need to do, or can we be more equitable and address more than one need with this pool of money?”

So I think accountability is the key word here. And I feel like residents in general are worried that this is going to keep going on. And I think they’re right to be worried about that because the accountability right now isn’t really there.

And I think that’s why there’s, I believe, a real big appetite for a change in leadership and the direction Folsom’s going right now.

Q: As Folsom’s population and developed area continue to grow, what should the city be doing to ensure police, fire and emergency medical services keep pace? Do you believe current staffing and funding are adequate? And if not, how would you pay for additional resources?

Vander Veen: Another good question. And again, I think when you take the totality of these questions, there’ll be a common theme, right? That the city has put itself in a situation where there’s not enough to go around and there’s a lack of trust in leadership that we can’t get a sales tax measure like Measure G passed.

So it finds itself between a rock and a hard place right now. And, you know, I’ve met with the Folsom Police Department. I’ve met with the fire department. Chief Solak has done a really good job of trying to, on the fire side, solve the browned-out engine issue with a restructuring of how staffing is going to proceed going forward.

I don’t know if it’s a long-term solution, but it’s a solution that I think everybody can get behind right now. You know, I’ve met with Chief Green, too, and I think there’s real concern in the public safety space about being stretched too thin.

They haven’t been able to add resources in some time, and you have the same amount of resources to work on an area that’s getting bigger and bigger. You know, at some point something’s going to get strained to the point of potentially breaking.

It’s kind of like the same thing with our water issues, right? We have one source of water, but that area keeps getting bigger. That water is finite. You know, police and fire resources are finite, and they have to serve an ever-growing area.

So again, that gets back to what can city leadership do to increase revenue to pay for these things, while also, you know, there’s a whole bunch of other issues they need to think about: pension obligations, people leaving fire, for example, for a better-paying job at Sac Metro.

Those are real concerns, and I think the police department feels it. I think the fire department feels it. I think the public feels it. Everybody’s worried about service levels going down, because that’s what will eventually happen.

You can’t do more with the same amount of resources. When it comes to people, people can only do so much.

We don’t have a substation. Everything for FPD is out of the department headquarters right next to City Hall. South of 50 is far away from there. And we talked about traffic and infrastructure and getting to those places. That can be a real challenge even for first responders.

So I think my long-term solution to that is, again, building that trust, that political capital, so you can in the future do things like pass maybe a half-cent sales tax measure, and you have the public trust that, yes, it’s going to go to these things. It’s going to go to that public safety in the way that was promised. It’s going to go to fix the issues at all the different parks. It’s going to go to, you know, traffic technologies.

The whole thing gets down to that trust issue again, which is why I first decided to run. If people don’t trust their government to do what’s right, you’re never going to get yourself out of the situation we find ourselves in.

And from parks to public safety to anything in town, it absolutely comes down to, do I believe my leaders are going to do what’s right for my community, or am I convinced that they’re just going to do what their backers, their special interest groups ask them to do? Who’s the priority?

And I think right now that’s what a lot of people feel like, that they’re not the priority. And public safety is a big one. That’s how we add more resources for them: building trust, building political capital and then being able to do things like find new sources of revenue because the city and the community are aligned in what they want.

That to me is the solution. But it takes time. It takes a willingness to, you know, change your vote, to vote for somebody new with a different perspective. There’s a lot of new people running this year. And there’s a lot of people that are on council that have been there for eight years.

And I think it kind of goes back. I think what I ask a lot of people when I go knocking on doors is, is Folsom better today than it was four or eight years ago? And if their answer is no, I mean, then that’s an opportunity for change.

And I think that’s what I’m looking at. That’s how I’m talking to folks. You know, I’m presenting myself as a change agent, for example, to do things differently, to look at the city differently, so we can accomplish those goals we all know need to be accomplished.

And in terms of public safety, I think we can’t keep doing — we’re just not going to be able to provide the same levels of service that people expect, that people move to Folsom for, with the same number of officers at Folsom Police Department, with the same number of firefighters and EMTs, when the city keeps getting bigger.

So, yeah, again, I think it comes down to having leaders you trust so you can do the things that need to be done in order to address those needs.

Q: Housing remains one of the more difficult issues facing California cities. Within the authority Folsom still has under state law, what kind of housing growth do you believe is appropriate for Folsom? Do you believe the city currently has the right balance of apartments, higher-density housing and single-family neighborhoods? And where should future housing be concentrated?

Vander Veen: Yeah, housing, I think, you know, people want to live in Folsom, and just south of 50 is a great example of that. How we do that is vital to the city’s future. California is in desperate need of more housing continually, you know.

But we also have to kind of go back to what I talked about earlier, finding balance — balance between housing needs and what makes Folsom Folsom, between building more houses and our oak trees, for example.

And I think if you look at what’s happening south of 50, it’s not bad, but it’s not a particularly inspired development. It’s kind of what you expect. And what I’ve heard a lot of frustration with is the fact that — and it’s true for me too. I couldn’t afford to live in my own house right now if I had to rebuy it.

And I think about my boys, our boys. Our oldest is 18, and he hopefully goes on and starts a successful life, and maybe one day he wants to start a family and move back to Folsom. Is he going to be able to afford to do that? And I don’t think he can right now. And I think that’s true for a lot of families.

I think that’s true for an entrepreneur who has a lot of his or her capital tied up in starting a small business, but then can’t live in the same city the business he wants to open is in, or that small business employer’s staff. They’d like to live in the same city they work in, and that’s becoming increasingly more difficult.

And I think part of the issue is the way we’re approaching affordable housing in Folsom. You know, I think affordable housing has a negative connotation for some people. They think it means bad housing.

It’s meant to be 10% of new development is affordable, and that just means affordable for city staff, city employees, for teachers, for public safety people, for maybe people that don’t make the best money in the world, but they want to be able to live in Folsom. I think it’s important that they do.

And what we’re seeing happen now is all that new master plan development south of 50, there’s been no affordable housing built. Zero. Literally zero. Because the city offers legally an in-lieu fee to developers who pay into a fund, Housing 238 Fund, at about $3 a square foot instead of building the affordable unit.

And then that money goes into that fund I mentioned and is held on to by the city, which can be good. It can help finance affordable housing projects. It can be used for what the city just recently approved, which is purchasing a bunch of land by Lakeside to hold on to land for future development.

But again, in that particular case, there’s no housing being built in the near term. There’s no real plan for what to do. And what we’re starting to see happen is affordable housing being addressed by buying up parcels of land here and there where it’s available and being dropped in in isolation.

These affordable housing projects here and there are not really well integrated into their communities. And what I would like to see in areas like south of 50 and any future development is dialing back the ease with which developers find they can just pay into the in-lieu fee rather than building those units.

Because to me, those mixed-income communities are better long-term for Folsom’s future, for the future of people that want to live in Folsom, making those available as part of a master-planned community where you can live alongside somebody at a different income level or from a different background than you.

I think that raises everybody’s boats in the long term and provides more opportunity for that small business owner who wants to move to Folsom, that young family that wants to move back to Folsom, to do so rather than building affordable housing in isolation.

And there’s a lot of ways to do it. Kind of as you mentioned, the variety of housing available. I think we got to try and educate people more about getting over the stigma of what affordable housing means, who it actually benefits, why it’s important to mix that into a master-planned development, and how over the long term that is better for the city as a whole and for our community.

Q: Folsom residents value the city’s parks, trails and open spaces, neighborhoods, and overall sense of community. While issues such as e-bikes, homelessness, code enforcement and neighborhood safety continue to generate concerns, which quality of life issues do you believe require greater attention from City Hall? And what specifically would you do about them?

Vander Veen: I’m going to start with one that’s on everybody’s mind because it’s a visceral, present thing people are seeing every day, and that’s the e-bike issue.

I actually had the opportunity to meet with Sergeant Rice at Folsom Police Department, and we talked about e-bikes, and he actually had a really good solution that I would like to implement if I’m elected. And even if I’m not, I would hope to see it implemented, and that is working with the schools directly.

A lot of people have said, well, why don’t they have license plates on them? That creates a whole bureaucratic process with the DMV and the state to implement. That’s not really within the scope of what we probably want to try and do.

But what we could do is work with, let’s just take Folsom High, for example. Students that ride e-bikes or e-scooters to school, those get registered to their student ID, to their student account, so that way we know, to a larger degree than we do now, who is riding those things, and we can make those students and their parents accountable when things go a little sideways.

Because I think that’s just really what people are asking for now is some accountability on the e-bike situation, because it’s so difficult to identify who’s using them. And, to be honest, they’re great getaway vehicles that I know the police are frustrated with.

So some more community accountability on those I think we could implement by working with the schools to associate a particular e-vehicle with students. And we could do that, you know, Sutter Middle School, Folsom Middle School, Vista.

Homelessness is obviously another one, and I want to recognize Jean Schumann and Barbara Leary and Folsom PD for recently doing, like, a town hall event over at Haraz by WinCo to talk to the community about homelessness and what’s going on.

Because I think there’s a lot of fear and a lot of unknowns among residents when it comes to homelessness. Because if you’re not working with them on a regular basis, like FPD is, or like Jean is, or like Heart of Folsom is, you don’t know, and you make assumptions and you fill in the gaps in your own mind.

I’m not going to promise I can fix homelessness. I don’t have the solution. Nobody does. If I did, I promise I would share it with everybody, and I hope if somebody ever comes up with one, they do the same.

It also doesn’t stop at Folsom city limits. It’s a regional issue. It’s a statewide issue. It’s a national issue.

And I think the best thing we can do right now is to make sure communities and residents are educated, they feel their voices are being heard, they feel listened to, and they have regular access to city leadership, to Folsom Police Department, to the nonprofits that are providing services, to what’s going on.

Because I think information helps reduce fear and helps reduce unknowns, and it builds a stronger community, and then you can work together toward solutions.

Again, I can’t fix homelessness. I wish I could. I volunteer at the winter shelter. For every 10 people that come through the gate, there’s 10 different reasons they’re homeless. So there’s no magic formula. There’s no silver bullet.

But there is the ability to educate people to see homelessness through different lenses, because there’s some people that are homeless because they had a medical emergency and went bankrupt and lost their home and their job. There’s other people that are drug addicts. There’s other people that are just criminals.

And I think you need to approach it from a bunch of different angles. And people are rightly concerned, like when they see a homeless person committing a crime, are they going to be treated differently because they’re homeless? I think the answer should be no. I mean, a crime committed by anyone should be treated the same way.

But if a person’s, you know, a student or a young person, for example, whose parents passed away and they don’t have the money to live on their own, I’ve run into a couple of people like this. They’re trying to get right. They’re trying to get by. They’re trying to go to school, trying to find a job. How can we as a community help them?

So it’s one of those things. There’s a lot of nuances, and you don’t want to just approach it with a blanket. You want to approach it tactically and targeted, to the best that you can and with limited resources, of course, to try and solve it, at least in part.

Again, there’s a lot of issues we could discuss on causes of homelessness, why it’s so widespread, why it’s seemingly getting worse. And there’s some things we can’t do as a city. There’s some things we have to work together with our regional partners on, with our state partners on, with the federal government on.

But yeah, I mean, issues like homelessness and e-bikes, those are top of mind for my district when you talk about quality of life issues.

It might sound trite compared to some of the other stuff we’ve talked about, some heavy issues we’ve talked about, but we don’t have a grocery store north of the river. And I’ve talked about maybe having to go over to Granite Bay to go to Raley’s over there to buy a tomato if I forget it when I’m making dinner for my family.

That’s half an hour there and back just to get a couple of items. And again, I might be spending money outside of Folsom instead of in Folsom.

We don’t have a dog park. I’ve talked to a lot of residents that live in, like Pinebrook, for example, the mobile estate community up by the Granite Bay border. A lot of the senior citizens there love the fact that they have a lake right across Folsom Auburn from them, but are terrified of trying to get across Folsom Auburn.

How do we make that safer? What do we do about the persistent and growing issue of red light running? I see it every day. I’m at the intersection at the new bridge on Folsom Auburn. The number of cars that run the red turn light is alarming, to say the least.

And I understand if you’re a senior citizen and you have lower mobility, and even if you’re using the crosswalk, it can still be a scary situation. But then what do you do about that? It’s a traffic enforcement issue on the red light running, and then it circles back to what we were talking about earlier with police resources being stretched too thin.

Yeah, I talked to Chief Green. They only have four or so traffic officers to cover the entire city, and that now includes south of 50. And then that gets back to the funding issue and back to the trust in city leadership so you can find ways to solve funding issues.

So it’s a great example of, like, it seems like a one-off thing for a quality of life issue in a district, and you start to see when you examine it how it connects to the city as a whole and why it’s important that we do the things we’ve talked about today in building that trust and having leadership that people can get behind so we can actually in the future address those things.

You know, I think quality of life is really, really important to Folsom residents. It’s important to everybody, you know, but Folsom positions itself as distinctive by nature, and that has multiple meanings. It’s by the beautiful nature that we have and by the people that inhabit this community.

And so I think it’s really important that we have leadership that is willing to address those quality of life issues and recognizes that they all are interconnected issues in terms of making the city, not just my district, but the entire city, a community that’s better served.

Q: What should Folsom be doing to attract employers, restaurants, retail and other businesses that strengthen the city’s economy and generate revenue? At the same time, what could City Hall do better to support existing locally owned businesses?

Vander Veen: Yeah, supporting small businesses is absolutely critical, and new business in particular. And the tricky part is, you know, I talked about this earlier, using ideas from last century to address problems of the 21st century.

Especially post-COVID, obviously corporate America has changed significantly. My job, for example, is 100% remote now. We used to have an office here in Folsom right over by Out of Bounds. And it was, you know, I went in there every day and I spent money in the areas right around there, buying lunch or whatever.

But economic reality and situations, you know, as a result of those, we got rid of that office space entirely and everybody went remote. So it’s tougher now. Point being, it’s tougher now to attract, like Intel was a big win back in the day, but to attract a big company like that now when, especially in the technology space, so much is done remotely.

I’m not saying you can’t do that and shouldn’t keep working to do that, but it’s going to be much more difficult because the reality today is different than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

So how do you attract small businesses? And again, that gets back to, I believe, making sure that we’re building the right kind of housing, that those people brave enough to try and start a small business, willing to risk so much to do that, can afford to live in the place that they’re trying to establish their business.

And that means making those affordable homes part of a community and not some project on some vacant piece of land the city bought and held on to for years. So I think that’s a big part of it, making it affordable to live here and start your business.

And I think there’s a lot of things we could do, a lot of process issues I think we could look at within the city. You know, where can we make improvements, and in this case, to make it easier for you as a small business person to try and start a business? How can the city be your ally? How can we avoid being an obstacle for you to open a small business here? What can we do to make it easier?

And I think that would be one of the first things I do if I’m elected, is to look at what the processes are for a small business owner to start up in Folsom and try and work with city staff to say, where can we make this easier? How can we provide a service as a city to encourage you to come to Folsom to open your business?

And I think there’s a lot of things process-wise we can do to make things better. And I think you also asked, how do you support existing businesses?

Again, there’s a lot of interconnectedness here. I’ve said it already, like my wife and I make decisions on where we go based on traffic, for example. That means we’re not visiting some of the businesses on the other side of town because it’s such a hassle for us to get from the north side of the river over to the 50 side of Folsom.

So how do we make it easier to get through the city? Again, goes back to some of the traffic issues we talked about.

You want to make small businesses — like in my district, I think about the historic district a lot because that’s, I believe, the heart and soul of Folsom. And if I’m elected, that’s got to be a priority for me. How do we make that work better for the business owners and for the residents that live around those businesses?

You know, Sutter Street’s just such an incredible place. We’re here today in this beautiful spot. How do we support that? I think you do that by making it so people feel safer, making it easier to access.

I think one of the things I would like to explore is looking at meterless parking meters in the historic district. I don’t think it would serve the historic district to have physical meters. So that’s what I mean by saying meterless parking, where you do it all on your app.

And the revenue that generates, I think, could be reinvested in the historic district community, into the businesses. It could better serve residents who get frustrated by the parking situation in the historic district.

It could drive people toward utilizing the assets, and we’ve talked about better utilizing existing assets already. It could drive people toward utilizing the parking lots and the parking garages we’ve already created for them. That would help with traffic safety.

We could do things like — it’s a little off track, but it’ll make sense in a second — the left turns onto Sutter Street from Riley. Those cause massive backups every day. You see it every day.

I remember my wife and I were sitting up at Riley’s and watching out on the deck and watching people making those left turns and the backups it causes and the safety issues it creates.

If we do little things like that, we’ll actually start nudging people to use the parking garage because they can’t turn onto Sutter, so they’ll end up at the parking lot or at the parking garages. And that improves pedestrian safety, improves traffic safety, encourages more people to be part of the Sutter Street, the historic district community, to spend their money here.

So I think it’s a series of little tweaks and acknowledging things that are not quite right, and what can we as a city do about that?

And I think the benefits of those things, by doing those, are that it supports the small businesses in my district. And, you know, for other candidates, obviously there’s different business districts. There’s the central business district. There’s, you know, Palladio area. And I hope they would be also looking at, you know, how can we make those small changes to support small business throughout the city.

Q: If elected, what would be your three highest priorities during your term? And four years from now, what measurable results should voters use to determine whether you were successful?

Vander Veen: Well, I’ve been running my campaign on three ideas, which I’ll share with you, which is trust, transparency and follow-through. And I hope in my answers up to this point, I’ve really kind of demonstrated that in how I’ve responded.

I think those are the most important things that I want to be measured by if I’m elected. Am I building trust? Am I being a transparent council member? And am I following through on what I said I was going to do?

And I think it does start with transparency. I think the other two come afterward. And we’ve talked a lot about how everything kind of is interconnected and all these issues are related to one another in some way or another.

And when you talk about transparency, I think there’s often the mistake of thinking that making something public makes it transparent. And that’s not the case.

If you take the city budget, for example, I think it’s about 577 pages of a lot of tables and charts and graphs and language that’s difficult to parse through for the regular person. It’s public. Is it transparent? I don’t think it is.

And I think as city leadership we can do a better job of making sure people can access that information in a way that they can understand it.

Same goes for council agenda items or staff reports. And I know staff works really hard to put that stuff together, but the language is difficult to understand. It’s hard for even some council members to understand what the agenda item is even referring to. And then, you know, if there’s an associated staff report, that could be another 10 to 100 pages.

So making information about the city understandable to the regular, everyday person, that’s what I mean by transparency.

And if I’m elected, I will commit — there’s not a lot of things I’m going to say will absolutely happen — but one of the things that will absolutely happen if I’m elected is monthly town hall meetings, kind of like the one Barbara Leary held a couple of weeks ago with FPD on homelessness.

Different small business every month. Another way we can support small businesses by driving attendance or patronage to these places. I would do it every single month at a different small business in Folsom and say, “All right, here’s what is coming up that we’re going to be voting on. Here’s what I think you need to know, and I’m here to listen to your concerns so I can represent your voices at the council. I’m not here to say this is what I’m doing, and too bad for you.”

I want to be engaged with my district, with my community, so they feel heard, they feel listened to and they feel like their voices matter.

And I can do that every month just by sitting down and presenting the opportunity and hoping people will take advantage of that and meet with me. So that way we start to build the trust, right?

And then, once we have built trust and political capital, we can do great things together as a community. We can pass the sales tax. We can start to fund all the things that people are desperate to see funded to fix — not all the things, you know, but start to fix the things that need fixing.

And then we’ll have that transparency. We’ll have that trust in place. And then we can start to follow through on the promises that not only I might make in the future, but that have been made to people that have been living here for the last few decades or longer, that they have seen not been followed through on, that they’re frustrated by, that they feel like is holding the city back from being the city they envisioned it becoming when they first moved here, from being really truly that city that is distinctive by nature, both in terms of what the city is and where it is.

So I really want to be measured on those three things: trust, transparency and follow-through.

And if I am elected and I haven’t met those three benchmarks, haven’t built the trust, haven’t been transparent or haven’t followed through, I hope people would vote me out the next time, or I wouldn’t even run if I felt like I failed by my own measure.

I think underlying those three things is the idea of being accountable and accessible. And I think in my district a lot of people feel frustrated that city leadership is not accountable, not accessible, and that they’re not being heard.

So that’s why I kind of settled on trust, transparency and follow-through, because I think those are actionable things. They’re things that can be tangible to people, and they’re measurable.

And if I don’t live up to those, then I haven’t done my job and I shouldn’t be reelected, or I won’t run again.

Q: In closing, is there an important issue facing Folsom that we haven’t asked you about or something about your candidacy that you want voters to know? This is also your opportunity to discuss your qualifications, endorsements or community support, and to tell voters why you believe you are the best choice to represent your district on the Folsom City Council.

Vander Veen: Yeah, you know, I’m glad you asked that question because I was going to say, you know, you get a lot of the, well, why are you running? What makes you different? What makes you better qualified than your opponent?

And I don’t even, to be honest, I don’t look at Mike as my opponent. I don’t feel like I’m running against Mike. I feel like I’m running for the people of District 1 and for the city of Folsom. And I’m providing a different vision of what Folsom’s future is than what they see at the council today.

If they like mine better, I hope they vote for my vision and for me. If they feel happy with the way things are going now, I hope they vote in that way, too.

So in that way, I feel like I’m really truly running for people rather than against someone.

And I get the, well, what makes you qualified? So I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about my service to the city of Folsom.

My wife and I have lived here since 2003. We’ve raised our two boys here. I’ve been a Little League coach, a soccer coach. I’ve served on the board for Folsom National Little League. I served on the board for Folsom Junior Bulldogs.

I was PTA president at our district’s only elementary school from 2019 to 2021, which was a challenging time, as we recall.

I’ve served on the Folsom Architecture and Review Commission back when that was a thing before it got folded into the Planning Commission. I presently chair the Folsom Arts and Culture Commission, to which Mike Kozlowski appointed me. I want to recognize that, make sure that’s transparent.

And I mentioned, too, I volunteer at the winter shelter. So serving Folsom has been a big part of my life.

And I mentioned, too, that, you know, I’ve been sort of a student of government most of my adult life. So I do feel like I have a particularly relevant set of experiences that position me well to serve Folsom as a council member.

I love my community. I’m leading a Community Service Day project for the second time in a couple of weeks, which I’m very excited about. And I have a lot of experience working in different facets of the community. So I think that gives me a different kind of experience.

You know, there is value in institutional knowledge, but we also have, in a lot of our elected positions, term limits, and for good reason, I think.

It’s not necessarily that people become bad at their jobs. It’s that we as a society recognize that after a certain amount of time, we are all better served by bringing in a different point of view to try and go in a different direction to better serve the community.

And I think that’s where I’m at right now with my campaign. And I feel like a lot of people are with our City Council in general.

Not saying they’re bad people at all. I know they all, in their own way, work hard for the city to do what they think is best. But it gets back to that question of, is Folsom better off today than it was four or eight years ago?

And if your answer is no, you have an opportunity to help change the direction of the city. And I would encourage you to do that by, in my case, voting for me. I would love to earn your vote.

And, you know, you asked about endorsements, too. And I really think the most important endorsement I could ever ask for is somebody’s vote.

You can go to chadforfolsom.com. I encourage you to do so. Check out my endorsements listed there. But the best, the most important endorsement is earning your trust and winning your vote.

And I think that’s how I would like to move our city forward, by building a community of people that are confident in city leadership, that trust it, and that they know that the city is working for them and for their benefit and for the benefit of the city as a whole.

So, yeah, I encourage you, please visit my website. I also want to encourage you, if you have questions, reach out to me. My phone number is 916-792-3938. Call me, text me, anything you’re concerned about.

I’m going to start making myself accessible now because that’s the kind of council member I want to be in the future. I want you to be able to reach me with anything you’re concerned about at any time because, as a Folsom City Council member, my job is to represent the people of my district and the people of Folsom.

It’s not my job to tell them this is happening or that’s happening. My job is to listen, to make them feel heard, to make them feel valued, and to represent them and their voices as a leader of this city.

And I also want to thank you guys for doing this. And I hope everybody who’s watching this one also watches every other candidate interview because I think that’s true to what I was talking about earlier about trust, transparency and follow-through.

Make sure you take this great opportunity the Folsom Times is putting together to make all these candidates available. Listen to everybody’s ideas and then make a decision based on the information you hear and the information you get by hopefully reaching out to people like me who are running, to existing council members.

I know for me, I invite everybody who reaches out, hey, can I buy you a cup of coffee or a beer and let’s meet up? It’s so much better to meet in person than to get an email or a text message response.

So this was a great opportunity. Thank you guys for doing it, and I hope everybody watching takes advantage of the chance to hear all the different voices that you guys are going to share. So thank you. Chad Vander Veen’s website is www.chadforfolsom.com.

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