by Elizabeth Lasensky
I want a leader on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, someone who has fresh ideas and solutions for the new decade. I want someone who will not only question the need for a new county jail but will look at ways to reduce the incarceration rate that we have. Eliminating the cash bail system that keeps poor people in jail while awaiting their hearings is one way to accomplish this goal. Because 65% of our jail residents cannot post bail, they must stay there until his or her trial. They are in jail, often for months at a time, despite not having been proven guilty of any crime. It’s a modern-day debtor’s prison.
It costs as much to house a prisoner in California for a year as it does to send a student to Stanford for the same amount of time. That’s a lot of money that could be used to provide more robust social services programs that lift up our county residents.
I want a leader who will return our foster care program back to one that works for families that are in distress. We need to stop shipping hundreds of Yolo County children to foster homes far from their families.
I want a leader who understands climate change as the existential threat that it is. Someone who is able to work with other committed supervisors and residents to do the hard work of making significant and urgent changes to our county’s operations model.
You have a choice of leadership for the 4th district Yolo County supervisor race for the first time in many years. The leader that I want for Yolo County Board of Supervisors is Linda Deos. She is the future.
