VALLEJO – Three candidates are running to represent District 5 on the Vallejo City Council: Tara Beasley-Stansberry, Rebekah Truemper, and Tanya Hall. Both Beasley-Stansberry and Hall ran for a council seat in 2022, ultimately losing to current city councilmember Peter Bregenzer, who declined to run for a second term. District 5 represents Central Vallejo.
How to vote: Ballots will be mailed to voters this week, and the completed ballots must be signed and postmarked before the polls close at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3. Voters can also vote in person on Nov. 3, Election Day.
How we reported this story: We solicited questions from our audience and attended community forums to find out what questions mattered most to Vallejo voters. We then interviewed each of the candidates to learn more about their positions and what they plan to do in office. You can find out more about how we cover elections on our FAQ.
Tara Beasley-Stansberry
Tara Beasley-Stansberry is a human resources recruiter for the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the co-owner of the Noonie’s Place restaurant along with her wife Ronda Stansberry. She’s lived in Vallejo for nearly 11 years.
She currently serves as a Planning Commissioner and emphasizes her unique perspective as someone familiar with the challenges facing small business owners.
“I know what it’s like to stand in line and get a permit,” she said. “I know what it's like for a business owner to want to come here and start a business, and I know a lot of those bottlenecks and hurdles.”
She said she’s running for City Council because she wants to help the city reach its full potential.
“I want to see us go in the direction of growth,” she said. “I want to see us go in the direction of prosperity, and be the city I know we can be.”
Her platform is centered on attracting and retaining businesses, fast-tracking the business license permitting system, and public safety.
She supports creating more small business districts, and suggested narrowing certain streets into one-lane roads to “keep people safe” and comfortable, because she said people might not want to shop where others are driving “like it’s NASCAR.”
Beasley-Stansberry said that public safety also goes hand-in-hand with economic growth. She stressed the importance of fully staffing the Vallejo Police Department during a public forum on Sept. 3. Currently, the department employs about 80 officers, about 30 fewer officers than the department has budgeted.
“I want to see our police department staffed up. Waiting one and two and three hours for a call is ridiculous,” she said. “You can forget about economic development if you do not have a viable police department.”
But she also supports police reform and accountability. “We need both desperately,” she said. She said as a city “we need to heal,” and she wants to see reform efforts that include working with families who have had loved ones killed by Vallejo police officers.
“They’re demanding some sort of resolution, and we owe it to the impacted families to turn this police department around and make it a high priority,” she said.’’
She added that she would like to see the Police Department hire more officers who represent the community. “We brag about being diverse,” she said. “But if our police force, if the people who are protecting us don't look like us, we start repeating the cycle of systemic racism within the police department.”
Regarding Flock Safety cameras, she said she has “concerns about any technology that the city uses.” She said Flock cameras are “a great tool,” but it’s important to “put guardrails in place” and have rules about who can access the data.
On fiscal policy, she said she opposes further tax hikes due to the high cost of living. “Too many folks are living check to check,” she said. But she said she’s open to municipal bonds for infrastructure upgrades.
In terms of housing, she said that as a Planning Commissioner she’s interested in bringing in developers who can build affordable and market-rate housing that has retail businesses on the ground floor. She also supports rent control, but with “reasonable parameters in place.” She would also like to see the Housing Authority “operating at full capacity.”
In regards to a community question about California Forever, Beasley-Stansberry said she supports more jobs, but she’s also “not for any group coming in and overturning our democratic process for their own benefit.”
She’s hopeful that under City Manager Harry Black’s leadership, the city can create a firm foundation to attract larger businesses to the city. To restore people’s confidence in local government, she also supports performance audits for city workers, and for city councilmembers to make themselves more available to the community, like holding town hall meetings and later office hours.
She also wants to see more collaboration between the council and city staff.
“I don’t like the contention and the drama, if you will, between staff and council,” she said. “We can work in tandem together as a group to get to common goals.”
- Fundraising: As of June 30, Beasley-Stansberry has raised a total of $18,644.91, including investing $1,750.00 of her own money. Top contributors include Landis Graden, Jamese Beasley, and Ronda Stansberry.
- Endorsements: Beasley-Stansberry has been endorsed by Solano County Supervisor Wanda Williams, Vallejo city Councilmember Helen-Marie “Cookie” Gordon, American Canyon Mayor Pierre Washington, Suisun City councilmember Amit Pal, Solano Association of Realtors, Sir Winston, Ignacio Magallanes, Dennis Yen, Victory LGBTQ+, and Democratic Municipal Officials.
You can learn more about Beasley-Stansberry’s campaign on her website and contact her at taraforvallejo@gmail.com.
Rebekah Truemper
Rebekah Truemper is a nonprofit professional who has been running her own nonprofit management consultant firm for the last 10 years. Her family moved to Vallejo in 2000 from San Francisco.
“We came to Vallejo when they had a Wednesday night celebration in the summer,” she said. “The downtown was so alive, everyone was so welcoming, and we just fell in love with it.”
She said she’s running for City Council because she’s always been involved with the community, and she wants to see the city set a clear vision for the future. She’s invested in helping the city achieve its General Plan 2040 goals, like building up a vibrant waterfront, creating more employment opportunities for young people, and building more mixed-use areas.
“I feel like we have a really good opportunity right now to make some of the tough decisions that other city councils have kicked down the road,” she said. “That's what I want to be a part of: helping make Vallejo work better for all of us.”
In terms of bringing in small businesses and improving Vallejo’s nightlife scene, Truemper said she'd like to modernize the city’s business license permitting system, and invest in more street lighting and green spaces.
Truemper said the city also needs to move forward with meaningful police reform and accountability. She used to work in domestic violence services in Contra Costa County, where she saw how the negative impacts of trauma and neglect can “bubble up again, even across generations,” unless there’s real accountability and restorative justice.
She said the city has been dealing with “systemic racism, generational poverty, years of neglect of city services and infrastructure, and excessive and deadly force by our own police.” All of that, she said, are “different forms of violence” that need to be addressed.
In terms of Flock Safety cameras, she said the “data privacy concerns are real,” and she wants to see strong safeguards and community oversight. But she added that she’s also attended forums, including the Vallejo Sun’s, where people who are living in neighborhoods impacted by gun violence have said that Flock cameras have helped to catch violent criminals and deter crime.
“They’re seeing a real difference in their communities, so we can’t dismiss that,” she said.
On homelessness, Truemper is interested in the possibility of creating safe parking and safe camping zones. “I think we need to look at that again because just leaving people to live in the White Slough area is a humanitarian crisis and an environmental crisis,” she said. “We can’t turn a blind eye to that.”
In terms of data centers, Truemper said she’s “opposed to data centers in our community” for both environmental and “quality of life reasons.”
Truemper has worked in the environmental sector, and she was opposed to a potential gas terminal on Mare Island and the Orcem cement plant. She said we shouldn’t have to “pit health and safety against good paying jobs,” and the city should be looking at industries that support both job growth and a sustainable future.
She said the city also needs to look at climate resilience when it’s considering updating infrastructure.
“We really need to be looking at climate change and rising sea levels,” she said. “Looking at the infrastructure without looking at what's coming our way would be a mistake, to make those investments without looking 20 and 40 years ahead of what those systems need to be ready for.”
She said she’s suspicious of the California Forever project, and thinks that they undermined trust by secretly buying up land. In terms of its Collinsville shipbuilding plans, which have stalled at the county level, she said she’d prefer to prioritize revitalizing Mare Island, as laid out in the Roosevelt Group plan.
“Mare Island is the natural first location to bring shipbuilding back alive in this region,” she said, adding that it’s important that the city makes connections with the county, state, and Cal Poly Maritime Academy now to achieve this.
She wants to see new City Manager Harry Black “set the tone for accountability.” She also wants the city council to “set the model for collaboration and teamwork and how you debate ideas across differences,” she said. “Find a way to work together and move forward, so that the city isn't operating in silos.”
- Fundraising: As of June 30, Truemper has raised $12,395.00. Top contributors include Joanna Truemper, Lorene Allio, and Bernadette Chi.
- Endorsements: Truemper has been endorsed by Solano County Supervisor Cassandra James, former Solano County Supervisor Erin Hannigan, Vallejo city councilmembers Alex Matias and Tonia Lediju, former Vallejo city Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz, former Vallejo Mayor Tony Intintoli, Benicia Mayor Steve Young, the Solano County Central Democratic Committee, Napa-Solano Central Labor Council, and the Sierra Club.
You can learn more about Truemper’s campaign on her website and contact her at rebekah@rebekahforvallejo.com.
Tanya Hall
Tanya Hall was born and raised in Vallejo District 5. “I know what District 5 offers and what it needs,” she said at the Sept. 3 forum. “District 5, Central Vallejo, is the heart of Vallejo.”
Hall is the vice chair of the Architecture and Heritage Landmarks Commission, and she recently retired from her role as a career transition specialist with the Vallejo City Unified School District. She plans to apply her experience helping students chart their career paths to the challenges of city governance.
This is Hall’s second campaign for the District 5 city council seat. If elected, Hall said that she pledges to work toward rebuilding the prosperity that the Mare Island Naval Shipyard once brought to the city of Vallejo.
Hall has worked in both education and healthcare fields, and early in her career she was a personnel clerk for the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
"Mare Island was our bread and butter, it acted as an umbrella for our town," Hall said in an interview with the Vallejo Sun. "Our city thrived, our small businesses thrived," she said, recalling the economic stability created by the naval base.
Hall sees the redevelopment of Mare Island as key to bringing back industries that can, once again, offer long-term economic stability for the city's residents. She feels that District 5 has a special role in this process partly because of how Vallejo High School and union hiring halls are located along Nebraska Street.
"I call it the Nebraska to Mare Island Maritime pipeline," she said, adding that in the past there were clear pathways for high school students to get involved with union apprenticeship programs. Hall said that reinvigorating those programs will create career opportunities for high school students and build the skilled workforce needed to attract maritime industry to Vallejo.
"We want to keep our youth focused and we want them to thrive and to be successful because they are our future," Hall said.
In combination with strengthening apprenticeship programs, Hall said that she would encourage the city to take advantage of federal grants for small shipyards to facilitate development of city owned parcels on Mare Island.
According to Hall, public safety on city streets is of particular importance to residents of District 5. She said the city has made some progress in this area but there is still more work to be done.
When it comes to addressing homelessness, Hall said that it is important to have resources available to assist individuals who are suffering with mental health issues.
“I think that we should have more wraparound services,” Hall said at the Sept. 3 forum. “Asking what their needs are, and providing them with what they want.”
However, she said that it is also important to ensure that encampments are not continually reestablished in problematic areas. She suggested using contracted security guards to patrol locations where the city frequently has to conduct encampment removals as a way to address the problem without taxing police department resources that could be better used elsewhere.
Hall said that she is supportive of new development projects that build housing from the ground up but she would like to find ways to incentivize the reuse, remodeling or conversion of existing buildings to create more housing in Vallejo. She noted that Vallejo has a number of vacant buildings which can create blight, and said that redeveloping these could provide housing and beautify the city.
At the Sept. 3 forum, Hall said she’d like to see the city fix the roads, but said it also needs to update its aging infrastructure. “It’s one thing to patch up a street, but it’s another to fix it,” she said. “Why would you fix it if the plumbing underneath isn’t adequate enough?”
Hall said she wants to see greater accountability and collaboration in local government. “I believe in strength and integrity,” she said at the Sept. 3 forum. “I think as a council member, all seven council members should be on the same page.”
- Fundraising: As of June 30, Hall has raised a total of $8,271.70, including investing $3,000 of her own money.
You can learn more about Hall’s campaign on her website and contact her at contact@hallforvallejo.com.
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