“We want opportunities for small firms, medium-sized firms and large firms to be able to play a role in the issuance of city bonds,” Gorzell said. “We’ll still have that at the end of the day whether we’ve got 19 firms or 20 firms.”
Castillo, who was one of the most vocal council members about her concerns about the bank, questioned why some of her colleagues were willing to “give grace” to the bank but were opposed to expanding the, which allows officers to issue citations rather than make arrests for select low-level, non-violent crimes. Castillo, McKee-Rodriguez and Castro were the only council members who backed Proposition A in the May 6 election, which sought to make citations largely mandatory rather than optional.
“I think it’s worth noting that we’re either gonna give grace to criminals or we’re not, but it seems to be an inconsistency that if you’re a multi-billion-dollar criminal, you get the grace, the contracts, and you continue to keep profiting,” Castillo said. “When it comes to working families of color who commit crime, it’s lock them up. They should no longer have access to housing, health care or employment.
District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte jumped on that comment, using it to repeat misinformation from the campaign season about how the existing SAPD policy works. “Wells Fargo and others have been fined hundreds of thousands if not more than that — millions — of dollars when they do wrong, and I think one of the issues on the cite-and-release side is really there are no penalties for some of the crimes that are happening here throughout the city and that continue to happen,” Whyte said. “But, we’re not here to talk about cite-and-release today, I don’t think.”After the meeting, she took to Twitter to“See you next week,” she captioned it.