Editors note: The Guardian is interviewing candidates for the fall elections, and to give everyone the broadest possible understanding of the issues and our endorsement process, we’re posting the sound files of all the interviews on the politics blog. Our endorsements will be coming out Oct. 6th.
Jim Meko’s been part of western SOMA for decades. He founded the SOMA Leadership Council, played a key role in Western SOMA planning, helped create the Entertainment Commission and now sits on that panel. He probably knows the details of land-use policy better than half the professional planners in the city and has all sorts of ideas about using zoning and traffic engineering to improve the neighborhood (two-way traffic on Folsom, for example). He’s pushing to be sure that market-rate housing development not skew the existing ration of affordable to expensive housing. He’s a small business owner and a supporter of the entertainment industry.
He’s got a bit of a fiscal conservative side, too: He told us he supports Jeff Adachi’s pension-reform measure and wants to get rid of many of the set-asides in the city budget. You can listen to his views here: