What I stand for.
What I'll do about it.

In the spring of 2026, my daughter Camryn was nearly struck by a vehicle twice in forty days. Once near Mossdale Landing Elementary. Once at Autumn Rain Drive and McKee Road — a driver went around her in an active crosswalk. I called the non-emergency line. A police officer took a statement. The report exists.

I sent my first email to the Lathrop City Council on March 23, 2026 — asking for a free community traffic safety event. Zero cost to the city. Three follow-up emails. Forty days of silence from four of the five council members.

When I finally showed up at the May 11 council meeting, the Police Chief characterized his existing, federally-funded bicycle program as a response to my request. The Mayor said on the record that it wasn't what I asked for. Both statements are on camera, in the same meeting.

This is east Lathrop's story — streets that existed before the infrastructure caught up, crosswalk protections that lag behind new development, and families who follow every proper channel and still get silence. That changes when someone is in that chamber who knows this neighborhood the way a neighbor knows it.

Spanish. Punjabi. Hindi. Ilocano. Tagalog. These are languages spoken by families who live in Lathrop, pay taxes in Lathrop, and raise children on these streets. City communications that reach only English speakers are not neutral. They are exclusionary.

At the May 11, 2026 council meeting, the city was about to strengthen bicycle ordinance enforcement — with fines for violations. There was no plan to reach Spanish-speaking families in the 95330 corridor. No plan to reach Punjabi-speaking families. The families most likely to be cited were the families least likely to have been told the ordinance existed.

I said this on the public record that night: "You cannot fine a family for violating a law they were never taught. Enforcement without education is not public safety."

Lathrop's city website is English-only. Most program registration is online-only. Families without strong English literacy or without reliable internet access are systematically excluded from services they fund. That is a solvable problem. It requires someone willing to put it on the agenda and keep it there.

One current council member cannot vote on River Islands — Lathrop's single largest development project — due to a private employment conflict. This is not an accusation. It is a documented fact. The recusals appear in the public minutes of every recorded meeting through 2025 and 2026: December, February, March, April, and beyond.

River Islands is planned for 15,000 homes at full buildout. On the issue that will most define Lathrop's next decade, the community loses a council vote at every single meeting. That is a structural problem, regardless of anyone's character or intentions.

Full representation also means knowing the job. A council member who shows up prepared — who has read the agenda, who understands California land use law, who knows what a conflict of interest is before the city attorney has to explain it — is not a luxury. It is the minimum standard for the people this city is counting on.

The I-5/Louise Avenue interchange is a single-lane bottleneck. That's not a neighborhood complaint — it's the city's own engineering description: a "Type L-1 tight diamond" with single-lane on and off-ramps. Residents in Lathrop Facebook groups have been documenting 30-minute backups through that underpass for years.

The city has known about this problem since at least 2006 — that's when they opened the engineering project file. They've been designing a fix, a Diverging Diamond Interchange, for years. As of today, it is still in design phase. There is no construction contract. There is no secured construction funding. In May 2026, the city went to Washington DC to ask Congress for money to build it.

This is part of a broader pattern: infrastructure investment in Lathrop has consistently followed new development west of I-5. The Louise/I-5 interchange improvements are explicitly designed, in the city's own documents, to accommodate River Islands and Stanford Crossing traffic. East Lathrop's older streets receive a different level of attention.

A council member's job is to ask out loud: where is the investment going, who benefits, and who is still waiting? Those questions belong on the public agenda.

Sprouts Farmers Market: Golden Valley Parkway — River Islands side. Sam's Club: Stanford Crossing — River Islands corridor. Both west of I-5. Both primarily car-accessible. Both in the new development zone.

East Lathrop has community businesses that matter: Ratnadeep Indian Supermarket on Harlan Road serves South Asian families and does it well. The Lathrop Food Plaza brings food trucks to that corridor. These businesses are part of the community and deserve to be treated as such. But they are not a substitute for equitable access to the full range of retail and services that the rest of Lathrop is attracting.

The city cannot force a grocery store to open anywhere. What it can do is actively market east Lathrop sites to retailers the same way it marketed Stanford Crossing to Sam's Club. It can use the Community Development Block Grant program — which the city already administers — to incentivize full-service retail in underserved corridors. It can ask the Planning Commission to conduct food access analyses alongside development approvals. It can make the question public.