All four BART Board directors running for reelection won bids to retain their seats, with Director Debora Allen cruising to victory with a wide margin.
According to the latest voter tallies, Allen defeated her District 1 challenger Jamie Salcido with a little more than 64 percent of the vote, compared to Salcido’s nearly 27 percent.
Allen’s other opponent, Emmy Akin, earned just over 9 percent of the 130,899 ballots cast in the race.
“I’m not just doing the job at election time. I’ve been working hard at this almost at a full-time basis for almost four years,” Allen said. “I’ve been very visible and transparent with the media.”
“I’m out there working on issues that people want, working on behalf of riders on what they want and on behalf our taxpayers and what they want,” Allen said.
District 1 is in Contra Costa County where the Concord, Lafayette, Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre and Walnut Creek stations are.
Allen has often clashed with her fellow BART directors over the transit agency’s budget and policing issues, among other things, and six of her fellow directors — Lateefah Simon, Bevan Dufty, Mark Foley, Janice Li,
Robert Raburn and Rebecca Saltzman — all endorsed Salcido during the campaign.
“We should not be defunding the police. I heard that over and over from my voters, but I had an opponent that was backed and recruited and funded by my fellow directors who have been pushing that directive,” Allen said.
She added that she does think the system needs to find ways to “improve our policing techniques and processes.”
Allen said Wednesday that one of the transit agency’s biggest challenges revolves around its drastically shrinking ridership and revenue in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Don’t look at me. I didn’t vote for any incumbent.
I don’t know anyone who did! BART has been run into its own tracks by poor management. Privatization is the only answer.
When Bart board apologized to person who was cited after a warning about eating on the platform, used a slur against the officer, and didn’t show ID till detained, I was hoping for a major change.
With six members wanting to defund the police looks like the right person who is not for defunding got re elected. Are people who want to defund the police capable of doing any public job? Do they have a brain? What has gone wrong with our country?
The Concord PD will take up 57% of the city budget for 20-21 as shown in Concord’s “Adopted Biennial Operating Budget” document. It is the city’s biggest expense.
I don’t understand the mental disconnect of wanting services, but also complaining about taxes.
Fix the roads!!! That sentiment is heard a lot around here. So where do the funds or allocation come from? Rebalancing the budget? Taxes?
Similarly, posters do not want to defund the police in any capacity, but don’t want increase taxes that would support them. Or use a different budget that would fix said roads.
Can’t have it both ways.
Sadly we are going through the decline. It happens to most great countries/civilizations. Didn’t think we would make it through those eight years from 2009 to 2017, but we did. These next four will likely be the worst ever and possibly never recoverable.
God Bless the United States that we were fortunate to experience.
at WellWell
You say “I don’t understand the mental disconnect of wanting services, but also complaining about taxes.”
Let me help. Tax payers pay for the person doing the job. They also pay annually the lottery winning-sized pension for the person that retired a few years back. And they pay another annual lottery-sized pension for the person who retired before them! And the medical care for all three. Now do you understand?
Well of course they got reelected….only they know who they are.
(I didn’t vote for any incumbents either!!!)
Debora Allen is the only BART Director looking out for the interests of the rider and tax payer. The other Directors are all bought and paid for by the BART unions. Good for her
Oh, Goody. Now BART will run smart and efficiently, no more fare hikes, be on time, be clean and safe.
Wow
So liberal with the can’t have it both ways
Look you and your following oted for the demifornia high speed scam train
And put us on the hook for a 30 year bond for billions
Now no train of course and dems stealing the money
Measure q tax was a temp and meant to be
Until the politicians scammed you again and said hey extend it and we can fix the roads …..roads still garbage
Now you voted to make it 1% tax for life why oh for roads lol
Oh gas tax you also voted in and still roads garbage
A general tax you also passed for what no one knows
Oh sorry it is claimed to be for a whole plethora of service’s again we will see
And schools are closed shut down where is that money
Most of the money is going to the sanctuary of illegals
and our systems they use
and housing
and medical
and schooling
Can’t have it 50 ways you mean
this thread is about Bart and who do you think is going to get bonuses and raises ….you do know they are union and the politicians have to pay them off as well
Why hurry us in taxes
Should t you be safe ting the bosses to do their job with what they have
Do you get a raise and under perform at your job
I mean de slacker is collecting and all he does
is have picnics every month
and shine pelosis shoe collection
Stop making excuses for forcing taxes on us for no reason
Privatize.
BART Management is a disgrace. Why would you vote for leaders. Wouldn’t you want to have managers who knew something about running a transportation system? These people are triple dippers who have no clue about transportation. It’s time to do something different.
Deborah Allen is a voice of sanity among the self-serving and self-aggrandizing BART Directors like Bevan Dufty and Janice Lee. She’s been fighting an uphill battle trying to protect the interests of people who pay to keep BART running, namely, the riders and taxpayers. Glad she’s been reelected.
@Dorothy et al.: sometimes the incumbent is the best candidate, even if you’re unhappy with the status quo. A protest vote is good as long as you don’t start cutting your nose to spite your face.
She wants to criminalize homelessness. She shouldn’t be in public office.
@Dave
She wants to criminalize homelessness? Does she also eat children for breakfast and beat seniors in the evening?
It may not be obvious to you, but there is a difference between homelessness and anti-social behavior, such as vandalism, arson, theft, aggressive panhandling bordering on assault.
Only some – a minority – of homeless people exhibit anti-social behaviors. So punishing them is not criminalizing homelessness. But equating anti-social behavior with homelessness is indeed an insult to homeless people.
May be you should give it a thought before spouting stupid slogans. Even if they give you a warm feeling of being “progressive”.
I’m so grateful Deborah Allen won, she’s the only director that seems to get it, ehilr the other ones are running some kind of social experiment. The gall of the other directors to try to replace her, what a joke.
As I’ve said here a few times before, if you want to see and understand why BART is a disaster and the DC Metro is well run, just go and look at the biographies of the respective Boards of Directors. BART’s generally have little or no professional background in transportation, while DC is the opposite. One example of a BART director is some sort of bicycle activist who does not even seem to use BART.
I don’t have an issue with the police salary but I do think they should have to use a 401K for retirement and find their own medical using covered California. A police officer makes $150,000 to $300,000 a year that is easily over a million in 401K savings. What really hurts the tax payers of Concord is the unions and the pension plans. Why do tax payers have to pay for union employees for all city of concord jobs?
She had me at, We should not be defunding police. Back the blue.
criminalize homeless ….
no she wants the homeless to stop crapping on trains
and injecting in elevators
and harassing paying customers
and breaking into vehicles
you know law and order
not fluffy clouds of snowflakes running the show and leaving citizens to foot the bill of overpaid union workers and the board itself
if you think bart and the cities are going to become these utopian tambourine drug dens your surely mistaken
Remember this election! Thank goodness Debora Allen was reelected and is servicing us in the Claycord area. We need more like her to counter the tax and spend approach in the rest of the BART areas who apparently don’t care enough to think broadly.
I don’t ride BART much anyway. Who wants to ride it to SF or Fremont or Richmond!