Rhodesia Ransom believes that local problems require local solutions.

Especially when it comes to the homeless and unsheltered in San Joaquin County.

If elected to the San Joaquin Board of Supervisors – where she is hoping to replace outgoing supervisor Bob Elliott who is terming out in November – the Tracy City Councilwoman wants to make sure that the person representing Area 5 (which includes Tracy, Manteca south of Yosemite Avenue, and the River Islands portion of Lathrop) does what they can to make sure that the respective communities have what they need to address societal ills rather than pushing them off onto other part of the county.

In a virtual town hall Thursday night, Ransom draw a sharp parallel between her approach to the homeless in the South County and that her opponent – current Tracy Mayor Robert Rickman – who has advocated sending the homeless in Tracy to Stockton because that is where the majority of the county services are located.

“We need to take care of our own business,” Ransom said matter-of-factly. “We hear stories about somebody dropping people off, and I have gone in Tracy to talk to these people and the majority of them have connections to our community. I don’t support shipping your problems anywhere else.

“At the Board of Supervisors, I will work with the individual cities because every city’s issue and response to the homeless is going to be different. I don’t believe we should be sending our problems anywhere else – it’s important that we come together and do what we can to solve the problem and reduce the problem and not create another problem.”

And Ransom was not short on specifics on how she plans to accomplish that.

While Ransom said that she realizes that there is a perception in the community as it pertains to homeless services that “if you build it, they will come,” she said that her own investigative work has revealed models that are designed to prevent those sorts of migratory issues by ensuring that those that utilize the services have ties to the communities they are seeking help in.

Ransom talked about one facility that she visited in Southern California where only those who have a legitimate tie to the community the facility is located in can utilize the services – whether they grew up there, went to school there, have family there, or another tethering standard that allocates the resources to the local people who need it. Those that don’t qualify are then provided other services to get them back to the place where they do have those connections – something that she said is pivotal towards getting people off the street and aligning them with the support that they need to make a change in their life.

“It appears to be a very successful program that works as a navigation center and provides transitional services to those who need and don’t have the ties to the community,” Ransom said. “There are ways to say yes to solving our problems instead of passing them off to somebody else.”

Ransom was elected to the Tracy City Council in 2016 and has spent nearly two decades involved in local community issues – something that she said during the town hall will serve her well when working to address issues on a countywide level.

While her roots are in Tracy, Ransom also said that he recognizes that she needs to work to get her finger on the pulse other communities within the supervisorial district, and went so far as to say she would represent the communities other than the one that she lives in by making sure that they have the representation that they deserve – something that hasn’t always been the case with Manteca and Lathrop which are split between districts.

Not having that kind of continuity of governance, she said, has left many in those communities – including the elected officials in those communities – feeling like they don’t have as strong of a voice at the county level. If elected she would work to rectify that by making sure that Manteca and Lathrop would be made whole on the Board of Supervisors with a single elected official even if it meant that she would lose some of the support that she has been working to build in those communities.

“Right now, Manteca and Lathrop have different people representing them, and they feel slighted – it’s confusing,” Ransom said. “I wholeheartedly believe that if elected I would representing the entire Manteca and the entire Lathrop, and I would want to work on that issue – I understand why they don’t feel that is fair as it has not served them well in the past.

“I would probably be losing some voters, but it becomes an issue with accountability when you can blame the other guy for the problems. I understand the importance of the continuity of governance.”

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.