When Alex Carrillo moved to Merced, he anticipated only staying for about two years. Ten years later, he is still here, and has ingrained himself in the Merced community.
With his 33rd birthday just next week, he is currently campaigning to bring his advocacy experience to the Merced City Council as the representative for District 5. He is running against incumbent City Council member Sarah Boyle, and fellow challenger Felipe Rojas-Flores, an attorney, in this year’s election process that culminates on Nov. 5.
District 5 covers the area west of G Street and north of Bear Creek, including the Merced Mall and the neighborhoods of El Portal, Buena Vista, Shadow Brook, and a small section south of Highway 99 along Sydney Lane.
When Carrillo’s younger brother was diagnosed with cancer in 2007, Carrillo saw firsthand the difficulties of handling the healthcare system, and the complicated nature of accessing necessary resources during a crisis. That realization led him down his current path.
“That’s really what the motivator was to really take the advocacy route. … It wasn’t just my brother going through that experience,” said Carrillo. “It was like, oh, a whole lot of families in the Central Valley, when in the same situation, they didn’t have access to healthcare.”
Early in his career, Carrillo worked primarily in Stanislaus County. He received an associates degree in human services from Modesto Junior College in 2012, and has worked with at-risk youth and nonprofits. He currently works at the UC Merced Community and Labor Center as the director of communications.
Carrillo also worked on the campaigns for State Senator Anna Caballero and State Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, both of whom have given their endorsements in his bid for Merced City Council.
Carrillo identifies five primary priorities for his campaign: economic prosperity, public and neighborhood safety, modernizing our infrastructure, community preservation and revitalization, and community engagement.
“We’re aware of the issues, the council’s aware of the issues, yet you see the priorities not aligning with the community. We have these multi-million and billion-dollar investments happening with rail, the marketplace, and other really big development projects, yet communities are being left behind,” said Carrillo. “We need to really start prioritizing community infrastructure so that, as these investments are happening in our town, the money being invested is going back to the community and really working to address some of these issues and opportunities that exist in our town.”
Carrillo believes that issues with city staffing is a contributing factor to the bottlenecks seen with some bigger projects, and suggests the city look closer for the solution.
“I think that we need to make sure that our staff have a capacity and that they feel empowered, right? That we’re hiring within, and making sure that there’s upward mobility for staff as well,” said Carrillo. “Maybe the city engineer is in the department already, yet we’re looking at outside firms to do the job. … We can’t keep outsourcing, that’s not sustainable.”
When it comes to public safety, Carrillo says he comes from a law enforcement family, and is happy with the direction Merced is going under the current police chief. He supports Measure C, and believes forging cooperative relationships between city and county agencies may provide solutions to some shortcomings the city has faced.
One of Carrillo’s plans if elected is to bring the City Council closer to constituents.
“I’m definitely committed to hosting office hours around District 5,” insisted Carrillo. “We’re gonna make City Hall accessible to the community. I don’t know how elected officials can make decisions without listening to residents or limiting their participation during council meetings. Regardless if we like what we hear or not, I think that we need to make sure it’s accessible to everybody.”
Carrillo describes an assortment of ways in which he thinks improvements could be made in Merced, everything from instating a tourism board to increase revenue, to implementing “landbank” programs to reclaim vacant lots for the city. He observes that the region, despite growing food shipped around the world, is still subject to “food deserts” and hunger.
Despite the challenges ahead, Carrillo believes his experience has set him up to be the best fit to help move the city forward.
“Over the past decade, I listened to the community and I worked alongside the community to address some of the challenges that exist and have existed in our city,” said Carrillo. “I saw that we need to make sure that our local government has the infrastructure necessary to implement some of these projects. … We have to make sure that we have the right people in place to be that voice and really go to bat for our neighborhoods, because those are the ones that are going to be impacted the most by whatever decisions are made.”