Los Banos mayor faces two candidates in bid for reelection

Los Banos Mayor Paul Llanez faces two challengers, including former mayor Michael Amabile, and former City councilmember Refugio Llamas, in his bid for another term.

Llanez, 45, is a former law enforcement officer and majority shareholder in Knowledge Saves Lives Inc. which provides safety and emergency preparedness training as well as consulting services. Amabile, 70, is a restaurant owner and served as mayor of Los Banos from 1994-2006. Llamas, 58, is retired and a former coucilmember whose previous term ended in 2021.

Q: What do you feel are the most important issues the City of Los Banos is currently facing?

Llanez said a lot has been done over the past two years but there is a lot more that needs to be done including infrastructure after decades of neglect, as well as amenities that the community wants to see done.

“Well for instance our roads,” said Llanez. “We had a survey done right before I got into office and our roads on a scale of one to 100 rated 59. Just in the past two years we’ve repaired more than 20 roads which is a record number in a two-year period, but there’s still a lot more that can be done on that,” said Llanez.

According to Llanez, the city’s wastewater treatment plant suffered neglect for roughly 10 to 15 years and just in the past two years, about $3 million was spent to address the needs at the facility.

“Dredging is something that most cities do at their wastewater treatment plant, to my knowledge I think we were between 10 and 15 years behind in dredging the solid waste inside our wastewater treatment plant that we had to get caught up on.”

He added that he believes taxpayers should see a return on their money. It’s something Llanez said he has focused on over the past two years and he hopes to do it again for the next two years. Llanez said he wants to see upgrades to parks including a little league park renovation as well as bringing back a community pool to the city.

Llanez said during his time as mayor the city has worked on beautification and branding projects in the city while posting to social media and working with the economic development director and their team.

Amabile said he thinks the city is lacking accountability with the city council as well as transparency.

“What’s going on is there’s not a lot of communication with the public and there are decisions being made at the city level and people just don’t understand why they’re being made,” said Amabile. “There’s not a clear understanding by the people or communication by the council. So I really think Los Banos needs a fresh start.”

Llamas said he sees a lack of economic development, run away home building and the quality of the water are the things he is most concerned about.

I think that the drive and the focus has been on building homes and that has come at a detriment to our residents,” said Llamas. Lllamas went on to say “they just approved a multi-unit facility here a housing development, and there was an issue about the runoff into our canals and seeping into our groundwater. It wasn’t property addressed,” he said.

Llamas said these are the type of issues that come with that development and it increases the burden on tax revenue to provide infrastructure for sprawl which the city doesn’t have.

“We don’t have economic development, we don’t have manufacturing we don’t have anything else but housing,” Llamas said. That leads to a boom to bust cycle which is not good for the city in the long run, according to Llamas.

Q: If elected, how do you plan to improve both the economic and educational outlook for the City of Los Banos and its residents both young and old?

Llanez said there are many opportunities in the city and although the community is a bedroom community, it has ties to the Merced College campus as well as the University of California, Merced and other colleges.

“There’s so many opportunities for us to create partnerships, again we want a not just better community but better the future of our community,” said Llanez. “So I think we have a lot of partnerships we can create and move forward on but there’s only so much you can do in a two year span.”

Amabile said he is a big supporter of Merced College and he believes the city has to work together with the Los Banos School District K-12, as well as Merced College to coordinate and get the city’s workforce trained correctly. Amabile said he would continue to do what he did when he was mayor in his first term and go to the people.

“I used to do park side chats on weekends and go to all the different neighborhoods and see what the people needed, what they wanted in their neighborhood with education, communication, what was desired in the city and then we would try to see what we could do about it and what was possible,” Amabile said.

Amabile continued saying the city needs workforce housing and more senior housing in the community. He said the city needs to work with the different educational groups and he feels the city needs city sponsored work programs for the youth in during the summertime. Amabile said he has done that in the past and it was successful and also brought high school age kids to city hall.

“So we could get all that going again and get people interested in their city and their community,” said Amabile.

Communication and working with residents is key, according to Llamas. Revamping and re-working the city’s portfolio as well as visiting companies who have relocated to the Bay Area and finding out whey they chose that location instead of Los Banos.

“I think that’s key information that nobody’s looking at,” said Llamas. Just because they relocated doesn’t mean that the city can’t gather information from the companies about why they chose that location, according to Llamas. The information can then be used to improve the city’s attractiveness that would entice companies to relocate to Los Banos in the future.

Llamas said networking is important even with developers and the city needs to have a positive relationship with all stakeholders.

I think we’ve destroyed the city’s credibility and as you know for any investor, that they’re going to take a risk somewhere they need to feel confident about it,” said Llamas. Llamas said the city needs to let the world and investors know that their investment will be sound and secure.

Llamas said that being retired, the position of mayor would be his full-time commitment.

“I’m going to devote my full time to ensuring that we’re in the best position to attract good paying jobs for our residents.

Q: If elected, what steps will you take to attract investment to the city and create jobs that provide sustainable wages for residents?

Llanez said he would like to see the city transition from an impact fee based to a sales tax driven.

“That is something that I’ve long talked about and wanted to see done,” he said. “Not something that’s going to happen in two years by any means, but it’s definitely something that we can push forward and create some momentum to go that way.”

Llanez said that in the two years he has been in office, the city has done beautification and branding projects in the city. Including being active on social media and reaching out with the economic development directors and their team.

According to Amabile, there are many pieces to the puzzle and he met with many different companies the last time he served as mayor of Los Banos. Amabile said it’s important to have a trained workforce available so when speaking with companies and promoting the city, it can be communicated that there is a demographic and workforce within a certain radius.

“You need to have the workforce available, trained workforce, so when you go to these different companies and you promote your city you can also say in a 50 mile radius we have this type of demographics, this type of workforce, that’s very important,” said Amabile.

Amabile continued saying that many people commute out of Los Banos on a daily basis.

“So we have to find out where they’re working and see if there’s any way that we could possibly get those jobs to relocate to our area,” he said.

Llamas said the city may need to look at the development of business parks. Additionally he said the city may need to contract with firms that look for city’s that are suitable for companies to relocate to. Llamas also said he thinks the city needs to network with the schools such as Merced College and work with them to make sure their curriculum providing the skills employers are looking for.

“It’s about identifying the city’s gaps and shortfalls and being honest with ourselves,” said Llamas.

Llamas said he believes it will require a change of mindset after having the same people running the city for decades. He continued by saying the city has major issues that stem from lack of economic growth.

“If we attract good paying business, have good paying jobs and benefits, we’re going to retain more people. We’re going to have the tax revenue to take care of our infrastructure, pay our employees better and provide a better quality of life for everyone,” Llamas said.

Q: How do you plan to address the needs of the unhoused population in Los Banos?

Llanez said the city has already received about $14.5 million in grants in the past year. He said the city will be building 50 tiny homes within the next year and the city has employed two full-time housing employees to focus on the efforts.

“Just those things alone have really kind of put us forward to get those things accomplished,” said Llanez.

According to Llanez, the city received $11.8 million from the Encampment Relief Fund Round 3 through the state of California, as well as $2.5 million through an Alliance grant which will add to the resources.

Amabile said the first thing the city has to do is create two ordinances.

“The first ordinance is that there’s no more public camping on public property, you’re going to ban that, make a law against the ordinance,” said Amabile. “Second one is there to be no more drop offs by any other agency or any other city into our community. So you have to create a law that restricts that.”

Amabile said the city has received housing grants for unhoused individuals and building anything is probably about a year of more away and that is something that would have to be looked into if he is elected.

Llamas said that community outreach is important and there has been zero community involvement. Llamas said the public needs to be invited in to be part of the decision making process as they are the ones that will be affected by it. Additionally he said networking with fellow stakeholders such as the director of the county Human Services Agency could be beneficial.

“Let us know how we can partner with them to identify those services that they can provide, so that we’re not duplicating and wasting taxpayer money by providing the same services that maybe the county is better equipped to do,” said Llamas.

Q: If elected, what policies and programs will you put in place to make sure residents have access to quality affordable housing, including housing for low income residents?

Llanez said the city has been trying to work with different developers for the past two years on meeting housing goals.

“We just approved I believe it’s 25 units, for a townhouse development that was just approved in the last council meeting and we’re looking for other developers to make that investment and to do that and partner with them,” said Llanez. “That’s something that we’ve been trying to do.”

Amablie said that while he was mayor of Los Banos three low income housing complexes were built and managers were required to live at the apartment complex to maintain the quality of the apartments. He said he wants to look at the redevelopment agency and bring it back to the city with stricter laws.

Amabile said it’s difficult when it comes to densely populated areas.

“My plan is if we are building a new neighborhood, that maybe on the corners here and there, we will place duplexes,” said Amabile.

Llamas said it begins with having a plan and developing a positive relationship with developers while understanding that they are key to the future of Los Banos.

“We need to ensure that Los Banos and its code enforcement is actively participating in ensuring these homes are built to standard,” said Llamas.

Before the city starts expanding its city limits, Llamas said the city needs to ensure that pockets of vacant land which previous developers had promised to build on, are filled in.

“Because a lot of time those areas create a magnet for illicit activity. So that will help with the crime and the quality of life,” he said