Vanessa Valenzuela
Candidate for City Council Member, Escondido, District 1
Vanessa Valenzuela has lived in Escondido since childhood, attending Rose Elementary, Mission Middle School, Escondido High School, and Palomar College. She has nearly twenty years of financial management experience across nonprofits and companies and currently serves as Director of Finance for I Love a Clean San Diego, an environmental nonprofit. She is raising three children in the community and volunteers with local organizing efforts.
Positions in brief
Valenzuela is campaigning on budget transparency, restoring library and park services, and civil-rights concerns tied to local policing and immigration enforcement.
Valenzuela has centered her campaign on budget transparency and long-term solutions to the city's pension debt, along with restoring community services like libraries and parks. On public safety and civil rights, she has raised concerns about surveillance cameras, racial profiling, and police brutality, and has said that keeping ICE out of Escondido must go hand in hand with broader civil-rights and foreign-policy commitments, including opposition to war with Iran and the embargo on Cuba, and support for Palestinian rights — issues outside the city council's authority that she has nonetheless raised in her campaign.
On the issues
Supports budget transparency and long-term solutions for the city's pension debt.
“budget transparency and long-term solutions for the city's pension debt”
Source →Supports restoring community services such as libraries and parks.
“community services like libraries and parks”
Source →Has raised concerns about surveillance cameras, racial profiling, and police brutality as local manifestations of broader policy problems.
“Flock cameras... Racial profiling... Police brutality”
Source →Opposes ICE operating in or cooperating with Escondido.
“ICE out of Escondido”
Source →- Foreign Policy & Defense
Links her opposition to ICE in Escondido to broader foreign-policy positions: no war with Iran, ending the embargo on Cuba, and support for Palestinian rights.
“ICE out of Escondido must also mean: No war with Iran, End the Siege on Cuba, and, of course, Free Palestine.”
Source →
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