Have you ever wondered who actually watches city council meetings on public access television? Well, Kim Bergel, for one. She’s been watching them for 13 years, “and I love it,” she said. “It’s my favorite show. It’s embarrassing; people say, ‘Get a life.’ But it’s true.”

Someone recently asked her kids (an 11-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son) if they ever had TV dinners, and they said, “Yeah, on Tuesday nights.” They weren’t talking about the microwavable trays of food, which they’ve never had. They meant eating dinner in front of the TV with their mom, watching the gears of local government turn.

Bergel, who’s employed part-time at Redwood Coast Montessori, working one-on-one with a boy with autism, is a Eureka native, a fourth-generation local with a lot of civic pride. “I love our city, and I really believe in the potential of our city,” she said over coffee Monday morning in Old Town. But she doesn’t feel like Eureka is the same magical place it was when she was growing up. “I used to play in the forest; I used to ride my bike all over the place,” she said. “There were things for me to do. And it was close-knit. And I believe we can restore that.”

These days Bergel worries about traffic safety. She and her husband, a small business owner, live less than three miles from Sequoia Park, but Bergel isn’t comfortable letting their kids ride bikes to the park by themselves because the roads are so chaotic. It’s not just the car drivers, she said. Cyclists need to be trained and educated, too. In Eureka they often ride on the sidewalk, or the wrong side of the road, cutting people off or worse.

Almost six years ago Bergel pursued an open seat on Eureka’s Transportation Safety Commission and got the appointment. She’s been on the commission ever since and currently serves as the chair. “That’s kind of the way I do things,” she said. “I take action on things that I think are important.”

Now she’s running for the Third Ward seat on the Eureka City Council, a position currently held by insurance salesman Mike Newman. During Newman’s very first meeting as a member of the City Council, on Dec. 7, 2010, he made a move that irks Bergel to this day. 

The previous council had voted unanimously to purchase the defunct Jefferson Elementary School campus from Eureka City Schools with $600,000 in redevelopment money. A neighborhood organization called the Westside Community Group was poised to transform the campus into a community center and park. 

But Election Day 2010 brought a changing of the guard in Eureka, with the election of Newman in the Third Ward, Marian Brady in the First and, in the Fifth, Lance Madsen (whose failing health eventually led to the appointment of Chet Albin). At that Dec. 7 meeting, the first meeting of the new guard, Newman expressed doubts about the pending real estate deal, much to the chagrin of many Eureka residents, Bergel included. In a subsequent council meeting, Newman, Brady and Madsen voted down the deal, setting a contentious tone for the new council.

“The prior council had worked so hard to make that [purchase] happen, and it was a great thing,” Bergel said. “And the new council came in and just put the kibosh on that. That bothered me.”

While the situation worked out fine in the end — the neighborhood group managed to buy the property itself and has made progress on transforming the campus — Bergel said “the red flag went up” with that vote.

There have been other red flags since — like when the council enacted a cannabis dispensary moratorium, sidelining the previous council’s work on a medical marijuana ordinance, and, more recently, when the council chickened out of an apology to the Wiyot Tribe for the 1860 Indian Island Massacre.

“The fact that [the threat of] litigation was even brought up in such a sensitive and important issue troubled me,” Bergel said. “I just feel like my approach would have been a lot different.”

Bergel said that, if elected, she would focus on making the community safe and healthy, which would make the city more attractive to businesses. “I’m not of the belief that I, as a council member, could create jobs,” Bergel said. “But I think that as a council-person, with the community’s help, we can rejuvenate our city and attract new business in.”

She was recently reminded of just how daunting a challenge that might be. On Saturday night she went on a ride-along with a Eureka police officer, and the experience was eye-opening. 

“There were places that I had no idea existed,” Bergel said. Among the stops they made was a welfare check on a man living in one of the low-income bungalows near the corner of California and Harris streets. “There was just stuff and yuck all around,” Bergel said. “You could hear this whooshing sound, and it smelled like sewer. … People were peeking out of their windows. The officer said, ‘This is a really dangerous part of town.’ I ride my bike past there and I never would have imagined.”

Later in the night, on another welfare check, Bergel encountered another troubling circumstance. “The woman was pregnant with twins,” she said. “It was a welfare check because of domestic violence, and the way she was living — people shouldn’t have to live like that.”

Like her fellow city council challenger, Natalie Arroyo, Bergel recently met with Eureka Police Chief Andy Mills and was impressed with the direction he’s taking with the department, particularly his effect on the culture of the department and his decision to send social workers out with officers to make sure people who need services get them. Bergel is also a fan of Betty Chinn’s efforts to teach life skills to people transitioning out of homelessness. “I mean, it’s one thing to put them in housing,” she said, “but they need education as well to help them to be successful.”

To address the problem of panhandling, Bergel suggested following a model being employed in Provo, Utah, where asking for money is treated like a business — one requiring a permit from the city and an official certification sticker.

Bergel supports Measure R, the upcoming ballot measure that would raise minimum wage in the city to $12 per hour, with an exemption for businesses with fewer than 25 employees. “I believe that people who work hard should not have to live on services, [they] shouldn’t have to support themselves with welfare, [and they] shouldn’t have to work two jobs to support their families.” Plus, she said, all the evidence she’s read suggests that raising the minimum wage has only positive effects on the community.

At several points in the interview Bergel brought up the word “magic.” The word seems to be a slogan of sorts: Her campaign’s Facebook page launched with a call to “reignite the magic.” What does she mean by that? She described one magical moment she experienced while participating in a volunteer effort organized by the nonprofit KaBOOM! to build a playground at Hammond Park in a single day. 

She was standing atop a mulch pile, surveying the scene. 

“I just stood up there for a minute, and I looked around.” Recalling the moment, Bergel’s voice caught in her throat and moisture welled in her eyes. “Sorry, it still touches me,” she said. “And I saw all these people, different people. I mean, there were people who would not normally mix. And they were all having a blast, and they were working together. It was fabulous. It was just so heartwarming to see that. And I think we can have that in our community, but it’s going to take effort.”

Bergel’s official campaign kickoff event is scheduled for noon on Thursday, July 31 at Eureka City Hall, 531 K St. For more information visit her campaign’s Facebook page.