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Nancy Shepherd has never served on the Palo Alto City Council, but her list of supporters and endorsers -- which includes councilmen, former mayors and school members -- is long enough to rival that of any political veteran.

Shepherd, a managerial accountant, has also never served on the local Board of Education. But having served as president of the Palo Alto Council of PTAs and having led the successful late 1990s campaign to institute district-wide fundraising at Palo Alto schools, she is well-known in the education realm.

She proudly notes that the new fundraising system has been bringing in a steady stream of revenues to the school district every year since it was adopted.

Now, as a council candidate, Shepherd, faces new challenges: a prolonged labor dispute, a projected $10 million gap in the city budget and a proposed high-speed rail line, among others.

Shepherd's interest in the controversial 800-mile system, which California voters approved in November, is more than academic. The Southgate neighborhood where she lives with her husband and four children is located near the Caltrain corridor, where the new line is slated to run under present plans.

In recent months, a swelling community of concerned residents has emerged from Southgate. Many fear the project could threaten their homes, properties and quality of life. It was at Shepherd's house that Councilman John Barton gave his "Berlin Wall" presentation, which compared the wall the California High-Speed Rail Authority would build along the Caltrain corridor to support the elevated tracks to the infamous landmark that divided Berlin.

Shepherd said she supports the concept of a high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles, though she is concerned about the design of the Peninsula segment of the line. In a questionnaire she filled out for Palo Alto Neighborhoods, she said she opposes "any transit design that would put high-speed rail or Caltrain above ground on walls with towers.

"That would permanently change the character of Palo Alto," Shepherd wrote.

She also told a crowd of about 60 people at a candidates' forum last week that she would support having the city hire an engineer to help staff navigate through the environmental reviews associated with the $40 billion project.

Shepherd sees the Rail Authority as one of several "outside" entities with agendas that may not necessarily benefit Palo Alto. She also points to California and its recent "borrowing" of local funds; to Stanford University and its expansion plans; and to the Service Employees International Union, which is engaged in a bitter contract dispute with city management over labor contracts.

She is also concerned about the Association of Bay Area Governments, a regional agency that has asked Palo Alto to build 2,700 units in the next seven years -- a directive Shepherd called "too much growth too fast."

Shepherd said her goal is to unite the Palo Alto community and make sure other agencies' plans don't interfere with the community's quality of life. The state's mandates threaten to turn Palo Alto into a different type of community than the one residents are accustomed to, she said.

"There's this feeling that we are losing the values that brought us here," Shepherd told the Weekly.

To maintain both quality of life as well as a fiscally sound city budget, Shepherd is promoting a three-pronged approach to the city's finances: reduce compensation of city workers (whose contract she says is "not sustainable"); pass Measure A, the business-license tax; and ensure the government is operating at maximum efficiency.

Shepherd is a graduate of Leadership Midpeninsula and a treasurer for Palo Altans for Government Effectiveness (PAGE) -- the group that introduced "civic engagement for the common good" into the popular lexicon.

She said she is proud of her record in leading discussions and bringing people into the policy-making process.

In January 2008, Shepherd co-wrote an opinion piece with Ray Bacchetti, another member of PAGE, which stressed the need for "civic engagement for common good" in setting local policy.

"Civic engagement, when driven by an explicit interest in serving the common good, can reveal what we share as a community in Palo Alto," they wrote. "In its most basic form, it affirms that people are the solution, not the problem in policy making.

"It becomes a civic instrument delivering results greater than the sum of individual participants' positions."

— Gennady Sheyner

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