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Lytle unafraid of controversy

by Bill D'Agostino

Even Councilwoman Nancy Lytle is sick of reading about Nancy Lytle.

The center of controversy after controversy on the City Council, Lytle's political opponents accuse her of being the prime force that has brought about constant bickering among council members.

Two of the most recent flaps centered around private e-mails sent to the city attorney, although she has been accused many times during her four-year tenure of breaking faith with colleagues and using behind-the-scenes maneuverings to gain unfair political advantage. (Lytle's backers argue those events were drummed up to make her look bad by those afraid of her community support.)

But Lytle -- now running for re-election -- doesn't want to talk about herself or the storms she has been accused of brewing.

"There's been too much coverage of Nancy Lytle," she said.

Because of that reluctance, the public may never know the person behind the hullabaloos. During a recent interview, Lytle would not answer certain questions about herself personally -- including a simple query about why "Casablanca" and "To Have and Have Not" are her favorite movies.

"One of the problems in our council culture is that we've focused too much on individual council members," she said. "What I'm hearing from the public ... is that they really, really want to focus on the public's needs and the issues that are the community's desires. That's where I'd like to spend my time and where I'd like this interview to focus."

Currently the manager of government and community relations for the city of San Jose's Redevelopment Agency, Lytle served as a planning official for the city of Palo Alto for a decade in the late '80s and early '90s.

Lytle's boss in Palo Alto, former Planning Director Ken Shreiber, described her as a "bubbling personality" with "high energy" who would push for public participation.

"She had a real knack for getting people involved," Shreiber said.

Lytle's political career can be traced back to her own discontent with previous council members.

On the night of Feb. 2, 1998, Lytle's home and neighborhood were flooded when the San Francisquito Creek jumped its banks during heavy El Nino storms.

"We all spent a week digging ourselves out of silt and digging ourselves out of muck" but the neighbors never saw a "single elected official in our neck of the woods," she said. Since those officials "weren't out in my neighborhood and were not consoling victims of a natural disaster, I realized our council was out of touch with the community."

Soon after, then-Mayor Gary Fazzino called Lytle to ask her to run for council. She took up that request and ultimately won a seat in the November 1999 campaign.

On the council, Lytle is still the voice of the disaffected Palo Altan.

Many of her early endorsements are a who's-who of residents and groups unhappy with current City Hall's goings-on, from attorney Dick Alexander (who spends his own money to contest the city's spending habits) to the firefighters union (who were angered with the council's vote to cut their budget) to library advisory commissioner Tom Wyman (who was the lone dissenter on the commission's recommendation to shut down Downtown Library).

One of the things that Lytle's supporters like is her willingness to go against the majority of her colleagues on the elected body.

"It's not always easy to stand up and be the minority voice, but it's called for when it comes to the public interest," Karen Holman, Lytle's campaign co-chair and friend, said.

Among the four council members running for re-election, Lytle has the most divergent record. She is the only one that voted against the city's current budget, for instance. Lytle said the budget did not reflect community priorities because it was "based on staff-driven prioritizations."

As an example, Lytle said the city chose to spend money on repaving a parking lot in the Baylands rather than upgrading libraries or other areas drawing high public use. Although the Baylands improvements will make the lot more environmentally favorable by reducing run-off and is partially funded by a grant, Lytle argues that nobody in the community asked for that lot to be upgraded.

"There's many areas in the community where we need to reinvest," she said.

One way to pry loose money for larger capital projects like libraries and athletic fields, she said, would be to simplify the process for reviewing the design guidelines that homeowners have to follow when applying to construct a new single-family home or expanding an existing one.

"There's a lot of discretion in the (law's) code; I don't think people are comfortable with that," she said. "I don't think staff is administering as it is written either. I think they're trying to turn it into something very objective, because that's what they're comfortable with and I believe that's all they should feel comfortable with. ... I don't think it's been successful and I think it's gone way beyond in terms of cost what we were told."

Bucking the council majority, Lytle also voted against 800 High St., a 60-unit condo complex located near downtown. She did vote in favor of a smaller, reconfigured project. The 800 High St. project is now the center of Measure C on the city's November ballot, after residents living near the project gathered signatures complaining about the project's size.

"The problem with 800 High was that it was done at a very high density, with very large units, very expensive units and fully parked," she said. Since there is so much parking for the complex's residents, there wasn't enough "opportunity" for a development that would encourage residents to use mass transit, she said.

In her four years in office, Lytle credits herself for getting the community to realize the problems with the city's library system, although she now admits the library measure -- a $49.5 million bond on the November ballot last year -- was too big.

Lytle is also not in favor of closing Downtown Library, as the library advisory commission has recommended.

"I wouldn't support closing any libraries. I do though think the city needs to focus -- as we did in the library bond measure -- on making three libraries our primary system and really de-emphasizing downtown and College Terrace," by using volunteers.

On her Web site (www.nancylytle.net), Lytle writes, "I accept my share of responsibility" for the council's "personal disagreements and political infighting" by not taking "steps to mitigate it." But in the interview, she placed the blame elsewhere, saying that contentiousness among council members has been wrought because the city's traditional power brokers are afraid of change.

"I believe I am a person who has caused the community to face the challenging questions and confront them directly," she said. "That makes people uncomfortable."

Many of those issues surround development and how dense Palo Alto should grow. Some neighborhood leaders, for instance, support Lytle because she is seen as protecting neighborhood quality, unlike other council members and incumbents.

Local newspapers have primarily focused on Lytle due to a series of flaps that originated with her actions (and often her e-mails), but she and her supporters believe the events were either blown out of proportion or the fault of someone else.

Late in 2002, an attempt by a few council members to quash an e-mail Lytle sent to the city attorney led to three members walking out of a closed meeting. Later, Councilman Jack Morton -- one of those who walked out -- wrote a memo accusing Lytle and others of illegally meeting behind closed doors, and of unethically keeping information private from the rest of the council.

The memo led to lawsuits by two local newspapers, including the Weekly, who successfully convinced the council to release Lytle's e-mail (and others like it in the future). Some in Lytle's camp accuse Morton of acting improperly by making claims of illegality that were, to some extent, rebuffed by two attorneys who invested those claims.

In his memo, Morton also accused Lytle and others of asking too many questions, unnecessarily wasting time. The reason she asks so many questions, Lytle said, is because city staff has not always presented all sides of policy questions in their reports.

"If you have an unanimous council and there's no debate on which set of values is more important, you don't have to do as much of that," Lytle said. But since the council currently represents "a spectrum of positions" then "it's a little more work for staff."

"For those of us who do feel its our obligation to have oversight of policy decision and not just accept the staff recommendations carte blanche, than those questions are legitimate questions and need to be asked and by golly we were all elected to ask those tough questions," she said.

Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com