Publication Date: Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Editorial: Real vs. flashy City Council issues
Editorial: Real vs. flashy City Council issues
(August 17, 2005) A baker's dozen field of candidates will raise many issues -- but sustaining city revenues and the environment needs to be high on any list
By 5 p.m. today (Wednesday) Palo Alto voters will know precisely who's in or out of the City Council and school board races leading up to the Nov. 8 election.
Five openings -- a majority of the nine seats -- exist on the City Council, with three incumbents (Mayor Jim Burch, Hillary Freeman and Vic Ojakian) not running and two only two incumbents (Yoriko Kishimoto and Jack Morton) vying for reelection.
It seems residents will be looking at the likely 12 or 13 candidates to either affirm existing directions or change course. There will be much talk of "leadership" -- an elusive concept that often determines whether outcomes are positive or negative.
Some have suggested the large field of candidates indicates significant dissatisfaction or anger with how things are being run in the city.
But it's hardly a record, and it's not surprising in light of the three open seats. In the bitter 1967 all-council or "recall" election, 21 candidates went after the 11 seats open -- in which four of six slow-growth "residentialists" were bounced from the council to be replaced by five generally moderate "establishment" candidates.
That turnout was matched only by the 21 candidates who ran in 1909, the year voters approved the City Charter and elected an entirely new 15-member council. There were 18 candidates in the field in 1973 and 1977, according to numbers compiled by former mayor and unofficial council historian Gary Fazzino.
So a dozen or so candidates is not unusual, and does not in itself indicate a higher-than-usual dissatisfaction with directions or city leadership.
And despite harsh and consistent attacks from some critics, polls show a consistently high citizen satisfaction with how things are being run.
Yet coasting on the laurels of positive poll results is dangerous. Public attitudes can be volatile, and will shift depending on news from City Hall -- especially if there start to be significant cutbacks in valued city services.
As outlined in a campaign preview story (Weekly, July 20), a core issue in this campaign is likely to be "the budget," the $120.7-million annual city-spending document that translates directly into staffing, which in turn defines services available to residents.
Yet a thick, complex document is virtually impossible to fashion into a winning campaign issue -- so watch for "lightning rod" issues, with the budget as a backdrop.
One such emerging issue is whether an "auto row" should be built along Bayshore Freeway between Embarcadero and San Antonio roads. A study of replacing the city's Municipal Services Center on East Bayshore Frontage Road with a couple of auto dealerships was narrowly approved by the council this month. But, surprise, both candidates for reelection -- Morton and Kishimoto, plus two other council members -- voiced strong opposition because of visual impact on nearby baylands park areas.
No matter that a council-appointed Retail Action Committee -- with representatives of slow-growth neighborhood organizations and business interests -- has concurred that without some type of auto row development along Bayshore the city will likely lose major auto dealerships and eventually $2 million to $3 million annually in sales-tax revenues.
Translate those revenues into city services, and imagine a few years from now the public reaction to cut after cut into those services. This will be a political issue of the first magnitude, but will relate to decisions made now, or in the near future.
The fact that the double-edged auto-row-vs.-revenues issus has run into the council campaign probably means the city will be unable to garner the staff or council-level support and collective ability to put an auto row together in the real world.
In other words, the auto row idea ran squarely into the decades-old baylands-preservation sentiment in town at the worst possible time -- and now looks to us more like a dead duck than something that can fly. Landowners approached by the city in other areas along Bayshore show little enthusiasm for an auto row on their properties, largely because of lower rents dealers can pay.
Yet how is it that Mountain View can gather the community will, or nerve, to actually buy an auto-dealership site along Bayshore in less sensitive, already developed areas, while Palo Alto can't?
Isn't the ability to define priorities and hammer out solutions the real issue facing Palo Alto voters this year?
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