Publication Date: Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Our Town: The mayors look back
Our Town: The mayors look back
(November 09, 2005) by Don Kazak
They are patient when facing a City Council chambers packed with upset people. They rein in wayward colleagues who veer from the subject at hand. They cut ribbons and turn over ceremonial shovels of dirt.
They are the mayors. Fifteen former Palo Alto mayors -- and current Mayor Jim Burch -- gathered on the stage of Children's Theater Sunday afternoon for a fond and sometimes funny look back at the city's politics over the last 40 years, beginning with Ed Arnold (mayor in 1965-66 and 1968-70).
Arnold got the afternoon going by quipping about his colleagues: "We never met a microphone we didn't like."
He was mayor during the city's most polarized politics, featuring a bitter recall election in 1967. One of his colleagues from those days, Frances Dias (mayor in 1966-68), noted that the political bickering was never as bad as what was reported. And, she said, the council managed to do the city's business despite the squabbling.
But some of the 16 people on stage Sunday were not exactly the best of political friends when they served together.
Kirke Comstock (mayor 1971-74), noted that he had been a community activist before he was elected to the council in 1963.
"When I first came on the council, here were these people I had been saying terrible things about -- and they were nice," he said.
Much of what defines Palo Alto today was enacted by foresight by past councils and their mayors. Alan Henderson (mayor 1979-81) said three of the key decisions made by the council in the early 1970s were the rezoning of the foothills and baylands to open space and enacting a 50-foot height limit for commercial buildings.
A key moment for Larry Klein (1984, 1989) came during a late night discussion with former Councilman Frank Patitucci in the parking garage under City Hall after a council meeting. A plan was hatched to put the utility users tax on the November 1987 ballot. Today, the Palo Alto Unified School District gets nearly $7 million a year from the tax and the community gets to use school play fields and Cubberley Community Center.
Several former mayors mentioned tussles with Stanford University over its development plans and over the hospital. Stanford Hospital was jointly owned by the city and the university when it opened in 1959, with the university buying out the city's ownership later in the 1960s.
Today, town-gown relations are in a quiescent period -- witness the soccer fields being built for the city on Stanford-owned land at El Camino Real and Page Mill Road.
As the 16 mayors offered three-minute-plus recollections of the year or years sitting in the center seat on the council dais, they also introduced the wives of two former mayors who died after leaving office, Fred Eyerly and Jack Sutorius.
The former mayors weren't all serious. Dick Rosenbaum (1998) remembers a highlight of his year in office was a chance to get on stage at Stanford with the famed Twyla Tharp modern dance company and participate in a new dance Tharp had choreographed.
"I danced the dance of the pregnant woman," Rosenbaum said. "It had nine steps" which Tharp herself taught him. When his big moment under the lights came, "I was introduced as the mayor -- of Menlo Park."
Seven of the 16 mayors on stage Sunday were women, and Jean McCown (1993) remembers a special lunch she had in early 1993 with two other women mayors, Sharifa Wilson of East Palo Alto and Gail Slocum of Menlo Park. The three set in motion plans for the two cities to help East Palo Alto, building on the cooperation begun when Gary Fazzino (1992) was mayor the previous year and an anti-drug police team from the three cities began arresting drug dealers in East Palo Alto.
Some troubled times were more personal. The first recollection Dena Mossar (2003) made was being criticized (by former Councilwoman Nancy Lytle) just before her election as mayor. That touched off a difficult year for Mossar in running council meetings and an even more difficult year for Lytle, who lost her re-election bid that fall.
Still, any job which lets you dress up as Sparky the Fire Dog (Lanie Wheeler, 1996) isn't all bad.
Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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