November 11, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

A shift in the balance?

by Bill D'Agostino

By choosing Yoriko Kishimoto and Larry Klein as the top vote-getters in Tuesday's City Council election, residents arguably awarded a mandate to those critical of the current balance of power between the council and the city manager.

"I would agree that one strong message that comes out of the election is yes, they want a strong council," said Kishimoto, one of the race's two incumbents. She received nearly 10,000 votes.

Klein, who was leading early in the evening but eventually dropped to the second spot, is also a familiar face in City Hall, having served on the council from 1981 to 1989. He received approximately 9,500 votes.

During the campaign, those two candidates argued the current council was failing to exert leadership on critical issues, therefore incorrectly allowing City Manager Frank Benest to make policy.

Rectifying that will be done "on an issue-by-issues basis," Klein said.

However, council members not facing re-election this year feel they haven't ceded control to Benest, likely setting up a conflict.

"It's something the council will have to work out amongst ourselves," Kishimoto said.

The third top voter-getter, environmental activist Peter Drekmeier, received nearly 9,500 votes. He had not been as strong a critic of the current balance, but argued for more interim reports, so the council could better oversee city administration.

Drekmeier was the only winner in the race who had not been a candidate in a previous local election.

Also getting elected in the race for five seats were incumbent Jack Morton and school-board member John Barton, who received approximately 8,000 votes each, 1,500 fewer than Drekmeier.

During the campaign, Drekmeier pushed for redeveloping existing plots of land in Palo Alto to construct more housing, saying it was better to build here than populating the state's greenbelt region. But the underlying problem is overpopulation, he argued.

"It's a tough issue to address at a local level," Drekmeier said Wednesday.

On election day, numerous voters praised Drekmeier's environmental passion. Mary Christine Erickson voted only for him in the council race when she cast her ballot at St. Elizabeth Seton School on Channing Avenue.

Standing outside in the brisk yet sunny fall weather, Erickson said she liked that Drekmeier doesn't have obvious connections to real-estate developers and feels the current council takes too long to make decisions, attempting to please everyone.

"I'm not too crazy about the atmosphere," Erickson said. "It's like, 'Do I really need these people?'"

The three new council members will replace outgoing members Jim Burch, Hillary Freeman and Vic Ojakian in January.

Both Barton and Morton were only a few hundred votes ahead of the sixth-place candidate, Planning and Transportation Commissioner Karen Holman. Former Mayor Gary Fazzino, Palo Alto's unofficial political historian, said it was the closest council race in nearly 40 years.

"They are really bunched up," Fazzino observed at 9 p.m. Tuesday, when just 155 votes separated fourth place from sixth place.

As of Wednesday, there were approximately 23,000 absentee ballots still to be counted in Santa Clara County, but it's unknown how many were from Palo Alto. On Wednesday morning, Holman did not officially concede, but agreed, "It doesn't look good."

For much of the evening Tuesday, Holman trailed Barton by fewer than 200 votes. Barton eventually overtook Morton for the fourth spot but Holman never caught up to either. The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters has 28 days to count the remaining ballots.

Also failing to get elected were Harold "Skip" Justman, Danielle Martell, Norman Carroll and Victor Frost. The latter three received fewer votes than Roger Smith, the founder and former CEO of the Silicon Valley Bank, who had dropped out of the race early on. Carroll and Frost also received fewer votes than Sanford Forte, a member of the city's Library Advisory Commission, who also withdrew.

"I can't believe I'm losing to Sanford," a clearly disappointed Carroll said Tuesday night at a posh party with other candidates at the Garden Court Hotel in downtown Palo Alto. Carroll was dressed in all black, as usual, and spoke while looking at the election results projected onto a wall.

Also at the party was Morton, an accountant, who sounded more like a defeated incumbent than one winning re-election, albeit narrowly.

"It was a hard election," Morton complained, citing the public's general dissatisfaction with politicians. Plus, he added, "We have not been the most effective council in the City of Palo Alto's history."

Scanning preliminary results, Barton said he felt voters wanted candidates with experience and proven track records.

The central issues in the race were the city's stagnant $120.7 million general fund budget and the pace of real-estate growth. The former resonated with Rob Lancefield, who voted at Trinity Lutheran Church on Middlefield Road. He picked candidates, like Klein and Morton, whom he felt had experience with difficult fiscal situations. Lancefield was also concerned about environmental issues such as global warming.

"We're facing a lot of intractable problems," he said.

The issue of real-estate growth motivated Mary and Jack Healy, who voted at Saint Andrew's Church on Alma Street. They worry about the impact of numerous large housing developments planned in south Palo Alto.

"I know people need a place to live, but it seems like an awful lot in a small area," Mary Healy said.

The couple voted for four of the five eventual winners but chose Holman over Barton, who was more pro-housing.

Jack Healy said he was tempted to vote for Danielle Martell, a police department critic who boasted a satirical cartoon featuring a penis-shaped police headquarters on her campaign Web page, but his wife warned against it. Mary Healy called Martell a "rabble rouser."

Martell failed to make a dent with voters, having only received approximately 2,000 votes. Now that she's not joining the council, she has a personal crisis to address: Her landlord recently gave her a 30-day notice to leave her downtown apartment.

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

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