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Full plate for Judy Kleinberg

by Bill D'Agostino

Although she usually votes with the Palo Alto City Council's six-member majority, Councilwoman Judy Kleinberg is viewed as one who doesn't necessarily play sides.

That is most accurately reflected in the early list of her re-election supporters, which includes Councilwoman Hillary Freeman, one of the three council members who usually find themselves in the minority.

"She's got people who support her and value what she brings to the table even through they may disagree with each other," said Barbara Spreng, a long-time friend and Kleinberg's campaign co-chair. (Kleinberg is one of four incumbents currently running for re-election to the City Council.)

Kleinberg has also co-authored "colleagues' memos" with both sides of the council's political fence. She penned a memo with Freeman seeking information on a report showing that police officers search African-Americans in high frequency, but also drafted one with Councilman Jim Burch requesting an -- ultimately successful -- resolution against the war in Iraq.

There doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day for all of Kleinberg's community involvement. While still maintaining an active law practice, Kleinberg, 57-years-old and a mother of two, has founded -- and worked for -- numerous nonprofits during her 20 years in Palo Alto, mostly advocating youth and environmental issues.

Since getting on the council four years ago (she was the top vote-getter in 1999), Kleinberg has also been a strong proponent for alternative transit, pushing the creation of the city shuttle, and affordable housing.

While she voted in favor of a controversial housing project that would place 61 condos at 800 High St., she said it is "not the kind of affordable housing that I have been pushing." She still approved the proposal because the land is near transit and entirely surrounded by commercial buildings, although she hopes similar projects in the future contain more affordable units.

Like the council incumbents, the fate of 800 High Street is in the hands of voters on Nov. 4. The ongoing battle over that project illustrates a division in the community between those who wish to build more housing and those who desire to preserve low-density neighborhoods.

Carefully toeing a tight-political line, Kleinberg wants to please both sides -- by encouraging developers to build new affordable housing but also advocating those units be kept away from neighborhoods, such as in now-vacant office buildings near Bayshore Freeway.

"I'd like to see us find ways to disperse those units throughout the community so everybody has their fair share and the schools aren't as impacted in one location, or the parks or the traffic," she said.

Another new housing project she is hoping to push forward is a joint city-school complex for teachers at a substation on Alma Street, located behind 800 High St. The substation is currently marked for closure.

A Providence, R. I. native, Kleinberg moved to the Bay Area to attend law school at UC Berkeley. After graduation, she got a job at a prestigious San Francisco law firm, only to be shunned and even sexually harassed by her fellow lawyers. That led her to join the women's rights movement, and she eventually became president of the California Abortion Rights Action League.

In the mid-'70s, she was a legal affairs reporter with KTVU-TV for two years, part of why some supporters believe she is so media-savvy and well-spoken.

But that ability was not apparent earlier this year when Kleinberg received an avalanche of negative press for chairing the city's Policy and Services Committee. That committee took heat for drafting a widely-ridiculed code of conduct that attempted to come up with rules for the council to behave better. In the national press, the rules were often misinterpreted as containing a law banning council members from frowning and shrugging during meetings.

Nasty letters, especially aimed at Kleinberg, were sent from throughout the world.

"I think that there was undue attention put upon her role in that," said Debbie Mytels, a supporter and friend. The code was approved by the full council, but without the part asking that council members refrain from disapproving body language.

In 1984, Kleinberg moved to Palo Alto when her husband Jim Kleinberg (then a lawyer, and now a Superior Court judge) opened a legal practice in San Jose.

Her first major splash in city affairs came in 1994, when she founded "Safer Summers," a set of activities for teenagers to help them socialize, have fun and, as the name implies, stay safe in the summer months.

"There were a lot of people in the community who observed the need but it was Judy who jumped in and did it," Spreng said.

After Sept. 11, Kleinberg jumped in again, co-founding Palo Alto REDI (Resources for Emergencies and Disasters Initiative), which aimed to make the community more prepared for a major catastrophe. Palo Alto REDI helps neighborhood blocks prepare for disasters, while also getting all the major public safety organizations -- from the Red Cross to the Police Department -- meeting on a regular basis.

"I'm not 'Chicken-Little-the-sky-is-falling,' but if things don't go according to plan it's usually because there is no plan. When it comes to emergency preparedness, you must have a plan," Kleinberg said.

"Public safety is the most important thing that a community can do. That's why when the Wild West was formed, who was the only employee that they had? The sheriff, that was it. Then we had a bureaucracy of 1,200 employees. But every community knows that's the first thing."

E-mail Bill D'Agostino at bdagostino@paweekly.com