Council candidates cite experience as key to election Council candidates cite experience as key to election (October 01, 2004)

Extensive qualifications give voters a challenge at ballot box
by Jeb Bing

Agreeing that traffic congestion, inadequate affordable housing and the need to complete a new General Plan would be their top priorities, the three candidates for Pleasanton City Council are urging voters to consider their years of experience in government and business in deciding which ones to elect Nov. 2.

Each cited significant and unique qualifications to fill the two council seats that they are seeking.

The candidates are former school board member Cindy McGovern, with 25 years of public service in the community; veteran Planning Commissioner Matt Sullivan, who also chairs the Pleasanton Energy Committee; and Parks and Recreation Commissioner Jerry Thorne, who also heads the Bernal Community Task Force and recently retired as an executive with a Fortune 100 company.

At candidates' forums sponsored this week by the Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce and last week by the League of Women Voters, Thorne summed up the challenge to voters:

"I believe this community needs to ratchet up its expectations of performance, professionalism and experience of its community leaders. We have managed to maintain a really wonderful small town environment here in Pleasanton and I intend to keep it that way. But we have to understand that we are a city that's growing towards 70,000 people, and we simply cannot continue to elect our officials as if we were a small country town.

"We must elect leaders who know what it truly means to be personally responsible and accountable for sorting through all the input that comes in and making the hard decisions that are in the best interest of the entire community."

Sullivan agreed, citing his own service for the last 10 years in neighborhood and city organizations, including the last six on the Planning Commission.

"I believe that these experiences and my passion for community-centered government have prepared me well to be your next City Council member," he told those at the public forums. "If elected, I will work hard to achieve these goals, with a new General Plan that evolves from public participation and is reflected in our community values."

McGovern said her 25 years of service on city committees and with the school district qualify her for election to the City Council. She stepped down last year after 10 years on the Pleasanton school board, where she was twice elected as chairwoman. She also was a founding member of the Pleasanton Legislative Action Committee, and a founder and chairwoman of both the Pleasanton Youth Collaborative and the Youth Master Plan Committee.

With regard to updating the General Plan, McGovern said that as a councilwoman she would want it "to make sense for our community, protect our quality of life, identify where and the type of housing to be developed, set the goal for traffic circulation, call for economic stability, and preserve open space and conserve resources."

Sullivan, who as a planning commissioner has been part of the General Plan public review and hearing process for more than a year, said he would work to make sure the updated plan, now scheduled for completion in December 2005, would adhere to the 29,000-unit housing cap voters imposed in 1996, when the last plan was approved.

He would also work to remove provisions in that 1996 plan that call for an interchange at West Las Positas and I-680, and an extension of Stoneridge Drive to El Charro Road.

"Because of regional cut-through traffic, I oppose the West Las Positas interchange and the Stoneridge extension," Sullivan said. "Both of those would just open up more ways for regional traffic to use our city streets to avoid the freeways. We need to be working regionally, instead, to find regional solutions to get traffic eastward over the Altamont."

McGovern said she also opposes building a West Las Positas interchange, but suggested that Stoneridge Drive might be extended as a loop to Busch Road to provide residents a second access to eastside homes, although she would not want it connected to El Charro.

Thorne said that although more than $1 million has been spent over the last six years to determine if the West Las Positas interchange should be built or scrapped, the city still doesn't have a community-wide impact analysis on how that decision would affect future traffic needs in Pleasanton. He also called for a citywide traffic study on the Stoneridge extension issue.

On housing, the three candidates said the city should allow more affordable units to be built to serve seniors, young families and those in the workforce who want to live here. But they questioned targets of up to 4,000 more housing units demanded by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), pointing out that there are only about 1,500 units left to build in Pleasanton before the 29,000-unit cap is reached.

"The housing cap and urban growth boundary lines are both very important planning tools for the city of Pleasanton and both of them were approved by the voters at the last General Plan update in 1996," Sullivan explained. "I would not support changing either one of those and, in fact, the City Council cannot change them without a vote of the people."

"But I do believe that with the remaining units we have under our cap, the focus should be on affordability," he added. "We have enough million-dollar mansions in the hills and we don't need any more of that type of housing."

Thorne, too, said he would honor the housing cap agreement, but suggested that affordable housing could be built on Staples Ranch on the far eastside of the city, in Hacienda Business Park and at the Vintage Hills shopping center.

"If you ask an aging person who has tried to find housing in this city that's truly affordable, housing that you can afford on a Social Security income, then you can understand that we can do just a little bit better," Thorne said. "There are a number of different properties we can look at around the city to meet these needs."

McGovern called for the city to seek the development of "age-in-place" facilities where single seniors or senior couples could live, staying together in the same complex, whether they could live independently or in assisted living or skilled nursing care units on the same site.

"I also like the idea of allowing second units where homeowners can give their elders a place to live with them," she said.

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