Our new First Family Our new First Family (January 07, 2005)

Mayor Jennifer Hosterman pushes for greater focus on quality of life issues
by Jeb Bing

It's been nearly a decade since Pleasanton's newly elected mayor Jennifer Hosterman stood on Highway 36 in Humboldt County facing possible arrest for joining thousands of others in the 1996 Headwaters Forest protest. But her commitment to the environment and energy conservation is as strong as ever.

Now, with fellow environmentalist and her co-founder of the city's Energy Committee - Matt Sullivan - at her side as a newly elected councilman, Hosterman's goal is to intensify and introduce new programs to improve the quality of life for Pleasanton residents. That will mean controlling and reducing traffic snarls on the freeways around Pleasanton. Their plan also is to reduce cut-through traffic and take the proposed West Las Positas interchange and extension of Stoneridge Drive to Livermore out of the new General Plan.

Another Hosterman goal: Substitute interlinking trails and add more open space in place of housing developments being pursued in the Kottinger Hills, North Sycamore and Happy Valley.

No doubt she'll have the strong support of her family, including her husband Michael, a downtown personal injury attorney with offices on Peters Avenue. Their three daughters, Heather, 24; Sarah, 21; and Megan, 18, all graduates of Amador Valley High School, have traveled in Latin America on missions to help those in need.

Sarah, a political studies major at UC Berkeley, where she will graduate next May, just returned from a six-month study-abroad program in Santiago, Chile. She received a standing ovation from her classmates, all Chileans, after giving her final dissertation in Spanish on Latin American politics.

Heather, the oldest, will leave Jan. 23 for Bolivia for a two-year stint in the Peace Corps. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, she was en route to a Peace Corps assignment in Nepal last September when she was called back because of renewed fighting among dissidents in that country. Her hope is to work in a Third World country when she leaves Bolivia, and eventually earn a doctorate degree and teach at a university.

Megan just graduated from Amador last June and is a freshman at Los Positas College. Active in her mother's campaign for City Council and last fall for the mayor's post, she joined her sisters in Costa Rica for her 18th birthday. She is planning an art career with a degree from San Diego State's art program.

Jennifer Hosterman met Michael at a large insurance defense law office in San Jose, where she was his secretary. They married two years later in 1980, and moved to Pleasanton in 1986. Michael, who had established his own practice, continued commuting to his San Jose office briefly, but the couple decided that their priority should be "going to school, working and playing in the same community," Jennifer Hosterman said. So he closed his practice and started over in Pleasanton.

Rebuffed both by the school district and later by the city government, Jennifer Hosterman became an activist. At first told that there was no room for Heather in a nearby school, Hosterman insisted on sitting in the back of the kindergarten class so she could home-school her daughter. Steve Maher, principal at Hart Middle School who was then the principal at Alisal Elementary, relented, agreeing that if there was room for the mother to sit in the class, there was room for the daughter, so Heather gained a seat.

That experience led to Hosterman becoming involved in the school's reading programs, field trips and the school site council, a progression that led to the school district's budget advisory and other committees.

A supporter of Mayor Ben Tarver, who served from 1988 to 1996, she also campaigned for Tom Pico, first for City Council in 1992, and then as mayor in 2000.

But it was the city's rejection of her for a position she sought on a citizens' committee in 1993 charged with updating the city's General Plan in 1996 that spurred her to more involvement in city politics.

"I thought the world of Ben Tarver and he encouraged me to serve," Hosterman said. "When I got passed over for the General Plan review committee because I didn't have a college degree, that really burned me."

So she got one and, more than that, will soon have a law degree. And, as mayor, she'll have the responsibility for steering the update of that 1996 plan.

After participating in the 1996 Headwaters Forest protest, she decided to learn more about environmental issues by enrolling in an ecology class at Los Positas College. When she received an "A" grade, she decided she could balance her responsibilities as a mother of three young daughters and enrolled at the University of San Francisco. Earning a bachelor's degree there in 2001, she enrolled at JFK University, where she will receive a law degree and plans to take the bar exam in May.

Besides completing her college education, Hosterman also moved forward with her interests in politics, seeking a City Council seat in 2000. Defeated, she stayed active, chairing the Bernal Task Force and joining Sullivan to co-found the Energy Committee. Backed by Mayor Pico, she was elected to the council two years later, and last November won 44 percent of the votes cast in a three-candidate race for mayor, becoming the city's first woman to hold the post in the 110 years since the city was incorporated.

As councilwoman, if there was a committee assignment available, Hosterman asked for it, ending up with appointments to regional water, sewer and planning committees. These assignments have paid off, she said, by bringing more regional focus to Pleasanton's needs. Just recently, only three days after her election as mayor, her colleagues on the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency appropriated $400,000 to fund a Triangle Committee she had been proposing for a study of traffic congestion on I-680, I-580 and Highway 84, and possible solutions.

"The timing was interesting," Hosterman said. "So what we are going to do is just what I had been proposing before being elected mayor - to see what we can do incrementally to get traffic moving on those three roadways that will help Pleasanton and the other cities around us."

In her focus on environmental issues, Hosterman said traffic congestion is key because of the pollution it causes in the region. As mayor, she also plans to meet with mayors in Tracy and other cities east of the Altamont Pass to coordinate improvements to the 580 corridor.

Concern over cut-through traffic is also her reason for wanting to block the long proposed construction of an interchange at I-680 and West Las Positas Boulevard and the extension of Stoneridge Drive to El Charro Road and its interchange at 580.

"We've been talking about these concerns for a long time, and we'll make the final decisions when we adopt the new General Plan late this year," she said. "I think the community for the most part now agrees that these proposals weren't such good ideas after all."

As a member of the Livermore Airport expansion study committee, Hosterman also urged the Livermore City Council to produce an environmental impact report before proceeding with those plans.

"While I feel that airport is a real amenity for the Tri-Valley, it's also important that if there is an expansion that we be allowed to know exactly what the impact will be on Pleasanton."

She also wants to revive the Energy Committee, which she and Sullivan started, turning it into a standing Environmental and Energy Commission.

"This commission would focus on environmental issues in Pleasanton as well as energy issues," she explained, "along with ways we can make our city more energy efficient and energy independent."

"At the end of my first term as mayor two years from now, I want to be able to say that we focused on energy and environmental issues, and much more. With the buildout of Pleasanton so close, it's time to focus on our quality of life related to environmental issues, especially air quality, and of course, that goes hand in hand with transportation issues and getting traffic moving on our surrounding freeways. I want to be able to show that I had a positive effect."

"I want to be able to say that we have been able to not only create a lovely community but keep this lovely, charming community just the way it is," she added. "Right now, there isn't anybody in Pleasanton who doesn't absolutely love this town. Those of us who've been lucky enough to raise our families here are really proud of the fact that we've been able to do that. Our kids have enjoyed a strong base educationally, recreationally and socially, and I want to be able to say two years from now that Pleasanton is just as lovely then as it is today."

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