Among the two candidates for mayor and another four seeking election to two seats on the City Council, we recommend Mayor Jennifer Hosterman for re-election to another two-year term of office and Councilman Jerry Thorne and high school teacher Cheryl Cook-Kallio for the City Council. We are making these endorsements earlier than in the past because absentee ballots will be mailed out next week with more than 50 percent of Pleasanton voters expected to vote absentee in this important national, state, regional and municipal election on Nov. 7.
Our pick for Mayor
Jennifer Hosterman is finishing her first two-year term as mayor after serving two years on the City Council. She brings to the office of mayor a lengthy residency in Pleasanton and a small business background as her family has a legal practice in downtown Pleasanton. Her three daughters attended and graduated from Pleasanton schools. Hosterman states that her primary focus is on protecting the quality of life in Pleasanton, focusing both locally and regionally on improving our transportation systems, maintaining and strengthening the business community and in being honest about her positions and views on the issues. She is also interested in the council finishing the five highest priority projects it has identified. It is hard to accomplish much as an elected official in just two years. So many things have been set in motion that we believe it would be wise to let her serve another two years. That is particularly important when it comes to regional transportation decisions.Many criticize Hosterman for her interest in allowing the City Council’s time to be spent on national and international issues. We agree that the council’s focus should be on local issues and that if a debate or discussion on world affairs is to occur that it should take place outside a regular City Council meeting. For Hosterman to be most effective in her role she will need to learn to defuse that criticism and debate and do everything she can to move those discussions to other venues. In local politics and particularly in the city of Pleasanton, debates about issues over which City Council has no control simply detract from the important business that needs to be done. While we believe her activism in this area is distracting, we do not believe it is cause to remove her from the office of mayor.
Hosterman’s leadership skills are still developing, but she has shown better temperament than her challenger, Councilman Steve Brozosky. She actually appointed him as vice-mayor during her first term only to have him then attack her at every opportunity. She also has better working relationships with more of the council than her challenger and to get things accomplished it takes three votes. We believe that she is the better choice to lead the council to make decisions in the best interest of Pleasanton. We urge a vote for Jennifer Hosterman for mayor.
Steve Brozosky is the lone challenger for the mayor’s position. Brozosky has a high tech background and took several years off after selling a business he had started to PeopleSoft. Two years ago, he formed another company that sells software to cities to help manage their customer interactions. Brozosky uses a business perspective as he approaches the financial issues facing our city and asks good questions about such matters. During his four-year term on the council he has been interested in transportation issues facing the city and has spent much of his time working on youth-related issues such as the Youth Master Plan, creating a youth Web site, ensuring that the BMX park on Stanley was completed and adding more bus routes to our schools.
The role of the mayor is to primarily work with the other members of the City Council to reach collective decisions and then to communicate them effectively to the community and to the region. We believe Brozosky would have difficulty with both of these. After four years on the Council he has fewer good relationships than the mayor he is challenging. His term has been driven by negativity as he uses the Council meetings to publicly criticize the existing mayor and other members of the council with whom he disagrees. While that might work for some in politics, Pleasanton deserves better. Pleasanton deserves a more professional, positive and mature approach focused on the issues and not personalities. We don’t believe Brozosky’s communication skills or tactics are what voters expect in this politically active and highly educated community.
While we also believe that a candidate’s business interests should not be considered in determining who is elected to Pleasanton’s council, we are concerned that, during his term on the council, Brozosky has joined and helped form a business whose primary mission is to do business with cities. While there may not be a legal conflict, there is certainly the potential for the business interests to cloud the decisions that are being made from the council dais, and that could create the appearance of conflict. Being mayor representing a business that does business with other cities, including at lest one in the Tri-Valley, could certainly have some advantage for Brozosky but potentially has more disadvantages for the voters of Pleasanton. We cannot support Brozosky for mayor.
Our picks for City Council
Voters are being asked to select two of the four candidates running for City Council. Three of the candidates have sought office before and one is a newcomer. As we did with the mayoral candidates, the Pleasanton Weekly interviewed all the council candidates and discussed their opinions on the issues, their involvement in local politics and their passion for Pleasanton. We also considered their ability to work individually and as a part of the City Council to make decisions in the best interest of Pleasanton. We recommend that you vote for Cheryl Cook-Kallio and Jerry Thorne.Cheryl Cook-Kallio was a delight to interview because she is intelligent, articulate and energetic. Her answers to our questions were straightforward and clearly reasoned from her two decades of experience in our community raising her family and having children in our schools. Her positions on the issues are based on common sense decision-making with an eye towards fairness and not on political expediency. While she is a newcomer to local politics, she has a strong background in government as a high school teacher and coach of a “We the People” competition civics team. As an expert on government and civic obligations, we are fortunate that she has decided it is time to give back to Pleasanton. We urge a vote for Cheryl Cook-Kallio for City Council.
Jerry Thorne is an incumbent on the City Council and during his short tenure he has proven that he is a calm, rational participant in the legislative process. Jerry brings private sector decision-making and perspective to a City Council that is often long on process and shorter on accomplishments. He carefully considers all sides of an issue prior to making a decision and is very measured in his thoughts and actions. He approaches his work on the council in a non-emotional and non-confrontational manner, which is needed on a council, although he sometimes digress into irrelevant tangents. Thorne is a strong supporter of our children and parks having served 10 years on the Parks and Recreation Commission with two terms as chair of the Commission. We urge a vote for Jerry Thorne for City Council.
This is Brian Arkin’s second run for City Council and our concerns regarding his ability to serve on the council remain the same. He is very bright, but during his time on the Planning Commission his ability to be effective has been hit and miss. He is concerned about the completion of the General Plan. But while being in a position of influence, he has been unable to convince others to move the process along and has sometimes lengthened it himself through his lines of questioning. His emotions tend to get in his way when it comes to making rational decisions and some of his ideas are more esoteric than practical. Brian Arkin is someone who makes a good advisor but is not the best decision-maker. We cannot support him for a seat on the City Council.
Dan Faustina is also running for the council a second time. He grew up in the community and would bring a more youthful perspective to the issues which would be a welcome addition to local politics. Unfortunately, it is not clear which is more important to him; being elected or being elected to the City Council. His opinions on the issues do not resonate as his own but sound like something he believes will get him elected. We like his enthusiasm for public service but do not believe his perspective and his approach are developed well enough to serve as a member of the City Council. We cannot support him for election to the Council.
