30 years of mayors 30 years of mayors (April 30, 2004)

Reunion produces laughs, political tones
by Jeb Bing

To hear some of Pleasanton's former mayors talk about their legacies over the past 30 years, it's a wonder the city is still intact.

At a recent Mayors Forum, Mayor Tom Pico and seven of the city's eight former mayors assembled for what was their first and could possibly be their only summit on what their administrations accomplished. Sponsored by the Amador-Livermore Valley Historical Society, which operates the Museum On Main Street, the event was officially billed as a look at "The Lighter Side of Pleasanton Politics." For the most part it was, as the city's leadership jested over some of their own successes and failures, and sparred with each other.

Floyd Mori, mayor from 1974 to 1975, talked about the efforts he made to push a cat leash ordinance through the City Council. This came after neighbors had complained about cats jumping fences into their back yards and howling all night, disturbing their sleep. Why can't cats be controlled like dogs? Mori asked when he presented the ordinance.

But at the next council meeting, the howls came from hundreds of cat lovers who turned out to protest, including a group of 100 spurred on by a former part-owner of the Oakland Raiders, whom Mori didn't name. Sizing up both the crowd and the importance of the issue, Mori said the council took a face-saving way out of the evening by tabling the ordinance, never to be brought up again.

But former Mayor Bob Philcox won out against a similarly packed council chamber when he persuaded the council to approve what has since been called the Philcox Horse Ordinance. Beset by angry customers at First Community Bank, where he was president, Philcox told of some who had stepped in horse manure on Main Street, even while negotiating through the bank's walk-up window. His ordinance banned horses in downtown Pleasanton over the objections of scores of horseback riders from as far as Lafayette and Alamo who saddled up to fight the ordinance.

Ken Mercer, Pleasanton's longest serving mayor, told of how he and then City Manager Jim Walker almost ended up in their own city's jail. Police nabbed the two after residents complained about the suspicious pair walking in their darkened neighborhoods. Mercer said he and Walker had undertaken the walks as an informational campaign to explain why the city had turned off streetlights following the passage of Proposition 13 and the subsequent severe property tax cuts. Police, on hearing their explanation, suggested that they come up with a daylight plan for making the rounds.

Not all of the mayors' comments brought laughter. Some jeered, although politely, when local Realtor Ed Kinney said that he was the mayor who pushed an ordinance through the council to install the city's first traffic light at Santa Rita Road and Black Avenue.

"You're the one who started it all," someone shouted, pointing out that the city now has nearly 100 traffic lights, and the numbers keep growing.

A few former mayors nodded in agreement when Mayor Pico answered a question from moderator and former City Attorney Peter MacDonald asking who were some of the unusual characters to appear at council meetings.

"There's an old saying that what goes around, comes around," Pico answered. "I think if you would ask some of the former mayors here, they'd say I was one of the more interesting characters they faced."

Philcox said a local resident, Paul Tull, was someone who frequently spoke before the council and often brought laughs.

"Here was a guy coming in to tell us that we should place windmills on the Altamont to harness the wind and generate electricity," Philcox said. "We all looked at each other and thought how crazy that idea was - to put windmills on the Altamont. Little did we know how great an idea that would turn out to be."

But for all of the laughs, the meeting had a serious side. Kinney praised former mayor Warren Harding, who died last year at 83, for his vision and careful land use planning as mayor in 1960 that helped define the boundaries of both Pleasanton and its residential, commercial and office building districts.

"Warren Harding and his administration put the city on the measured growth path that we all have followed ever since," Kinney said.

But former Mayor Bob Pearson disagreed. While admiring Harding and others who served before him, Pearson acknowledged that he was a strong no-growth activist long before the term became popular. He wanted Pleasanton's growth to be capped at 40,000 to 45,000, not the 110,000 that previous mayors had suggested. He also opposed the major business centers, such as Stoneridge Shopping Center and Hacienda Business Park, although a referendum against Hacienda that he supported with Ben Tarver, who was elected mayor in 1992, failed.

He said that planners and the City Council should never have allowed residential housing in Hacienda, a zoning change that Pico and others on the panel supported. He accused Hacienda's developer Joe Callahan of attempting to fool the public by promising never to add residential property in the business park.

"I hear there's an effort again to put even more homes there," Pearson said. "You folks should go down to those council meetings and watch what's going on because there should not have ever been any residential in the Hacienda Business Park."

His comments brought strong reaction from others on the panel, who supported the business park and the later decision to mix in some apartments and townhomes.

"Joe Callahan has contributed more money to this community and its schools than anyone else," said Mercer. "He has more vision in his baby finger than most city planning departments have on their whole staff. In fact, he's the one who donated time and labor to rebuild the Amador Theater and the old City Hall that is now the Museum On Main Street."

The Mayors Forum was organized by Ed Kinney, a board member of the Museum On Main Street and a Realtor with Hometown GMAC Real Estate, who has also been the speaker at Pleasanton parades for nearly 30 years. Kinney said he got the idea from former Mayor Warren Harding, who is credited with developing the city's first General Plan in 1960. When Warren Harding died last year at the age of 83, Kinney felt some urgency in putting a reunion together while there are still nine living mayors. Besides the public event, Kinney plans to makes videotapes and transcripts from the evening available to those who use the museum archives.

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