City Council Candidate Assessment 2009
by Douglas Moran

Focus: This is not intended to be a comprehensive assessment of the City Council candidates, but rather to focus on information that is likely to be unavailable to the ordinary voter. This is information that comes from my personal contact with the candidates over the course of the campaign, if not years, augmented by what I hear from others similarly involved. For example, how the candidate has grown (or not) during the campaign and how they perform in highly interactive discussions of the issues. And the way a candidate talks about an issue in an interactive discussion reveals much that is unavailable in campaign literature.

My criteria for selecting candidates are:

1. Are they likely to be effective, contributing Council members? Especially:
   • Do they demonstrate enough interest in the issues to be effective decision-makers?
   • For newcomers, are they likely to get up-to-speed in a reasonable time?
   • Are they able to structure and enunciate their ideas/concerns/...? Both for participating in debate and for informing residents of what they should be aware of about the issues.
2. Are they likely to listen to residents and seriously factor in what they hear into their decisions?
3. Their positions on issues. Since everyone will have their own assessment of positions, my comments here will be limited to information that is not in general circulation.

My background: I am a long-time neighborhood leader (Barron Park) and have been involved in many of the issues being discussed in this campaign. As one of the principals behind the Palo Alto Neighborhoods (PAN) Candidates Questionnaire and Candidates Forum, I attended a large number of candidate events—all the announced kickoffs, two forums and several private events—where I listened to the candidates, both in their speeches and discussions with myself and especially others. As the compiler of the PAN Questionnaire, I read all the candidates' responses to all the questions at least twice. I also created a Guide to the PAN Candidates Questionnaire giving details behind the questions and expected candidate responses. (Questionnaire at PANeighborhoods.org, Guide at DougMoran.org plus an Index for the YouTube video of the Candidates Forum).

Request: The effort required to produce documents such as this are warranted only if it is useful to enough people, so:

• Let me know how useful it was with this two-question survey
• Forward it to others who you think would find useful

Disclosure: My current expectation is to vote for Hackmann, Holman, Klein, Leong and Scharff.

Note on candidates on the Business License Tax / Measure A: I am deeply dissatisfied with the positions of all the candidates over the BLT:

• The supporters treat the intentions of the BLT as the key issue, dismissing as irrelevant its sloppy drafting, with its uncertainties and unintended consequences. "We don't plan to enforce..." is not a valid answer to concerns. Neither are statements that the ordinance will be something other than what is on the ballot.
• As for the opponents, questions intended to distinguish opposition to a BLT in general versus specific features of Measure A have not shown those candidates to have considered the difference.

Leon Leong

1. Effective?: Leong has been the positive surprise of this campaign. At the two forums I attended, he had answers demonstrating a depth of knowledge and interest that was missing from many of the other candidates. Several ordinary citizens commented on this to me and one who was keeping a scorecard at the PAN forum rated him the highest. This is significant because the more prominent candidates get tens of hours of help from their campaign committees on honing their message (5-10 people investing 3-10 hours each for a bigger name). Leong has no such help (that I know of). That he got up-to-speed so quickly and shows intense interest in key issues bodes well. Example, on the budget, he presented as well or better than Klein (incumbent) and the candidates who are accountants. Additionally, he has an approach to issues compatible with his background in computer science, which would be a welcome complement to the approaches engendered by the professions currently dominating Council.
2. Listen?: In my conversations, I found him intellectually curious and very open to new data and analyses.
3. Positions?: The PAN forum and other discussions showed a deep interest in the details of the budget, and an intensity about how densification was damaging the character of Palo Alto.

Karen Holman

1. Effective?: Land-use decisions underlie most of what the City does: They determine revenue, costs, demands for services and the overall sense of community. Holman has a very strong background in these decisions from eight years on the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) and has pushed various initiatives. An understanding of the complexities, tradeoffs and nuances of an issue are highly desirable in a decision-maker, but such people can have problems being fully effective in debate and other forms of advocacy (the awareness of all the linkages inhibits keeping a tight focus on the most important aspect at hand). Be aware that Council members role is not just to make individual votes at Council members, but to convince each other, staff and the public. Plus they also represent Palo Alto in various regional bodies. Holman has made noticeable progress in this area during the campaign, but still falls short of being good at advocacy. However, remember that this highly preferable to someone who is a strong advocate of ill-considered positions.
2. Listen?: As a neighborhood leader, I have help residents with various issues before the PTC and they have come away impressed by Holman: She factored what they said into her comments in a way that showed them that she had listened and understood, and was honoring their concerns.
3. Positions?:
   • Holman's approach to development— slogan: Zone for what you want— is in stark contrast to the policy of the current and past Councils. You will hear Council members dismiss concerns about the risks of particular zoning by saying approximately "Don't worry, no one is going to build that" despite many, many examples over the years that this gets us into trouble. (In this campaign, I heard Council member Klein say this (at a coffee)). For example, in 2002-2003 Council designated the Hyatt-Rickey's hotel for conversion to housing (to satisfy the ABAG requirement) and then were highly upset when it occurred (substantial loss of tax revenue).
   • Holman is also notable for taking the long view on zoning and development. Zoning is slow to change and can be even longer to take effect (until the owner decides to replace the existing building). Current and past Councils have routinely taken a short-term view, considering projects in isolation and rejecting concerns about cumulative impacts (Council members will publicly dismiss such concerns with "A little more won't hurt.").
   • The aspects of her campaign plank of Honoring the Public Trust have not gotten much discussion (because most of the other candidates don't have the background to appreciate the issue?).

Greg Scharff

1. Effective?: Like many of the other candidates, Scharff entered the race with little background on the issues. During the campaign, he has shown good growth over the wide range of issues confronting the City.
2. Listen?: This growth during the campaign is due to listening to a wide range of people. His initial base was a segment of the business community, but he now has support from a variety of neighborhood leaders and other segments of the community.
3. Positions?:
   • His statements on development/housing/densification shows that he understands and feels the issue and isn't just echoing a vague impression: In talking about the "Smart Growth" approach that Palo Alto continues to follow despite abundant evidence that it doesn't delivery, he is the only candidate I have heard use words like fallacies and delusions.
   • In August he was a signatory (but not author) of the over-the-top arguments against Measure A (the Business License Tax) but has since expressed his opposition in more reasonable terms.

Larry Klein

1. Effective?:
   • Klein's biggest contribution to Council could be his experience and background knowledge, both from his current 4-year term and from his time on the Council in the 1990s.
   • In public sessions, Klein routinely occupies middle ground and focuses on refinements of proposals. Most of his advocacy is behind the scenes and thus difficult to judge/report.
   • On development projects, he appears to largely accept what developers claim is practical, and is willing to grant substantial exemptions to zoning and the Comprehensive Plan.
   • Decisions that he sees as mistakes, such as Hyatt Rickey's (now Arbor Real), he treats as mistakes by Council as people, discounting the effects of poor decision-making processes.
   • On issues where Klein has strong opinions, his reluctance to publicly share makes him a cipher to many.
2. Listen?: Klein tends to listen to people rather than engaging them in discussion. Coupled with terse comments about his viewpoint or position, this can leave people wondering whether their comments had any impact.
3. Positions?:
   • Klein is intensely focused on the problem of labor costs.
   • Klein's campaign statements on High Speed Rail (HSR) understate his intensity on that issue.
   • Retail: Many of the candidates advocate having the Chamber of Commerce play a major role in promoting retail. Only Klein noted (in the PAN Questionnaire) that the Chamber needs to change to play such a role (Hackmann picked up on this later). This came as a surprise because I didn't think of Klein as being particularly interested in this topic.

John Hackmann

1. Effective?: Hackmann's demeanor belies his seriousness and interest in the issues. Among the candidates, he has done the most outside of normal campaign activities to learn more about, and become involved in, the issues.
2. Listen?:
   • He has engaged in highly interactive detailed discussions of the issues.
   • I found it interesting that he picked up (from somewhere) on a minor point about the Chamber of Commerce needing to change and incorporated it into his response to the question about retail at the PAN forum.
   • He is one of few candidates to highlight the need to provide the public better information to allow more meaningful participation in decision-making.
   • Over the years, Hackmann has appeared before Council as a resident (I don't think I encountered him).
3. Positions?:

Gail Price

1. Effective?: Price's reputation from her years on the School Board is not in evidence in this campaign.
   • Her professional background—community/transportation planner—bears directly on some of the biggest issues in this campaign, but I haven't heard any meaningful discussion on this from her. She calls the decision to turn Alma Plaza into predominantly housing a mistake, but offers no insight into the problem or what she might do.
   • The only topic on which she has shown energy and interest is her Caring Community, especially having the City enter the mental-health arena.
   • In the Post's explanation of its decision against endorsing her, it cited her "on the one hand, on the other hand" approach. This is consistent with what I observed, plus that she will not get down into the details where you could see how choices would be made.
2. Listen?:
   • I know people who praise her approachability and many others who found her unapproachable. When I mentioned that I was working on this document, several people volunteered their frustration in trying to talk to her about their viewpoints.
   • Several years ago, she came out strongly in support of the then-Library Director's plan to close branch libraries, and I heard from one major stakeholder group that she had not bothered to talk to them about their viewpoint. This highlights a potential problem: Over-identification with staff. Price is a city staff member in Sunnyvale and there could a natural and understandable bias towards the recommendations from the Palo Alto city staff (over the residents). Note: A previous Council member (Nancy Lytle, 2000-04) was a city planner by profession and did not show this bias.
3. Positions?:
   • She speaks enthusiastically of High Speed Rail (HSR), with the common caveat of how it transits Palo Alto. Given her professional background, I would expected a more nuanced, sophisticated statement, for example, about ridership projections. Or that the carbon footprint of construction of a basic scheme can be equivalent to 20 years of usage savings, and that tunneling would significantly add to this (manufacturing cement for concrete burns huge quantities of natural gas).
   • Price is a strong proponent of the "Smart Growth" philosophy that has produced so much controversy in Palo Alto and doesn't seem aware of Palo Alto's negative experience with this dogma. For example, "Smart Growth" calls for redeveloping the Cal Ave and Fry's areas into high-density housing—because it is near the Caltrain station—and mixed-use, which in Palo Alto has meant offices and housing with token amounts of retail. Price's answer to the Retail question (#8) in PAN questionnaire says that she supports the housing, mixed-use and retaining Fry's, but the hearings on the City's current steps in this direction demonstrated the math didn't work.
   • Her advocacy of the City government getting into mental health—motivated by the recent suicides—suggests a bad approach to management/organization behavior. With the likely cutbacks in services, why should the City take on a new service that is already the responsibility of others? What about start-up costs and delays? Could it be effective? Competitive advantage? Muddy the waters? ...
   • Price is one of three candidates endorsed by labor. This endorsement gives me pause because several of the key issues for the next Council involve City employees, restructuring not just benefits but the organization.

Nancy Shepherd

1. Effective?:
   • Although people who worked with her on the PTA spoke highly of her, that did not come across in this campaign. For someone with a strong campaign committee, her failure to have answers to basic questions was a surprise to activists (at early coffees she passed on questions that other candidates answered easily), and prominent enough to be remarked upon by ordinary residents (at PAN forum). This bodes very badly for her getting up-to-speed.
   • In her speech at her Kickoff event, she talked about a conversation with friends about the problems facing Palo Alto, ending with a wave-off that Palo Alto's problems were small compared to others' problems (Palo Alto, "does it get any better than this"). There were other Pollyanna-ish statements in that speech. If she doesn't feel in her gut that the problems facing Palo Alto are serious, I doubt that she will put in the time and energy necessary to address them.
   • Two of her campaign's key points show poor follow-through:
     1. She cites the greatly improved business in Town and Country and wonders why the same cannot be done for University Avenue. But she doesn't seem to have bothered to ask questions to find out more, much less propose solutions. And even though the problems in the other retail areas—Cal Ave, south El Camino, neighborhood shopping centers—have been mentioned by others throughout the campaign, Shepherd continues to cite only University Avenue.
     2. She cites her role in getting PAGE's Civic Engagement for the Common Good made a Council priority but is unaware of the controversies surrounding it: The results represented the position of PAGE but excluded significant positions expressed by others at the meetings she organized, and the phrase "for the Common Good" is prone to being abused (example in comments on Dykwel below).
2. Listen?: In trying to discuss the problems and difficulties related to various proposals, those concerns were repeatedly met with a Come on, it can be figured out-type answer. These answer were to dismiss the concerns rather than invite attempts to actually see if they could be handled.
3. Positions?:
   • In her Kickoff speech, citing the talent available in Palo Alto said that we should be able to figure out how to
     • have High-Speed Rail
     • build the housing called for by ABAG
     • handle the densification of Palo Alto
     Starting with the presumption that something is a good thing can easily blind a person to the accumulation of evidence that it isn't. My sense of Shepherd is that she doesn't have the special type of intellectual curiosity that would overcome this.
   • Shepherd is one of three candidates endorsed by labor. This endorsement gives me pause because several of the key issues for the next Council involve City employees, restructuring not just benefits but the organization.

Dan Dykwel

1. Effective?: I would second the Palo Alto Weekly which, in explaining why they didn't endorse Dykwel, said that they "supported Dykwel in the 2007 race, but this time around find him less informed on current city issues and less clear on how he would approach some of the important development questions the council faces. ..." When I have tried to talk to him about the details underlying his position, he invariably impatiently shifts the conversation and he seems inclined to make snap judgments using information he should know was one-sided/unreliable.
2. Listen?: Since "insiders" (staff and other special interests) routinely get to talk to Council members first, I project that ordinary citizens would have a hard time getting their issues and priorities considered by Dykwel. Additional detail (from over the years):
   • Many times when Dykwel appeared to be agreeing, I felt he was instead being agreeable (a reflex of his being a real-estate professional?).
   • When I (and others) have tried to talk with him about his positions, he is resistant to the possibility that some of what he had been told was wrong, that there were additional facts he should consider, and that there are other interpretations.
   • A significant example occurred at minute 47:00 in the tape of the second hour of the PAN Forum. He denounced a group of residents as "not concerned with the Common Good but with their own specific interests" because they argued against the Library Advisory Commission's (LAC) recommendation to understock the Downtown Library (far fewer items than libraries with comparable space). That recommendation was contrary to direction that the Council had given the LAC multiple times over the years, and Council corrected this relatively small element of the overall recommendation. Dykwel characterized those residents and Council as having "derailing" the whole plan for the libraries. By the way, Dykwel's supposedly selfish residents included people with a long history of tireless fundraising and advocacy for the library.
3. Positions?: I find myself routinely disagreeing with Dykwel because I don't think he has an adequate factual basis for his positions.

Corey Levens

1. Effective?: He has been the least memorable of the candidates, and I almost immediately forget what he said.
2. Listen?: In his closing remarks, he made a similar pronouncement as Dykwel on the LAC incident (above) that grossly misrepresented what Council had done (presumably based on information from a known unreliable source: a local newspaper).
3. Positions?:
   • For someone who owned a small retail business, Levens' comments on retail policy have been underwhelming.
   • Levens is one of three candidates endorsed by labor. This endorsement gives me pause because several of the key issues for the next Council involve City employees, restructuring not just benefits but the organization.

Chris Gaither

1. Effective?: His decision to run was based on civic duty. He hasn't shown the growth of interest in issues and sophistication to indicate that he would get up-to-speed as a Council member. I don't recall encountering him except at candidates forums, so my observations of him are very limited.
2. Listen?: Probably.
3. Positions?:

Tim Gray

1. Effective?: Although he ran for Council in 2007, it doesn't show in his knowledge of the issues. Neither is there evidence of involvement in the interim, and this bodes poorly for what he would do if elected.
2. Listen?: Don't know.
3. Positions?:
   • He introduces himself as an accountant and cites financial stewardship in his platform, but in listening to him there is little evidence of interest in this area, that is, nothing beyond the basic bullet point that all the candidates have to say on this topic.
   • His interest seems to be in environmental issues and the police department.

Brian Steen

1. Effective?:
   • He entered the campaign with very narrow interests, and I have seen no evidence of them expanding to cover the range of issues a Council member would need to deal with. At his Kickoff event he said he had been convinced to run as a civic duty, but projects no notion of what he would want to accomplish. The focus of his Kickoff was on "ancient history" such as the first Earth Day in Palo Alto (1990s?).
   • Example: In the Oct 22 Daily News interview, Steen continues to call for the City to renegotiate with ABAG. He persists in being unaware of the ABAG criteria process and that the City has already been through the appeal process.
2. Listen?: Don't know. Conversations have been small talk or extraneous issues.
3. Positions?:
   • HSR: He considers it a matter of how to get it built through Palo Alto, ignoring the significant possibility that it cannot be justified economically and environmentally.
   • At his Kickoff event, he made a point of heaping praise on the City Staff. This was several days after the "California Avenue Tree Massacre"

Mark Weiss

1. Effective?:
   • Weiss is running on an Arts Platform and has repeatedly shown that he has no interest in major issues such as City finances, development, retail environment.
   • Attitude: The PAN forum was being taped for rebroadcast and streaming on the Web, yet he initially insisted on not using the microphone because he wanted to talk directly to the audience.
   • His limited computer skills/access are likely to put him at a huge disadvantage. Basis for this judgment: The PAN questionnaire was distributed electronically as a MS-Word document and candidates were requested to submit their responses electronically as an edited form of that document. Candidate Weiss used Kinko's to print the document and then submitted a partial response in plain-text via email using a library computer (details from his comments to me in a telephone call).
     Response from Candidate Weiss: "Your characterization of me on your website is both unfair and non-factual. It is not true that I have ‘limited computer skills’ or that my use of computers would make me less than qualified to serve on City Council. As I stated in a previous email, I have a lot of abilities with computers - for example, computer programming was part of the undergraduate curriculum at Dartmouth , where I earned a b.a. in 1986.
     More to the point, I know a considerable amount of very computer-oriented people; if knowledge of computers, programming, information society or the high tech industry were a part of any job, task or project of mine, I have plenty of leads for more information, and the ability to discern, gather or absorb such.
     Your statements are not only wrong, they seem to libel me. "
2. Listen?: In trying to talk to him about various issues, I didn't find any issues he was willing to talk about, including how the City deals with selection of public art.
3. Positions?:

Victor Frost

Frost is a perennial non-serious candidate.

Reminder: Please take the survey and forward to those who might be interested.