Candidate for
Council Member; City of Palo Alto

Question and Reduce Spending

• There is a structural budget problem. Escalating employee costs, the local effects of the state deficit and the aging infrastructure are on a financial collision course.

• I voted against the last two budgets because the priorities did not reflect community needs and they failed to address our structural financial problems. We can solve our budget problems by surveying residents and cutting services in areas that are low priority for Palo Altans.

• We have reached a reasonable compromise on the future zoning for South of Forest Area II. We can do the same for all the redevelopment sites in the city, such as the Sun Microsystems and Ricky's Hyatt sites.

• We can meet our housing goals if we consider appropriate densities, not only high densities, at sites that have redevelopment potential. Real estate speculation and political spot zoning are no substitute for good city planning.

• Downtown, California Avenue and our public parks must be clean and welcoming. We have improved six parks, installed public restrooms Downtown and built new Hoover Park restrooms, through a private donation. That's progress.

• There is much more to be done such as improving the quality of the City's sidewalk cleaning equipment and installing restrooms at all parks that need basic sanitation.

• We have now achieved capital commitments for sport fields and some modernization of our outdated library system. That is a good start.

• We need to complete our private match fundraising and develop partners to eliminate the wait lists for our children in team sports and summer camps. And we must keep working to make Palo Alto's libraries a source of community pride again.