Candidate for
Council Member; Town of Portola Valley

Dear Neighbor,

Every town has something that gives it its own character. In our town that special quality is the beauty--the open space, the starry night skies and reassuring view corridors, the creeks that wind through the valley. I am running for Town Council because I believe, as our town founders believed, that this beauty is worth preserving.

I come from the Portola Valley School District where I've worked for 11 years as a parent volunteer, from supervising the Halloween party cookie station to co-chairing a school bond measure and working as PTA president and co-president. Now, as my youngest son Charlie moves through his 8th grade year at Corte Madera, I'm ready to move on to work with the larger community on town issues.

Here, for example, is my thinking on the town's most immediate issue, the new Town Center: we've invested significant funds in the planning process and have reached a point where volunteers can show a conceptual plan to the community to solicit private contributions. But we need clarity of funding before proceeding forward with detailed planning. If the additional $16 million for the current design comes in through private donations, let the project go forward as planned. But if funding falls short, let's bring the public back into the process and look at options such as scaling back, phasing, building more inexpensively, or floating a bond.

The Town Center is only one of the issues confronting our community. In the long term, we face the ongoing challenge of maintaining our town's rural character in the wake of inevitable change. In response I would rely on the three simple goals that inspired our town founders in 1964: preservation of open space, conservation, and a low-cost volunteer government, tenets that have assured our sweeping view corridors, community spirit and financial solvency. No matter where we fall in the Town Center debate, I think we can all agree that preserving what we have, what our town founders have fought to safeguard, is still worth holding the line for, and if elected to the Town Council, I will do just that. Thank you for considering me for your vote.

Sincerely,

Maryann Moise Derwin