The deadline looms for local candidates who plan to run in the Nov. 8 election. Candidates must submit their paperwork to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters by Aug. 12 to secure a spot on the ballot.
Following is a roundup of new and familiar faces waging campaigns for seats on city councils, school boards and the boards of the El Camino Healthcare District and the Purissima Hills Water District.
Los Altos City Council
Six candidates have declared their intent to run for a seat on the Los Altos City Council, and two are incumbents. Three of the council’s five seats are up for grabs.
Mayor Jeannie Bruins has filed paperwork to mount another run, as has Councilwoman Jan Pepper. Winners will join Mary Prochnow and Jean Mordo on the council.
Candidate Lynette Lee Eng was part of the project to preserve Neutra House and served on the Parks, Arts and Recreation Commission before it was split in two. She is joined in the race by Alex Glew, an engineer and consultant who ran unsuccessfully in 2014, and Steve Smiley, running for council for the first time since a failed 1997 bid. Smiley, vice president of program management and contracts at L3 Communications Corp., has lived in Los Altos since 1991.
Rounding out the current list of candidates is Neysa Fligor, senior lead counsel for HP Inc. She moved to the Dos Palos neighborhood of Los Altos in 2010 and has served as vice chairwoman of both the Parks & Recreation Committee and the Grant Writing Committee.
Fligor told the Town Crier that she hopes to add value to the community by serving on the council.
“Generally, I plan to tackle existing issues and identify long-term solutions,” she said, aiming to “ensure that Los Altos continues to be a great place for seniors, families and the community in general.”
Los Altos Hills City Council
Los Altos Hills hasn’t seen a city council election since 2008, but a contested 2016 race means voters will choose their top local officials this year.
In 2012, three candidates applied for the three open council seats, so councilmembers opted to cancel the municipal election and simply appoint incumbent Rich Larsen and then-newcomers Courtenay C. Corrigan and John Harpootlian. Corrigan’s term expires in November, as does that of Roger Spreen, appointed in September to replace Larsen after Larsen resigned and moved to Carmel.
As of July 27, two others have pulled papers to join Corrigan and Spreen in the race for three vacancies – Garo K. Kiremidjian and James Burnham.
Kiremidjian was among the candidates who vied for Larsen’s seat. A former mathematics professor, Kiremidjian also served as a senior scientist for industrial corporation TRW Inc. and co-founded several companies. He has lived in Los Altos Hills for 28 years and has been an active participant in local traffic congestion discussions, particularly concerning the Interstate 280/Page Mill Road interchange.
Burnham, a longtime Bay Area resident, is a principal engineer at Rambus, the Sunnyvale-based semiconductor company. He studied electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley and earned a master’s and doctorate at Stanford University. He has not held public office before.
Los Altos School District
In the Los Altos School District, there are two separate races for seats on the board of trustees.
One race includes two four-year seats, as the terms of incumbents Steve Taglio and Pablo Luther have expired. The second race fills a two-year seat vacated by Tammy Logan, who announced her resignation from the board effective later this year.
Three candidates have declared their intent to run – incumbent Taglio and newcomers and district parents Bryan Johnson and Jessica Speiser.
Johnson, the father of two daughters at Santa Rita School, has been a member of the Santa Rita PTA – chairing committees and serving as president in the 2013-2014 school year.
He said he has been following school and city issues closely in the 10 years he has lived in Los Altos and has participated in a number of community groups.
“After participating in Los Altos Community Foundation’s LEAD program this past winter, I have been looking for new opportunities to serve the community and think that my background positions me well to help ensure the continued excellence of LASD,” Johnson wrote in an email to the Town Crier.
Speiser served as co-chairwoman of the school district’s successful Measure N bond election in 2014. She sits on the Los Altos Educational Foundation Board of Directors and is vice chairwoman of the district’s Citizen’s Oversight Committee on bond spending. She has two children at Covington School, a kindergartner and a fourth-grader, as well as a fifth-grader at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto.
Speiser and Johnson have pulled paperwork for both the two- and four-year seats. Taglio is running for re-election for his four-year seat.
Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District
Two seats are available on the Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District Board of Trustees, with the terms of incumbents Phil Faillace and Susan Sweeley set to expire.
Faillace, who has served on the board for 20 years, said he intends to run for re-election. Sweeley did not return the Town Crier’s request for comment.
Mountain View High School parent Sanjay Dave, who came up short in his bid for a seat on the board in 2014, said he plans to run again in 2016. He said he would like to see more parent representation on the board, which comprises several longtime trustees whose children have since aged out of the district.
Dave is a member of the MVLA High School Foundation board as well as a volunteer tutor at Mountain View High. His daughter is an incoming junior at Mountain View High, and his son attends Huff Elementary School.
Foothill-De Anza Community College District
Five candidates are vying for three open seats on the Foothill-De Anza Community College District Board of Trustees.
The terms of incumbents Laura Casas, Betsy Bechtel and Joan Barram are up. Barram and Bechtel said they would not seek re-election, but Casas has pulled papers to run.
In addition to Casas, four other candidates have declared their intent to run.
Cupertino City Councilman Gilbert Wong, whose council term expires in December, plans to run for a seat on the community college district board but not on the council. Wong serves on the De Anza College Commission for the Foothill-De Anza Foundation.
Patrick Ahrens, former De Anza College student and former student trustee on the community college board, plans to run for a seat on the community college district board. After transferring from De Anza to UCLA, Ahrens worked as education policy adviser and senior representative for California Assembly District 28.
“I’m running for Foothill-De Anza Community College trustee to ensure that every student can access the American dream like I did,” he states on his campaign website, patrickahrens.com.
Los Altos resident Peter Landsberger, a former Foothill-De Anza Community College District employee, has pulled papers for a seat. He is a member of the community college district’s foundation board.
Former Cupertino City Councilman Orrin Mahoney also plans to run. He is an ex-officio member of the Foothill-De Anza Foundation.
Other local board races
For residents in south Los Altos, two seats are open on the Cupertino Union School District Board of Trustees. Some Los Altos students in the district attend Montclaire Elementary School and Cupertino Middle School.
The terms of incumbents Josephine (Jo) Lucey and Phyllis Vogel are expiring. Both incumbents have pulled papers to run for re-election, joined by district parents Gregory Anderson and Liang Chao.
Some Los Altos residents also will vote in the race for seats on the Fremont Union High School District board, which has two seats available in November.
The terms of incumbents Nancy Newton and Jeff Moe have expired. Moe has pulled papers, as has Roy Rocklin, Lynbrook High School science teacher and the father of Homestead High graduates.
Los Altos residents will also be voting for a candidate for the Santa Clara County Board of Education for Area 1, which serves local school districts. Incumbent Grace Mah said she plans to run for re-election, and Sheena Chin, a member of Palo Alto Unified School District committees, has pulled papers for the seat.
El Camino Healthcare District
Three of five seats on the El Camino Healthcare District Board of Directors are open, and three incumbents have filed to run again.
Julia Miller, who just completed her first four-year term on the board, cited the implementation of livestream cameras in meetings and hiring inside general counsel as her two greatest accomplishments during her term.
Dennis Chiu also is nearing the end of his first four-year term. His website notes that he was recently named the 2016 Healthcare District Trustee of the Year by the Association of California Healthcare Districts and has served on the Santa Clara County Planning Commission for 13 years.
John Zoglin, the final candidate up for re-election, has been on the board since 2007. He has spent his career in e-commerce, most recently for IBM Corp.
Purissima Hills Water District
As of Monday, no one had pulled papers to run for the three available Purissima Hills Water District director positions. The incumbents are Brian Holtz, Stephen A. Jordan and Ernest Solomon.
The Santa Clara Registrar of Voters updates the list of candidates daily through Aug. 12. To see the list, visit sccgov.org/sites/rov/Info/Nov2016Info/Pages/Nov2016Info.aspx.
