Four members seek new terms
Three incumbents will be unopposed, won’t appear on ballot
Who will set water policy for Santa Clara County over the next few years?
Mostly the same people doing it now.
Four incumbents are seeking to retain their seats on the seven-member board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency that provides drinking water and flood protection to 1.9 million people in Santa Clara County.
But three of them are unopposed after an election filing deadline passed Wednesday night.
Under state law, those three board members — Barbara Keegan, Dick Santos and Nai Hsueh — will not appear on the ballot and will be automatically reappointed to each serve a four-year term that begins in December and ends in December 2020.
The fourth board member, John Varela, a former Morgan Hill mayor and small-business man, was unanimously appointed to the board in December following the resignation of Dennis Kennedy. Kennedy, also a former Morgan Hill mayor, died four months later of brain cancer.
In the November election, Varela will face Tom Cruz in the race for District 1, which includes Gil roy, Morgan Hill and East San Jose. Cruz, a county employee and former financial consultant who ran against Kennedy in November 2014 and lost with 45 percent of the vote, is a member of the San Jose Airport Commission.
The winner will serve a two-year term — essentially the remainder of Kennedy’s original term — that expires December 2018.
One of the largest government agencies in the county, the water district is a wholesaler that has a $284 million operating budget funded mostly by water rates, parcel taxes and federal grants. The district, which has 783 employees, sells water to more than a dozen cities and private water companies, which deliver it to homes and businesses.