Housing, transit are key issues

There are eight candidates competing for four positions

There are eight candidates vying for four seats on the Mountain View City Council in the 2016 election, and they pretty much all agree that the main issues facing the city are housing and transportation.

Margaret Abe-Koga is seeking a return to the City Council following a two-year break mandated by city regulations. She had served two terms, 2007 to 2015. “It’s housing, not just for Mountain View, but for the entire region,” Abe-Koga said. “We need to be more creative, and consider different types of housing, perhaps more compact.”

Abe-Koga pointed out that Mountain View helped build “about 500 undermarket units, and needs to continue to do that.”

She also said, “We need to increase the range we can create housing in ... resources need to be put into a better transit system. The BART extension into San Jose will be complete next year. There are plans to increase the light rail system. It’s all about connecting the systems.”

Abe-Koga’s election site is www.mak4council.com. Kacey Carpenter said he’s running because “what is happening in the boom-bust model has put tremendous pressure on Mountain View’s affordable housing.” He noted that he is a “teleworker,” and can work anywhere in the world, but that not everybody can. “Teachers, nurses, doctors, restaurant workers need to be able to stay here,” he said. Working online via computers, he said, “can spread out the region a bit more.”

“Let’s not build the Manhattan of the 1990s in Mountain View,” he said.

Carpenter’s election site is www.carpenter4mountainview.com.

Chris Clark, a member of the council who is seeking re-election, said in an interview that there are two main issues facing the city.

“One is clearly housing and affordability,” he said, adding that “we’ve taken a number of steps, including additional rental protection and rights.” He said there are several thousand housing units in the pipeline, and that he supports putting housing in North Bayshore and in the El Camino Real and San Antonio Avenue area.

The other major issue, Clark said, is transportation. He is hoping the city will develop North Bayshore in such a way that “it makes sense to have people live near where they work.”

Clark’s election site is www.electchrisclark.com.

Greg Coladonato, a member of the city’s Human Resources Commission, was elected to the Mountain View Whisman School District board in 2014. On his website, he says, “We are now at a point in the city of Mountain View where there is a fair amount of disagreement about what to do about affordability, mobility, and differing visions for the future. I am running for City Council in the hopes that the campaign will be a chance to discuss these important issues, in a civil and respectful way.”

Coladonato’s election site is www.electgreg.org.

Thida Cornes said that “the most important issues are our huge growth and traffic. We really need to work more on short-term and long-term solutions for dealing with traffic.” Cornes, who is on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, said, “In the short term, there is more we could do to make biking and walking more safer and more accessible to a variety of ages,” adding that “about 20 percent of traffic is parents taking kids to and from school.”

In the long term, she said the city needs to improve the community shuttles and work with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. For housing, Cornes said she would “like to increase housing options for all, and increase the diversity of housing, including micro housings, down to 400 square feet, and encouraging second units.”

Cornes’ election site is www.thidacornes.com.

Lisa Matichak, a planning commissioner, on her website said the main issue is housing. “Every day, more people are arriving here to work for Mountain View’s world-class companies. We must provide additional housing, both to provide newcomers with a place to live, but also to slow down the rising cost of housing.”

Matichak also said, “We must support regional transportation solutions as well as explore creative solutions for getting around Mountain View.”

Matichak’s election site is www.lisaforcouncil.com.

John McAlister, who has been on the council for four years, serving as mayor in 2015, said that transportation is one of the top issues. “It can solve a lot of our problems, if we tackle it aggressively,” he said. “If we have a mass transit system from Morgan Hill to Mountain View, it would open a quality of life.”

Mountain View is already improving housing density along transit lines, he said, “But housing is a regional concern. ... If we can get people out of cars” and into mass transit, such as buses running on dedicated lanes, it will reduce traffic and reduce greenhouse gases.

McAlister also noted he is worried that the city may be pushing its infrastructure, such as roads and sewer service, too hard, which is another reason to look at wider regional solutions.

McAlister’s election site is www.johnmcalister.org.

Lucas Ramirez, a member of the city’s Human Resources Commission, said that the “crisis in housing affordability is the primary issue the council will have to address urgently. “In the long term,” he said, the city needs to “address the jobs/ housing imbalance. We have significantly more jobs than housing.”

Ramirez said the city has “two prime opportunities to dramatically increase housing,” in the North Bayshore and East Whisman areas. Both areas, he said, are “almost exclusively zoned for commercial. Rezoning each of those areas for mixed use would allow for significant housing development.”

Ramirez’s election site is www.ramirezforcouncil.com.