Chris Kuszmaul: the scientific radical Chris Kuszmaul: the scientific radical (October 18, 2002)

By Bill D'Agostino

Looking at Moffett Boulevard, Chris Kuszmaul sees a failure of imagination, and a failure of local government.

The sorry state of the road near his home was the primary impetus for Kuszmaul -- who is originally from a small town in Kansas, and has been Mountain View for 13 years -- to get involved in city government. He worries about the effect of the blight on his two children as they run down the street. "I worry about them getting run over by traffic and I worry about they who will meet on the street, especially if they're running in a blighted area," he said.

"Blighted areas attract the kind of behavior -- even from decent people -- that is not as good as in a nice area," he continued. "Blighted areas send a message from the community, ' we don't care about this area.'"

To solve the problem Kuszmaul, a NASA research scientist, has a radical idea: use eminent domain. "You don't have to just seize the land. You can conceivably take the land for two weeks, long enough to make it look decent and then give it back to the owner. That's an idea I haven't found anywhere in my research but I don't see why we couldn't do it. Of course I'm just an engineer. I'm not a lawyer. But I think it's the role of the council person to push on the city staff to find solutions that are in line with a strategic vision."

Speaking of visions, Kuszmaul also has a grand idea to create new neighborhoods throughout the city, using intra-neighborhood transit to shuttle people around. "It would be an experiment. Frankly, it might fail. But it wouldn't be that costly of a failure and we'd learn a lot."

Kuszmaul -- who has a computer science degree from MIT -- also emphasized education as one of his important campaign themes during his hour interview with the Voice. Among other ideas, he would like to have the city help create housing for teachers. "Overall, our community doesn't spend enough money on its schools. The amount that I think we should spend is probably higher than the other candidates."

Kuszmaul, 38, has another controversial idea to get more people who work in the city to afford to live here: "allow for people who work in Mountain View to vote." He also wants to give the vote to non-U.S. citizens in the local elections "just as a matter of fairness."

"If Mountain View can't do it," Kuszmaul said of his drastic ideas, "there's no community in the world that can. The question is, what are we going to decide to do?"
Favorite Book: "Crime and Punishment," by Fyodor Dostoevsky. "I will always remember the phrase, 'I drink to double my misery.' I don't drink by the way."