Elected mayor proposal fails Elected mayor proposal fails (April 15, 2005)

Kasperzak finds no support for direct elections

By Jon Wiener

Mike Kasperzak's city council colleagues uniformly opposed his idea of a referendum letting voters say how Mountain View picks its mayors.

The proposal, which Kasperzak said would have cost about $80,000, failed when no one seconded the motion. Every council member but Nick Galiotto had said they would be voting against it.

"No surprise there," Kasperzak said after the meeting. He said he had been finding that experienced city officials consistently opposed changing the system.

Council members' most common objection was that the current system, under which the top post rotates among council members, worked well. Other concerns included the danger of making city elections more political, the cost to taxpayers and worries about elevating the status of the mayor - now largely a ceremonial post with few powers.

"It made me think of 'Animal Farm,'" said Council member Laura Macias, quoting a famous line from George Orwell's anti-communist screed: "Some pigs are more equal than others." She quickly added that she did not mean council members were pigs.

Nearly one-third of California cities, including five in Santa Clara County, have directly-elected mayors. And when voters get to decide whether they want such a system, they usually say yes. But council members said they didn't think voters would be able to make a fully informed decision taking into account factors like length of the mayor's term and whether candidates would have to vacate council seats in order to run.

Kasperzak said beforehand that he was expecting to have his motives questioned, and they were immediately after he finished presenting the idea. Greg Perry, who had a testy exchange with Kasperzak earlier in the five-hour meeting, asked Kasperzak whether council members could run for mayor after term limits had forced them out of office. Kasperzak, who is being termed out next year, hesitated before saying yes.

"To me this is an end-run around term-limits. And we don't rewrite the rule for one person," Perry said during the council's discussion. "If this went through, the person who would be in the best position to run for mayor would be Mike Kasperzak, who wrote the proposal."

Kasperzak insisted that his goal was only to let voters decide what they want -- "we serve at the pleasure of the voters," he said. But there was no denying that his political future may have suffered a setback. He had previously expressed an interest in running for mayor, as other choices for higher offices -- like state Assembly and county Board of Supervisors -- are filled with incumbent Democrats unlikely to face an electoral challenge any time soon.

Tuesday night, Kasperzak said that he had no current plans to run for higher office.

The three members of the public who addressed the council during the public comment period -- Ronit Bryant, Don Letcher and Steve Chessin -- all encouraged members to drop an idea that could have required rewriting the city's charter.

Bryant, a former member of the city's downtown committee, encouraged the council to forget about the proposed referendum "until we have time and money and nothing more important to worry about." @email:E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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