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When the Mountain View City Council met this week to discuss planning commission appointments, the typically staid bureaucratic process turned into a heated debate.
The council met Tuesday to fill two vacancies on the Environmental Planning Commission but ended up voting 4-2 to defer the decision until after the election. The move was prompted by concerns from Council member Chris Clark that another seat could open up if current commissioner Paul Donahue is elected to the City Council Nov. 3.
“I might make different decisions if I had three choices versus two,” Clark said. “Knowing the full scope of the available vacancies going into the next year, I think is important.”
Before the vote, Council member Lucas Ramirez questioned whether Clark was pressing for the delay because several of the current candidates favor increased housing development. Mayor Emily Ann Ramos appeared to hold back tears as she described how the delay went against her goals of promoting civic participation and volunteerism.
“I dislike how this has [been] maneuvered,” she said. “I do feel very strongly about this because I ran my entire mayoral term focusing on the people who want to serve our city and treating that with the utmost grace and and gratitude.”
Ramirez and Ramos cast the two dissenting votes. Council member Pat Showalter was absent at the Oct. 20 meeting.
Reviewing the applicants
This year, there were four applicants vying for the opportunity to fill two seats on the seven-member planning commission, which makes recommendations to the City Council on land use issues. The two new commissioners will replace Bill Cranston and José Gutiérrez who both term out Dec. 31.
The four applicants were: Alex Amoroso, a U.S. Army Reserve Officer currently running for City Council; Elizabeth Conlan, an agricultural scientist; Daniel Hulse, a research software engineer; and John Scarboro, an engineer who previously served on the planning commission from 2014-2018.
Several council members voiced support for Clark’s recommendation to wait to decide until the City Council race is settled.
“I’m kind of liking the idea of advancing everyone and then seeing the makeup of the council and the remaining EPC and making decisions from there,” Council member Alison Hicks said.
However, the proposal drew strong objections from Ramos and Ramirez.
“My general feeling is we made a process,” Ramos said. “The process was followed. People adhere to those deadlines and the presumption is that as council members we would follow our process.”
Ramirez voiced similar frustrations, suggesting that his colleagues were motivated by opposition to the views of the current pool. In their applications, two of the candidates, Conlan and Hulse, cited their affiliation with Mountain View YIMBY, a prohousing advocacy group.
“I would wonder aloud if we had maybe some applicants who were part of Livable Mountain View or had some other perspective, whether we would be having this discussion tonight,” Ramirez said. Livable Mountain View is a historical preservation advocacy group that has opposed some redevelopment projects and state housing legislation, like Senate Bill 79.
Ramirez recommended that council members not vote for the candidates they did not like, rather than delaying the entire process.
Council member Ellen Kamei pushed back, arguing that planning commissioners vacating seats to join the City Council has been a recurring issue during election years and that deferring the vote was not related to the quality of the applicant pool.
“It’s an important point of clarification for me that I don’t think that we’re changing a process on this dais tonight,” Kamei said. “We are discussing an issue that has plagued the council for multiple cycles and we’re discussing how to remediate that.”
Two years ago, the City Council did not wait to reappoint an incumbent to the planning commission, even though there were two commissioners running for City Council. That included Clark who resigned from the commission shortly after he was elected to the council.
This time around, Council members John McAlister, Hicks, Kamei and Clark voted to wait until after the November election.
If Donahue is elected to the City Council, Clark said that there would be another recruitment period for the planning commission in which candidates will be considered for all three seats. That includes the four candidates who already submitted their applications. If Donahue is not elected to the council, Clark said there would not be another recruitment period.
Neither the city manager nor acting city attorney were present for the Oct. 20 meeting.
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