Walnut Creek City Council Race 2010: I can't wait for the damned election to be over

Whatever happened to the happy, shiny suburb known as Walnut Creek?

It has been overcome by a gloves-off, hard-hitting, contact-sport election with several different forces fighting for control of the city's destiny. Yes, I'm talking about the City Council race. Three candidates, Kristina Lawson, Cindy Silva, and Justin Wedel, are fighting for two seats, and the battle grounds have been sharply drawn.

When I started my blog, Crazy in Suburbia in the fall of 2008, I wanted to scratch beneath the shiny, happy surface of this California suburb. As AKA Soccer Mom, I thought my muckracking would focus on despairing alcoholic moms, teen ennui, and hookers working out of downtown condos.

But as editor of Walnut Creek Patch, I wound up covering City Hall and the 2010 Walnut Creek City Council race. I have found that the muckraking now extends to educated professional adults going at it over such issues such as per capita spending on police salaries. And, pointing fingers of blame at one another over who started all this craziness in the first place.

Here are some of the low lights from the election:

Citizens are upset that the campaigning has become too personal and bemoan the negativity and nastiness of the rhetoric coming from different camps--a lot of it said to be posted in anonymous rants on the message boards of Walnut Creek Patch and the Contra Costa Times.
Business owners say they have found themselves caught in the middle of angry candidates and supporters who demand that they hang their campaign signs, not their opponents', in their store windows.
The police, who are trying to oust Silva from office, last week held a highly visible demonstration outside the city's new crown jewel of a library, of which Silva was a strong supporter.
Library supporters, in turn, vented on Facebook about aggressive police tactics and misleading statements.
A former mayor and a police sergeant engaged into a yelling match outside the chambers of City Council during a recent meeting.
Two council members supposedly withdrew their support of one candidate at the request of another candidate
What's it all about, Walnut Creek?

The politics of scarcity? That's what Walnut Creek Patch writer David Mills asserted in his Oct. 13 story.

"In Walnut Creek, the phenomenon has elevated this fall's election into the most contentious City Council campaign since the growth vs. anti-growth battles a quarter-century ago," Mills wrote. "Budget cuts and hiring freezes have sent the city's police officers into the streets to campaign against incumbent Cindy Silva."

In its endorsement of Cindy Silva, the Contra Costa Times asserted that the race has essentially been a battle over police benefits and pension reform.

Silva and the current council approved a contract that would freeze salaries and require police managers--sergeants, lieutenants and captains-- to begin contributing into the CalPERS retirement system to the tune of 7 percent.

But the Times showed signs itself of getting caught up in the madness with an uncharacteristic rant that mostly argued about the need to control spending on public employee pensions. Yes, it is an important issue--one the Times cares about, as do all three council candidates. But the editorial also used disparaging language to blast Walnut Creek police officers for being greedy. Reading between the lines, the Times also was telling the cops to be quiet and to stop rocking the boat. This language wasn't necessary for the Times to finally make its point that it thought Silva had been a thoughtful, hardworking city council member who deserved to be re-elected.

I happen to believe that this race is about those issues and more: the city's economic future, its priorities, neighborhood concerns about new developments, official accountability, and even the general question of what Walnut Creek citizens want their city to be.

More urban? More small town? An arts and culture mecca? A shopper's paradise? A great place to raise a family? A community known for its beautiful parks, pools, and open space?

Or a great place for guys to party on Friday and Saturday nights, get really drunk, and get into fights? Yes, a series of bar fights in early October, involving 50 or more combatants at three different bars, emerged as an issue in the campaign with police saying it shows that the city needs to spend more money on public safety.

Then police asserted that council member Gary Skrel, a Silva supporter, had a "secret" meeting with bar owners, at which owners vowed they wouldn't call police if fights break out until the election is over. Both Skrel and Tony Dudum, owner of the 1515 Restaurant and Lounge, one of the sites of the reported fights, denied hearing owners made any such promise.

The outrage in some circles over Skrel's meeting points to questions some residents have about the accountability of city council members.

Neighborhood representatives have told me that council members have been dismissive of their concerns and treated them in a condescending manner. One neighborhood representative, who asked not to be named, said he has become cynical about the Chamber of Commerce "hand-picking" candidates and perpetuating a one-party system in town. He said he was in some ways grateful to police for shaking things up and challenging the status quo.

This representative is pointing to the widespread perception that there is an In Crowd in Walnut Creek political life. Not surprisingly, members of Walnut Creek's In Crowd will deny it exists.

Perhaps this race, like all local, state and national races, is also reflective of the disaffection citizens have for their elected officials.

In his story, Mills said that Wedel has homed in on the city's budget problems, saying the City Council is "broken." He says city leaders have been on "a spending spree" the past decade. And he says the powers that be--the In Crowd?--want to keep Silva in office and elect Lawson, their "hand-picked candidate," to maintain the status quo.

Lawson, an attorney, has tried to "present a calm counter-argument to those claims," Mills reported. She stresses her experience in civic activities, her knowledge of land-use policy and her ability to work with others.

Silva's main campaign message actually hasn't been about police pensions but about integrity, Mills reported. Silva says she made at least a half-dozen promises when she campaigned four years ago and she has kept them all.

"When I decided to run again, I had to ask myself what did I say I'd do and did I do it," Silva said. "I went through the list. I concluded I made promises and I kept those promises."

I wish good luck to all three candidates on Tuesday. They've all worked hard and endured a lot of the craziness--or perhaps helped to perpetuate it? I expect Walnut Creek voters will make the right decision. For the record, I live just outside the city limits, so I can't vote in this race.

I look forward to when this race is over. But with all the anger and craziness this election as generated, I worry about how much trust has been lost, how many bridges have been burned. Which of the three candidates will do the best job addressing the hard feelings that must now exist at City Hall and among citizens? The incoming city manager, Ken Nordhoff, also will have a lot of repair work to do.

Vested interest alert... and more on arts and cops in these tough budget times

Vested interests.

I've written about this concept before: whether it's right or wrong for people to have "vested interests" when it comes to how they position themselves on public issues. Readers used this term in debates about the Neiman Marcus controversy. Now, it’s popping up again in debates about the city budget and in discussions about the decision to go forward with building the library. Actually, the term “conflict of interest” is also showing up in comments.

To me,  “conflict of interest” applies to very specific, legal circumstances, and it suggests a public official who is doing something illegal. He or she is voting on a project, for instance, that would lead to direct personal financial gain.  

Just so you know, I checked in with City Attorney Paul Valle-Riestra in regards to one city council member, Cindy Silva. Someone in the comments raised the question: When she voted to approve funding for construction of the library in January 2007, did she have a conflict of interest? 

Given that she had been a paid, part-time consultant for the Walnut Creek Library Foundation and a volunteer campaigner for a library bond measure in 2005?

Valle-Riestra says no. He says she resigned from her consulting job with the foundation as soon as she was elected to the City Council in November 2006. She didn’t stand to gain financially from her yes vote on the library a few months later, and personal financial gain is the standard for a conflict-of-interest allegation, Valle-Riestra said.

As for her voting when she had a history of advocacy for this project, Valle-Riestra said that politicians vote on issues all the time in which they have a personal interest or bias.  We might be uncomfortable with that sometimes, but there is nothing illegal about it. 

“People have sued politicians for voting in favor of projects for which they campaign during elections, and show a strong bias,” he said. “The courts have said that politicians are supposed to have strongly held views of issues during campaigns. If they kept silent about their biases, we wouldn’t have much of a democracy.”

Now that we’re talking about this council person’s bias and work and volunteer history with regard to this major downtown project, I might as well reveal a potential bias of my own as I continue to blog about the city budget.

Up until recently, I edited Diablo Arts, the magazine that is distributed to patrons at the Lesher Center. As that magazine's editor, I talked regularly to Lesher Center and Diablo Regional Arts Association staff, and to people involved with local performing arts groups.

And, just so you know,I was a big drama geek in high school. So, I like the theater, and I like artsy people.

The talent, creativity and drive of some of Walnut Creek's arts folks added to my sense that it is really cool to live and work in this town. Maybe you could say I drank the arts Kool-Aid, but I do see arts and culture as an asset to the city. Now, and in the long term. 

For example, the city made a huge investment back in the 1980s to build the Lesher Center, which opened in 1990. It transformed the downtown, for good or for bad, depending on your position.

Walnut Creek’s happening night life sure keeps the police busy on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. I witnessed that first hand when I went out with the police on a ride along last weekend. And, I didn't even go out on the very busy shift last Saturday night/Sunday morning when the officers rounded up 10 drunks and three drunk drivers and carted them off to County Jail in their new special van for just this purpose. 

Through this blog, and more recently, I've had the pleasure of meeting officers and administrators in the police department. As it is with those artsy people, I have come away from my contacts with Walnut Creek police with the sense that it is really cool to live and work in this town. 

Oh, some more disclosure in terms of my background. Besides being an arts geek, I am also a cop/crime geek. For much of my career as a daily newspaper reporter, I had the police beat, including in Richmond--at a time when there were up to three murders in a single week. (I might still have a trashy crime novel or a few true-crime exposes in my future.) As a police reporter, I came to respect the job that everyone in a police department--from patrol officers to the detectives to the chief--does. 

I understand the position of some people that when times get tough, public entities have to make difficult choices about programs to eliminate. I agree that public safety is one of those investments that shouldn’t be shortchanged.  I also believe, though, that Walnut Creek needs to keep up its investment in arts and culture.  These programs are crucial to the town’s identity and, ultimately, to its economic vitality.

Maybe, as these very difficult budget negotiations continue, I will need to become a parks and recreation geek and a public services geek.