*This article is an extended version of an article published in our print newspaper.

Four of Mountain View’s City Council’s councilmembers are reaching the end of their terms in January 2025, with nine candidates running for four spots. Of those reaching the end of their terms – Emily Ann Ramos, Margaret Abe-Koga, Lisa Matichak, and Pat Showalter – only Showalter and Ramos are running for re-election. Affordable housing and climate change were key issues heard among candidates, along with various strategies for addressing them. The election is set to take place on Nov. 5.

Chris Clark

A veteran city councilmember, Clark is returning after reaching his term limit from his time on council from 2013 to 2021. He said that his experience in a variety of economic cycles, both good and bad, would help him lend expertise to the council, especially with several long time councilmembers hitting their term limits in the coming years. 

His top priorities, he said, would be addressing housing affordability and fixing the council’s relationship with the Mountain View- Whisman School District. Additionally, he also said he would prioritize infrastructure and public safety. 

“We had a backlog of infrastructure projects developed during the pandemic where things got really expensive and we just couldn’t move forward because of supply chain issues and other things,” Clark said. 

He said that he would commit to making sure that these backlogged projects would get finished.

He said that as one of the younger councilmembers, he hopes to pay the good economic decisions forward, and make it so that future councilmembers could appreciate the soon to be council’s decisions. 

Having helped develop the housing element while on the planning commission, he said that they had a good plan to build new units and protect existing units. The challenge, Clark said, is to implement this plan, which he planned to do by removing existing barriers to incentivize people to build additional housing and subsidized units. 

Clark said that his unique perspective, having been the youngest to ever serve as mayor, helped him give a unique perspective to the council. 

He said that he is an experienced consensus builder, with endorsements from both sides of the aisle. 

“I put Mountain View over politics,” Clark said. 

Devon Conley

With a master’s degree in City Planning from University of California, Berkeley, a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture from Yale University, and a master’s degree in Education from Stanford University, Conley seeks to apply her education to create thriving neighborhoods, prioritize public safety, and ensure a healthy community. 

Part of this planning, Conley said, includes improving parks to be more heat resistant and climate friendly by using permeable surfaces like grass, and planting trees for shade. Additionally, to better the roads for cyclists, Conley said she plans to utilize tree cover to help with heat on roads, make protected bike lanes, and implement more four way stops.She also said that her own children, ages 21 months and 11 years, would keep her involved in the school system.

“I’m going to be in our public school system for a very, very long time to come,” Conley said. “I’m going to be connected to children and families in our community in a way that nobody else is going to be directly connected.”

Conley said her experience in education includes teaching at Mountain View, working with AVID students in West Oakland, getting her teacher training in the Bronx, teaching teachers in Compton, and working with low income students in  California and New York. 

In regards to affordable housing, Conley said she’d focus on subsidizing housing and helping vulnerable families.

“We have to pull on multiple funding streams,” Conley said. “We have to advocate at the federal and state level to get additional funding and grants, because when we talk about affordable housing, we’re really talking about subsidized housing.”

Jose Gutierrez

Gutierrez said that his priorities for city council are increasing responsibility, accountability, and follow through. To avoid a budget deficit, he said that he saw Measure G, a bond measure, as the way to avoid budget deficit spending that would ensue without the funds that it would raise. 

He said his experience includes five years on the Mountain View- Whisman School Board where he worked to bring organization and stability to offer teacher housing, and he is the current Vice Chair of the Environmental Planning Commission. In addition, he has been a intellectual property patent litigation paralegal, which he said granted him experience working with attorneys and being able to negotiate. 

“I’m not the status quo candidate,” Gutierrez said. He said that through using responsibility, accountability, and follow through, he could proactively identify problems, solve them, and go on to the next problem. 

“They all speak about Diversity and Inclusion,” Gutierrez said. “I’m the diversity and the inclusion. It’s people like me that are speaking up and stepping in and stepping up to take the next level of leadership, that are wanting to be part of that process, that deserve to have a shot to represent the needs that we have because it’s someone like myself or others that are from underrepresented neighborhoods to be part of the decision making progress in Mountain View.”

Upon getting the position, he said the first thing he would do is to hold a retreat to figure out who is who, and decide on top priorities, as well as which should have funding. This would set their priorities straight for the next two to four years, and give direction to the city staff, he said. 

Nicholas Hargis

As a 27-year-old Los Altos native, Hargis said he would bring innovative policy to the council. Some of his proposals included halting permits for new gas stations after 2035, incorporating AI into the planning and building process to help with the city’s growth, and banning the sale of vapes.

He said that a priority of his would be affordable housing, which he would address by streamlining the permitting process and allowing for denser buildings and multifamily residences. 

“My guiding principles are equitable growth, public saf

Courtesy of John McAlisterety, sustainability, and community well being,” Hargis said. 

He said his experience included working as a field representative for Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and campaigning for Kamala Harris in New Hampshire and Iowa as a field organizer in 2019 and 2020.

“That’s when I learned that it’s really important to meet people where they’re at, and that’s a big priority for me as a city council candidate,” Hargis said.  

He said that he wanted to bring City Hall to people instead of expecting them to come to city halls. This would be done, he said, by hosting community meetings and zooms. 

“I think I have a unique background, professional experience, and innovative policy platform that will make me an impactful councilmember from day one,” Hargis said. “I believe that the best policy is made when everyone has a seat at the table, and that’s why my motto is, ‘together we succeed.’”

With a Venezuelan mother, and Spanish as his first language, Hargis said he connects strongly to the immigrant experience. 

Hargis said. “One of the most important things of my background is that integrated background,” Hargis said.

To bring people together, he said he would like to strengthen the multicultural engagement program, which currently translates materials and offers live translation in Russian, Chinese, and Spanish. 

“I think that the City Council needs to do more around public health, including hosting drives to make sure that people have health insurance through Covered California or MediCal…,” Hargis said. 

John McAlister

As a business owner, McAlister said his business experience helps s

et him apart from the other candidates. He said his top priority was to get the city to prioritize projects that they could get done, narrowing down the large number of projects the city has. He said his experience included  serving on the council from 2012 to 2020, his role as mayor in 2015, collaborating with other cities as a VTA board member, and helping cofound Silicon Valley Clean Energy during his time as mayor. 

He said he had helped MVHS by hiring students at Baskin Robbins, donating to schools, helping students perfect sales pitches on job training days, and helping to get the Turkey Trot course off campus and through the neighborhood. 

“I actually own a store, I have employees, I pay rent, I write checks, and that’s what I call a true business person,” McAlister said.

His education includes a business degree from UC Berkeley, and he is a certified public accountant. The two businesses that he owns are the Baskin Robbins on El Camino, and the daycare Stepping Stones Preschool.

“I’m looking for solutions that are fair for both, but best for Mountain View,” McAlister said. 

Erik Poicon

Having lived through homelessness, Poicon said his lived experience sets him apart from other candidates. He said his priorities are housing affordability, public safety, and working on the environmental crisis, all in the effort of creating the “Mountain View of Tomorrow.” 

His experience also includes  having worked as a community outreach specialist for the Community Services Agency for over 10 years,  which he said gave him a lot of experience being boots on the ground, working with community members, and being people first oriented. 

For public safety, he said he would work towards implementing protected bike lanes on roads like El Camino Real, Castro St., California St., Escuela Ave., and Grant Road. He also said he would address danger at certain intersections by making them no right on red.

To fight the effects of climate change and sea level rise, he said he would work towards enacting safety measures like levies or sea walls, and consult with experts to find the best solution. 

For housing affordability, he said he would reduce the limit on rent increases for apartment complexes, beginning it down from a 5% for buildings built before 1995. 

“As we’ve been witnessing through the campaign trail, many folks aren’t able to take on a $70 a month increase every year, especially when wages aren’t going up at the same rate, especially for the most vulnerable community members like our elderly members who have fixed incomes that aren’t able to adjust based on those increases.”

Emily Ann Ramos

With experience working on policies for tenant protection from her job at SV@Home, Ramos said her top priority is housing affordability. On top of this, she also said she would  also prioritize climate resilience and civic engagement. She said her technical education included a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the California Maritime Academy.

Her strategy to address the housing issue, she said, involves three stages: production, preservation, and protection. The plan involves producing housing at all levels of affordability, preserving existing affordable housing with things like deed restricted affordable housing to set certain units aside for specific income tenets, preserving the naturally low cost housing that older buildings provide, and protecting these housing units with tenant protections and rent stabilization, she said.

The daughter of immigrants who came to the United States from the Philippines in the 1980s, Ramos moved to Mountain View in 2016. She said her optimism sets her apart from other candidates, along with a deep faith in government and its capacity for good. 

Ramos said her biggest success from her past term was passing the housing element, and using it to explore how Mountain View can improve its future, as well as bringing new people into the conversation. 

“There was deeper engagement and engagement of people who traditionally have not been included in these conversations,” Ramos said. “We have done really great groundwork, particularly in our immigrant communities, with the language leadership academies that the city has. We leverage those to help get people engaged on what [are] their housing needs.”

Pat Showalter

Showalter, an incumbent who just finished a year as mayor, has a total of eight years on council and two terms as mayor. Going into this year, she said her priorities were on building more housing, and increasing climate resilience. As a civil engineer, she said she has long worked in water resources management.

“I’m the only person who’s running who’s a [civil] engineer, and also, I’m the only environmental professional who’s running or on council,” Showalter said. “I think those are both really important perspectives.”

She said successes from her term as mayor included getting affordable housing projects approved, breaking ground on one, and working on an affordable housing project that the council worked on in coordination with the Mountain View -Whisman School District. Another was making good progress on the sea level rise protection project at Baylands, getting enough dirt to finish the horizontal levy, and even moving on schedule.

Going into this year, she said that a new challenge was a high vacancy rate in the downtown and in office buildings, which the council responded to by developing an economic vitality plan that had 164 actions in it. 

To benefit MVHS students, she said the council were working on the design of an extension of the Stevens Creek Trail, crossing the creek over to the Sunnyvale side where there is a lot of unutilized space. She said that soon after the expansion, it would go all the way to Fremont, connecting people in Los Altos and Sunnyvale. 

In addition to her experience on council, she said she had served on many regional groups including Silicon Valley Clean Energy and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, as well as being active in the Santa Clara Cities Association. 

IdaRose Sylvester

A Mountain View resident for 25 years, Sylvester said her top priorities included creating a sustainable future with housing for all, doing the city’s part to limit and adapt to climate change, and working on infrastructure. Her community involvement includes being a member of the Human Relations Commission, the Environmental Sustainability Task force,  being a mediator for the city, and running a Halloween Haunt in her backyard. 

“I believe we have a moral imperative to continue our hard work on limiting climate change as much as possible,” Sylvester said. “We can no longer stop it, but we can do our part to limit it, but also to adapt to it.”

To improve public infrastructure, she said she plans on building more parks, improving roads and utilities, and spreading tree canopy.

  Another of her concerns is economic vitality, especially in regards to the future. 

“Our small businesses are suffering right now due to a variety of zoning and permitting issues, and just a down economy,” Sylvester said. “I would like to make our city much more welcoming to small businesses.”

She said that her experience having been on two commissions gave her experience with most of the senior city staff, and that the relationships that she had formed would create a smooth transition to city councilmember for her. 

For MVHS students, she said she wants to create a future where they can stay in the city, rather than having to move away. 

“‘I’d like to stem that [exodus] so that what was your home growing up can be your home in the long run,” Sylvester said. 

In the long term, Sylvester said would like to lower the local voting age to 16 or 17, so that students could vote for school board and city council in Mountain View. 

“I think those are really, really important ways to get people more involved in their community at a very early age,” Sylvester said.