Los Gatos gears up for town council election this fall with two open seats

Two Los Gatos Town Council members are both running for re-election in November, and as yet they’re both unopposed.

Vice mayor Matthew Hudes and councilmember Maria Ristow, whose terms are up at the end of the year, were the only two candidates as of June 24 to have officially declared their intention to run for town council in the Nov. 5 elections. The candidate nomination period for opens on July 15 and ends on Aug. 9, according to the town’s website.

Hudes, who announced his plans to run for re-election in May,  came to the council after years spent serving on the town’s planning commission and historic preservation committee.

Ristow previously served as mayor in 2023, and prior to being elected to the council in 2020 had served on the transportation and parking commission and the bicycle pedestrian advisory commission.

Also likely to be on the ballot for Los Gatos residents this fall is a proposal for a one-eighth cent sales tax hike, though the town council is still working through the logistics of what the ballot measure will look like.

Council members are in the process of deciding whether the ballot measure should be a specific tax, meaning the revenues would be earmarked for particular budget items, or a general tax, meaning it would be up to officials’ discretion where the roughly $1 million in annual revenues could be spent.

The council voted at its June 18 meeting to rule out a specific tax because they felt such a measure was unlikely to receive the two-thirds majority it would need to pass. Council is on track to consider a general tax at a special council meeting in July. The general tax would be accompanied by an advisory measure that would indicate which areas voters would like the revenue to be directed, and would only require a simple majority to be approved.