Civic officials, activist vying for Lafayette City Council
Two seats on the council opened up with the retirement of Mayor Mike Anderson and Council member Steven Bliss, who decided not to seek election after being appointed to the council last year.
LAFAYETTE — Four candidates, representing a mix of civic officials and a well-known community activist, are running for three seats on the Lafayette City Council on the Nov. 3 ballot.
The candidates are Lafayette City Council incumbent Cameron Burks; Carl Anduri, a former council member and mayor; Lafayette Planning Commission Vice Chairman Farschad Farzan; and Regina (Gina) Dawson.
Dawson and her husband, Michael Dawson, founded the environmental justice community organization Save Lafayette Trees, which has been critical of PG&E’s oversight of gas lines over safety issues. Both Gina and Michael Dawson are members of the city’s gas safety task force.
Two seats on the council opened up with the retirement of Mayor Mike Anderson and the decision by council member Steven Bliss to not seek election after he was appointed to the council last year.
Regardless of the election outcome, the makeup of the incoming five-member council will be relatively new — the remaining two members, Vice Mayor Susan Candell and council member Teresa Gerringer, were elected in 2018. And if Dawson is elected, it would mark the first time in the city’s history that women made up the majority of the Lafayette City Council.
Burks said the past four years he has served as mayor, vice mayor and as a council member “have been the proudest in my life.” In Lafayette, the mayor and vice mayor positions rotate among council members.
He said he has the institutional knowledge to bring “continuity to our deliberations and policy considerations.”
Burks has been outspoken about local land-use issues, particularly the Terraces of Lafayette. He described a letter by state Sen. Nancy Skinner supporting the project as meddling and intrusive of city issues, and criticized the developer, O’Brien Homes of Menlo Park. However, he joined the council majority in approving the 315-unit apartment complex last month.
Burks added, “What keeps me up at night is the safety of our town. Public safety, whether it be wildfires, crimes, the sustainability of our environment, the integrity of our local jurisdictional independence,” he said.
Burks said he will donate half of the money raised in his campaign to the National Institutes of Health for COVID-19 research, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights legal advocacy group.
Farzan said he will bring a fresh perspective to the council if elected.
“I believe that it’s time for new ideas and additional vigor,” he said in a statement on his website.
He notes he has 20 years experience as an attorney, and can bring that expertise to the council.
“I am also very familiar with all of the new state housing laws and proposed housing legislation because of my work on the Planning Commission,” he said.
In addition to having been on the City Council and Planning Commission, Anduri has served on the city’s hillside task force and co-chaired task forces on environmental strategy, senior housing and roads.
“I want to put my experience to work helping Lafayette meet its challenges and making it an even better and more supportive place to live,” Anduri said, explaining that he stepped away from the council in 2012 because of job demands. “I solved that problem by retiring last year.”
Among his priorities are the housing crisis and the state’s removing local control over land-use issues like development; working to make Lafayette become more inclusive; the pandemic’s economic impact; climate change; and the city’s aging population and their needs.
Dawson said the “unprecedented times call for skillful and resourceful leadership,” and she will use her experience to hold PG&E “accountable to better public safety and to build a path to an inclusive, thriving community.”
Dawson was the co-founder of the city’s volunteer gas safety task force and helped form the Lafayette Gas Safety Alliance with Pacific Gas & Electric and the California Public Utilities Commission to work on pipeline safety. Save Lafayette Trees, which she and her husband founded, has contested PG&E’s plan to remove up to 272 trees in Lafayette as a safety measure.
In addition, Dawson is a founding board member of the Lafayette Hillside Memorial, aka the Crosses of Lafayette, and a founding member of Lafayette Partners in Education, a nonprofit that supports Lafayette’s public schools. She was also a co-creator of the Lafayette Farmers Market.