Candidate for
Council Member; City of Palo Alto

Yoriko's speech at her campaign kick-off event on 9/18/05

Thank you all very much for coming. I'm so honored and happy to have you here as we kick-off this campaign for my second term.

It has been a wonderful experience and great honor to serve as your representative on the Palo Alto City Council for the past four years. I want to tell how I define this job, what motivates me to run again, and why I would like you to support me both in this campaign and hopefully in the next years.

Part of the job is challenging myself to climb the highest hill I can find and look out as far as I can to try to anticipate long-term challenges and opportunities. I try to keep a long-term perspective and understand Palo Alto in a regional and even global context. Palo Alto is a wonderful although imperfect microcosm of enlightened democracy in action, still a hotbed of innovative technology, with a fabulous downtown, California Avenue and great neighborhoods. It is framed by the uplifting and unspoiled hills on one side and the vast peace and renewing power of the Baylands on the other. But the big picture shows a potential one million more people in the Bay Area by 2020 and there will relentless pressure for growth and potential deterioration of quality of life and work in Palo Alto.

I believe that I am most qualified to help Palo Alto meet the challenges of the future without sacrificing our environmental and community values. It would be easy to say there should be no changes, but the fact is that Palo Alto changes every day. It is also far too easy to make changes and grow without taking the time and trouble to understand the complex consequences and trying to adjust the system or equilibrium to make sure every change is a net positive for the community. I have a deep belief that change and progress must not mean deterioration in our environment or quality of life. This is partly what motivates me to wake up enthusiastic most mornings to do my work as a council member: a belief that this goal is possible and achievable. If we cannot achieve it here in Palo Alto, where can we??

I also have the audacity to believe that I can help break the stalemate between the environmentalists and pro-development advocates. We can move forward as a community only if we can develop the tools to ensure that redevelopment and development need not mean more cars, less open space, worse services. I have been a staunch supporter of development impact fees so that new development pays at least some of their share of new infrastructure needs. I want to help Palo Alto move towards a model where kids can bike to school and seniors can find a shuttle to take them to services and eventually reverse this relentless growth in regional and local car traffic. I am so proud of our PTA champions who against all odds have led the charge to reverse what seemed like an inevitable long-term trend where kids were all being driven to school because all those other drivers were creating dangerous congestion. Together, through the City-School liaison committee, we have created a community where more and more high school and middle school kids bike to school or take our shuttle and our elementary schools kids are able to develop healthy life-long habits by walking to school. Looking forward, I believe that initiatives such as the Charleston-Arastradero Corridor Plan are absolutely essential to keeping South Palo Alto safe and livable and an opportunity to show that new development can lead to an overall raising of the quality of life, not a deterioration.

Thus, I combine my Stanford MBA background with many years of activism as an environmental and neighborhood leader and now four years on the city council and regional boards to try to find creative solutions so that we can indeed move forward as a community. When I am told there is no choice but to accept environmental or community value trade-offs or that some proposal doesn't pencil, that is when I roll up my sleeves and do my homework, crunch the numbers, ask questions, get the advice of the many brilliant people here in Palo Alto and our Silicon Valley region, and build coalitions. I go the extra mile to listen to all sides and ensure we are doing the best we can.

Another part of my job as a city council member is to participate regionally to make joint, responsible decisions. Each city in our county and region is different and unique. But we also share common air, common water, some common tax base, and a common future as a region. I have found it absolutely fascinating to be chair of the VTA Policy Advisory Committee, which is where all fifteen cities of the county send an elected official to be represented and try to develop a consensus. We are fortunate to have a number of council members dedicated to serving on these regional boards because if we are not there, they are making the decisions without us.

A third part of the job is that of being your connection to city hall. It is our job to oversee the city manager and the city budget and keep the potholes fixed and lights turned on. It is true that 90% of life and work is the daily chores + we want to take pride in them and do them well, do them efficiently. We have an incredibly educated and intelligent community and we have on the whole great staff who work hard to provide good service. It is my job to work with my colleagues to set policy, review staff work, ask questions on your behalf and give them constructive feedback and have them take corrective action when necessary and change practices. I have been on finance committee three of the last four years and I have worked hard to control costs by tackling long term cost issues so that we will not have to cut services or reduce our spending on infrastructure. An example is libraries where I refused to close branches when they had not taken the basic steps of even automating check-out and promoting volunteers as a way to free up valuable professional librarians time to do more productive work.

Finally, there is the strategic part of the job; the intangible. I awake sometimes afraid of thinking small, living small, of being afraid of stepping up and taking a chance when the opportunity. My theme of my kick-off speech four years ago was to remind ourselves that "it is not by accident" that we have this great community of strong neighborhoods, awe-inspiring open space, a strong, diverse tax and job base, a great mix of neighborhood commercial and downtown, California Avenue. I think of great people like Nonette Hanko who was driving force behind the Mid-Peninsula Open Space and many of the city leaders we have amongst us today. It is not by accident we have this great community, but due to the constant, hard work and vision of a great many people.

I've been supportive of the FTTH initiative moving ahead in some way. I think it is absolutely critical to keeping Palo Alto and the region globally competitive. There is much visionary work and hard work ahead of us on a long range energy plan including fostering more renewables, a sustainable water shed management plan, and a long term solution to our creek and tidal flooding issues. We need an overhaul of our tax system. We need to keep an eye on keeping our Valley of innovative companies serviced with efficient infrastructure. I have a vision of public transportation that is modern, responsive to today's needs and fully utilizing internet and GPS technology. To get to a level of trust where we can try new things together, we need to take our community conversations to the next level.

Perhaps in a way, I hope our work together in the future can also be judged by the changing culture of our city to open and civil debate, how deep our conversations and thinking are, and the quality of relationships amongst us all. I know that can only lead to good things.

So you see much work is ahead. I derive my strength from all of you every day, including my loving family, and I ask for your support on November 8th.