Three candidates, two council seats
By Nathan R. Huff
With less than a week left in the filing period for the Monte Sereno City Council election, an incumbent, a 1998 council candidate and a start-up guru have announced their intentions to run.
David Baxter and Erin Garner will join incumbent Fred Hawkes to vie for two slots on the council. Councilman Gordon Knight has announced he will not seek reelection.
While Hawkes is an incumbent, his tenure on the council has been short. He was appointed to the council following the departure of Joel Gambord, who resigned in March to move to Pebble Beach. With Knight's impending departure, the last remnants of the former group, "Citizens For Monte Sereno," which Knight and Gambord helped spearhead, will be gone from the council.
Baxter was one of nine Monte Sereno residents who applied for Gambord's position in April. While Hawkes ended up being selected, Baxter was one of several hopefuls at the time who said he intended to run in November.
True to his word, the father of three has pulled papers and has begun to plan his campaign. A high-tech engineering and product development executive, Baxter has been a vice president for 3Com, as well as a venture capitalist. His present company, Akamba Corp., is located in Los Gatos.
Baxter said his primary issue was protecting the character of Monte Sereno against increasing outside pressures. "It's a quiet, friendly community and one of the big challenges we get is, as there are more people coming in and buying up old property, it's changing the character."
Baxter says he is in favor of neighborhood involvement with new developments and protecting the rural environment that helps give Monte Sereno its character. His other big concern is pedestrian and bicycle safety, which he said is an increasing problem for the city.
Garner is running on a "character" platform, as well. Endorsed by Gambord and Knight in the 1998 election, the 39-year-old environmental engineer and father of two garnered 13.3 percent of the vote, finishing sixth. He said he took a year "off" from following city politics, but dove back in recently and wants to become an active participant.
"I like trying to do community service," Garner said, "and I have a lot of interest in community politics."
Garner said his central issue would be preserving Monte Sereno's character by enforcing the town's zoning ordinance to limit further development. "I want to avoid the overdevelopment our beautiful neighbor Los Gatos has experienced," he said.
At the same time, Garner would like to expedite the permitting process for projects on existing homes. Garner, who said he has been troubled by some recent council uses of discretionary funds, would also like the city to develop a more conservatively fiscal policy.
Incumbent Fred Hawkes, a retired small businessman and engineer, said he also wants to control development in the city. "My interest is in the city maintaining its zoning laws and keeping variances to a minimum," he said.
A grandfather of two Daves Avenue Elementary School students, Hawkes served on the town's historic heritage committee and has also been an advocate of open space preservation. Hawkes separated himself from the other candidates vying for Gambord's seat in April when answering a council question on preserving Monte Sereno's rural atmosphere by questioning whether anything was left to preserve.
The deadline for declaring candidacy is Aug. 10, but a seven-day extension is offered for those waiting to see what the incumbents choose to do. Knight, saying he was not sure he wanted to "go through the whole agony again," has no plans to run for re-election.
"I set out a certain number of objectives, and I've accomplished all of them. I'm ready to move out of the way and give someone else a go at it," Knight said, adding he would make his endorsements after the candidate field was set.
The council situation may get stickier in November, if Mayor Suzanne Jackson is elected as the District 24 State Assembly representative and she would be required to resign her council seat.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
