Barbara Spector, a local attorney and former planning commissioner, joined Mayor Steve Glickman and community services commissioner Barry Bakken in filing nomination papers for the November election. Guy Johnson withdrew his entry early last week.

Glickman's and Councilwoman Sandy Decker's terms will expire in December, but only Glickman is running for re-election.

Spector said she decided to enter the race, like Johnson, partly due to Decker's encouragement.

"People have been encouraging me to step forward for a long time, but the person who brought this to my attention, because of the open seat, is Sandy Decker," she said.

Johnson said in an email to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times that Spector's entrance into the race influenced his decision to bow out.

"I decided to withdraw primarily due to the different dynamic in the race created by Barbara's candidacy," he wrote. "I plan to remain active in the community and pursue my goals via other approaches for the time being. There's a good chance I'll run in the next go-round."

Spector has been interested in serving on the council for several years, she said, but only now has the time to devote to it—she stepped away from the planning commission in 1988 after eight years because of a busy litigation schedule. But she has recently shifted the focus of her legal practice toward more mediation work in order to cut down her hours.

The 30-year Los Gatos resident said she and her peers on the planning commission "established a foundation that continues today" through work such as rewriting the town's General Plan and creating a downtown-specific plan. Since that time, she has been able to see that work in place and think about what changes or refinements would benefit Los Gatos.

"I think it's an unusual situation where you can make significant changes to a town and then have a generation go by and have the ability to see 'how did it work?' " she said.

In addition to her commission experience, Spector said the negotiation skills she has developed as a lawyer would be useful in dealing with town issues. Among the issues she said she would like to address are the town budget, revenue sources and land use. Those areas are intertwined, since land use affects revenue generation, and the budget depends on revenue.

"There are issues with the state that are not totally resolved yet," she said, referring to state "take-aways" of local property and sales tax money. "With regard to those things [in] which we have more control, like encouraging people to come here and use our hotels and shops, then we get back to why people come here."

And why do they come here? Spector quoted a passage from a 1915 Sunset magazine she came across when researching town history to answer that question.

" 'To know Los Gatos is to love the town. To become a permanent resident is to lie in paradise.' I felt that way in the late 1960s when I first came here ... and I continue to feel that way now."

Preserving that "paradise," she said, is one of the most important challenges facing the council today.

The filing period for candidates closed Aug. 11.