Willow Glen Resident
News
Photograph by Vicki Thompson
Loyal Liaison: Megan Doyle, assistant to San Jose City Councilman Ken Yeager, District 6, has worked for Yeager for more than two years. She is now District 6 chief of staff until the vacant council seat is filled.
Chief of staff keeps District 6 humming
By Mary Gottschalk
San Jose's District 6 may be vacant until the March runoff election, but Megan Doyle is making sure Willow Glen residents are still being represented.
Doyle, a four-year aide to former councilman Ken Yeager, has stayed on as District 6 chief of staff until a new councilman is elected. The runoff candidates are Pierluigi Oliverio and Steve Tedesco.
Doyle was Yeager's staff liaison to residents in the Rose Garden area but is now addressing concerns across the district, from garbage pickup over the holidays to the three sycamores downed on Willow Street.
"This is a unique opportunity," says Doyle while strolling down Lincoln Avenue. "There is some transition allowed."
While District 6 lacks a vote on the city council until after the runoff, Doyle assures residents their questions will reach city council.
For example, when the appeal to Alano Club West's conditional use permit came before council, Vice Mayor Dave Cortese took the initiative toward a resolution. Yet the District 6 staff did the legwork, such as speaking with neighbors, before the issue reached council.
Doyle and two aides, Adam Byrnes and Ryan Ford, are also still attending neighborhood association meetings throughout District 6.
When Doyle spent most of her time in the Rose Garden, she was usually the first person people contacted with questions, concerns, comments or complaints.
The neighborhoods' email list postings frequently suggested "call Megan" or "email Megan."
Upbeat, cheerful and invariably polite, Doyle works from dawn to dusk and later. She's at 8 a.m. meetings of The Alameda Business Association and that same night will be at a neighborhood meeting that will stretch beyond 8 p.m.
Mention an eight-hour day and Doyle laughs, saying, "That's not part of the job."
She doesn't begrudge the early morning or evening meetings because "I need to be in the community when the community is there. So many of these people are volunteers, and they're only available on evenings and weekends."
Doyle says development projects that come before the council are another aspect of her job she relishes.
"I enjoy talking to the community and working with developers and staff to make sure everyone is getting the service they need and that both sides are talking to each other. But if I had to do it full time, I'd go crazy."
Doyle's accessibility has made her popular with residents.
John Hoskins, president of the Newhall Neighborhood Association, once introduced her as "Megan the miracle worker." He says Doyle can handle things others couldn't imagine. "She's been an inspiration to our neighborhood."
Urban development
Doyle, 29, grew up in the Rose Garden neighborhood with younger siblings John and Colleen. She attended St. Martin's and Notre Dame High School.
She recently bought a condo in the district, and her parents, Frank, an attorney, and Nancy, assistant superintendent of schools for the Diocese of San Jose, still live in the house where she grew up.
Attending Notre Dame gave Doyle what she calls "an urban experience," which readied her for Fordham University in the Bronx borough of New York City.
After graduating from Fordham in 1999 with a double degree in American studies and theology, Doyle entered the New York City Urban Fellow program. She describes it as "an intense fellowship where you see how the city interacts with the state, and how it interacts with the federal government."
From there Doyle went to work for the New York City Board of Education as an aide to the chancellor of the school district that serves 1.3 million children.
Doyle says she might still be in New York if it wasn't for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
With a softball game in Central Park scheduled for that afternoon, Doyle headed to work with a pack containing a change of clothes and walking shoes, when she came up out of the subway and saw a large crowd looking up at the smoke billowing from the first tower that had been hit.
Doyle made it back to her office in Brooklyn via the subway, and was told soon after to evacuate the building.
Before leaving, Doyle heeded a friend's advice to call her parents. She sent an email to her family members saying she was fine before taking a long walk back to her apartment. The shoes she had packed made the walk easier.
Her family was foremost on her mind at that time. "My grandmother was dying here on the West Coast, and I had a plane ticket to fly from JFK on American to San Jose three days later," Doyle says. After Sept. 11 there were no flights.
Once flights resumed, Doyle was on the first plane home to San Jose, sharing the flight with only five other passengers. However, it was too late, and her grandmother had died.
The experience of being away from her family started Doyle thinking about her future.
She was getting more responsibilities and promotions and thought if she was going to move back to her parents and family, this was the time to do it. She moved home in August 2002.
Although she wasn't employed, Doyle quickly picked up consulting jobs around the state.
Business travel, however, was not that glamorous.
"I thought it would be so much fun, flying in and meeting people in different offices, but you don't connect," she says.
So Doyle started looking for a local job and considers her work with Yeager to be serendipitous.
"I've always been interested in politics, and I'd followed the San Jose political scene," she says.
Shortly after Yeager was elected, Doyle sent him an email complimenting him on what he was doing and suggested how he could do one thing in particular better. When asked what that one thing was, Doyle diplomatically says she doesn't recall the exact issue.
"This is my life now; I answer those types of emails," Doyle says with a grin.
However, in Doyle's case, Yeager responded directly and suggested next time she was in San Jose they meet for coffee.
Yeager is more candid about their first encounter.
"I was very impressed that right out of college, she was interested in city issues," Yeager says
When Doyle's résumè landed in Yeager's office in May 2003, he was looking for a new aide. Doyle was hired.
Yeager says being an aide to an elected official is a very tough job, with long hours, night meetings, poor pay and abusive constituents. Despite it all, he says Doyle "seems to win everybody over with her compassion and sunny disposition."
While it would seem that Doyle is in a good position to consider running for office herself, she reacts with horror at the idea saying, "God, no.
"I never say 'never' to anything, but I like being the behind the scenes person working for someone I really respect," she says.
Doyle admits it's difficult to have a personal life.
"I am nowhere near the public figure my boss is, but sometimes it's hard to be at Pasta Pomodoro with your friends and people come up to the table and ask questions," she says.
"My friends go, 'What? Stop! Don't talk to them, walk away.'
"I think sometimes people don't see me as a real person, but I've gotten better at saying, 'I'm sorry, can you call me tomorrow when I can give it my full attention?' " she says.
After the March election, Doyle will pass on the reins to the next city councilman, and then rejoin Yeager as a policy aide. Yeager was elected as Santa Clara County supervisor in June 2006 and took office in December. Yeager's new district covers parts of Santa Clara, West San Jose, a sliver of Willow Glen and Campbell.
Like Yeager, Doyle hopes to raise awareness of countywide issues such as regional transportation, senior services and affordable housing.
"Ken and his staff had a good relationship with the city," Doyle says. "We can be a bridge between the county and the city."
To contact the District 6 office, call 408.535.4906 or email District6@SanJoseca.gov.
Staff writer Alicia Upano contributed to this story.
