EDITORIAL FROM THE SUNNYVALE SUN

Council incumbents have earned voters' confidence

The most remarkable feature of this year's campaign for four seats on the Sunnyvale City Council is how calm and civil it's been. Mayor Otto Lee is running unopposed, and the three incumbents--Dean Chu (Seat 4), Ron Swegles (Seat 6), and Melinda Hamilton (Seat 7)--are even endorsing each other.

Quite a change from campaigns past when races were just short of bloody combat.
But it's not just the welcome change of tone in today's council that prompts us to recommend the incumbents be returned to the council in the Nov. 6 election. A civil tone would mean little if this were a do-nothing council. It's not.

Although challengers--Dave Whittum (Seat 4), Pat Meyering (Seat 7) and Dixie Carney (Seat 6) would have you believe otherwise, the current council has made important strides to get the city headed in the right direction.

The town center is finally on track with construction now under way; citizen committees now participate in reviewing director hiring; noticing of council meetings has been improved with council agendas now posted four days prior to meetings--two days more than mandated by law. By the end of the year, video streaming of city council meetings will be available.

Oh, and the budget has been balanced.

The most controversial issue in this year's campaign appears to be the Mary Avenue Bridge. Challengers say it's a bad plan, and that the city needs to go back to the drawing board to find a better way to provide access to Moffett Park commercial complex. The three incumbents couldn't agree more. They say the plan was developed in the 1970s, and even if it made sense then, it doesn't necessarily make sense today. They are asking staff to rethink the bridge.

Arguably, the best decision the current council made in the past four years, however, was asking interim city manager Amy Chan to remove the "interim" from her title. Her inclusive and open style complements the approach of the council, and together, they are on track to return the city to its former glory days as the city President Clinton praised as the best -run city in the country.

For anyone who actually misses the bad old days of bloody city council races, the faint echo that can be heard in the distance is the sound of copy machines printing out so-called "fact sheets" attacking incumbents with misinformation and half-truths. Tim Risch and his wife, Yolanda, have created the fliers for challengers to distribute. Risch, a former council member who has lost two recent council bids, seems unwilling to accept defeat gracefully. Instead, he and his wife have made a career of trying to get even.

We think the best advice in this election, however, is the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Returning the three incumbents, Ron Swegles, Melinda Hamilton and Dean Chu, to the council on Nov. 6 is the right move for Sunnyvale