BY ALLISON LEVITSKY
Daily Post Staff Writer
A former TV reporter who moved to Palo Alto two years ago has decided to run for City Council, he told the Post yesterday (July 19).
Pat Boone, who went by Rick Boone as a reporter, said he decided to run to address the city’s traffic problem with a radical idea: to introduce a contra-flow system to major streets like Alma Street, University Avenue and El Camino Real.
In a contra-flow system, all the lanes of a street turn in a single direction during heavy traffic, such as during rush hour.
“To do that you have to set up a brand-new infrastructure system and brand-new traffic lights,” Boone told the Post. “We need to come up with a brand-new system where we can manage the roads, repave the roads and direct traffic in a better direction.”
Boone said he also wants to develop affordable housing for public servants, including police, firefighters and teachers, or “at least try to entice landlords” to rent to Palo Alto’s public employees.
Boone said he hasn’t gone to council meetings, but is aware of the major issues, which he considers to be grade separations, affordable housing and the cap on office development.
‘I’ve got a lot of time to give’
He now works as a media consultant, working with TV stations across the country on managing their news departments and coaching their reporters.
“I don’t really need to work as hard to survive,” Boone said. “I’ve got a lot of time to give the council position a full-time commitment.”
Worked at NBC Bay Area
He was born in Washington, D.C., and worked stints at a Fox station in D.C. and Tribune’s WPIX-TV in New York City before moving to the Bay Area and taking a job at NBC Bay Area (Channels 3 and 11) in 2016.
As he explored the Bay Area, Boone said he knew he was home when he got to Palo Alto. “I feel so darn comfortable. I can’t explain it,” Boone said. “I feel happy here.”
Looks a little like George Foreman. What’s his stance on grilling?
Will he support getting rid of the traffic diets that restrict through traffic at a time when we’re getting besieged by commuters? We’re spending tens of millions of dollars to create gridlock and make residents and commuters alike miserable.
Also, what’s his position on curbing the office growth that’s fueling the jobs:housing imbalance and increasing competition for each housing unit?
Finally, we need to know who’s backing each and every candidate so please make sure you cover it in this election. And what’s happening with the investigation into the current Mayor’s campaign financing irregularities? It’s been a while.
When I read, “I don’t really need to work as hard to survive” … “I’ve got a lot of time to give the council position a full-time commitment.” I m suspicious. It’s expensive to live in this town. Did he inherit money? Is somebody backing him financially?
Or maybe, perhaps on-air, in-front-of-the-camera TV “news” (cough-cough) readers are very well paid?
More disappointing/worrisome is when lay people with a bit of money/success/time on their hands and ZERO background in a specialized and not-so-simple field of knowledge/expertise, such as road engineering and traffic management strategies and best practices, think they can just waltz in off the street or their couch with their “bright” and disruptive ideas they thought of while in the shower, that (for some “strange unknown reason”) all the other trained and bright professionals in the field haven’t thought of or tried … maybe because they wouldn’t work and would cause at least as many – if not more – problematic side-effects than they purportedly might “solve.” All too often well-meaning people like this have no idea what they do or don’t really know, and letting them have at jobs they’re completely untrained and unprepared and unqualified and unsuited for (like being POTUS) results in complete and total trainwrecks.