As Palo Alto prepares to fill three seats on the City Council, voters face a pivotal choice between maintaining the status quo or demanding a more responsive local government. While the field presents distinct challenges, we recommend Bryna Chang, Ed Lauing, and Vicki Veenker as the best path forward to govern our city.
We are most enthusiastic about Bryna Chang, the current Planning and Transportation Commission chair. Chang brings a refreshing, urgent focus to neighborhood safety, sparked by her firsthand experience watching dangerous near-misses during traffic duty at Hoover Elementary.
Unlike career politicians, she is fiercely dedicated to holding the city’s notoriously slow-moving transportation planners to task, demanding accountability rather than accepting bureaucratic delay. Her focus is entirely on serving the residents of Palo Alto, and her detailed knowledge of city governance makes her an exceptional choice.
The incumbents
We are decidedly less excited about the two incumbents, Ed Lauing and Mayor Vicki Veenker. Under their watch, residents have grown increasingly frustrated by the city’s slow, agonizing response to the influx of RVs on local streets and the continued economic deterioration of California Avenue as a business corridor.
However, Ed Lauing has proven to be a steady voice for transparency. He has consistently pushed the city manager to communicate with residents sooner and publicly criticized the council’s frequent lapses into secrecy. His experience on both the parks and planning commissions provides a grounded, stable presence that the council sorely needs.
Vicki Veenker presents a more complicated case. While she touts recent incremental progress on the RV crisis, we harbor deep concerns about her political motivations. Despite her assertions that she will not seek higher office, Veenker previously ran for the state Assembly in 2016. Her extensive appointments to high-profile regional boards — such as the Bay Area Air District and Northern California Power Agency — strongly suggest she is using her council seat as a network-building stepping stone for the open Assembly seat opening up in 2028.
Furthermore, Veenker’s judgment was deeply flawed when she voted to reappoint Forest Olaf Peterson to the planning commission. Peterson was the subject of a complaint that he used his title to gain special treatment from a tow yard owner during a dispute involving his daughter. That breach of ethics should have been more than enough to deny his reappointment, yet Veenker voted to keep him on the commission and voted to keep the subsequent investigative report about the incident hidden from the public.
No viable alternatives
Despite these valid frustrations with the incumbents, the remaining choices on the ballot simply do not offer viable alternatives.
Yudy Deng has served less than two years Parks and Recreation Commission and hasn’t made much of an impact. She clearly needs more local civic experience before stepping onto the council. More troubling is the historic influx of out-of-town money flooding her campaign; more than half of her donations come from outside Palo Alto, including maximum contributions from out-of-town CEOs and political action committees. Deng claims this pattern isn’t suspicious, but that is exactly what it is. A local council member should be answerable to Palo Alto residents, not outside financial interests.
Meanwhile, candidate Gary Gechlik has no record of civic involvement in Palo Alto proper. Due to an oddity in our city’s sprawling geographical boundaries, Gechlik actually resides in an area that most people consider La Honda. While it is unfortunate that he lacks a structural mechanism to serve his immediate neighbors in La Honda — which is an entirely different community with distinct needs — he cannot properly represent the core interests of Palo Alto residents.
A combination of qualities
Despite our reservations about the incumbents’ past performance, the combination of Chang’s fiery advocacy for neighborhood safety, Lauing’s steady hand and Veenker’s experience offers the most capable leadership for our city’s future. Vote for Bryna Chang, Ed Lauing, and Vicki Veenker.
Agreed—Bryna Chang gets my vote enthusiastically and without hesitation.
The other two get my vote reluctantly, largely because there doesn’t appear to be anyone else left to vote for. Not exactly a ringing endorsement—more a triumph of limited options.
And Veenker’s decision to reappoint Olaf Petersen – a rotten egg- is disappointing. Apparently, recognizing a bad appointment when you see one requires considerably more than common sense. Perhaps the thinking is that if something wasn’t a good idea the first time, the obvious solution is simply to give it another term.
Let’s just hope Lauing doesn’t allow the do-nothing Ed Shikada and his staff to sideline him. Lauing ran on “Leadership We Can Count On”—so now would be a good time to demonstrate that leadership rather than let city staff dictate the agenda.
I voted for Lauing to lead, not to watch from the sidelines. If Shikada isn’t performing, I expect Lauing to rein him in—and, if necessary, make a change. Campaign slogans are easy; exercising actual leadership is the part residents are waiting to see.