Five vie for three San Carlos City Council seats

Among them are Ken Castle, business development consultant; John McDowell, small business owner; Sara McDowell, community volunteer; Laura Parmer-Lohan, small business owner; and Adam Rak, public policy consultant.

Situated in the center of a growing economy, San Carlos’ some six square miles have been dealing with change on multiple levels, including an uptick in jobs, increased traffic congestion and strained infrastructure, said Parmer-Lohan. Having decided to run for a seat on the council more than a year ago, Parmer-Lohan said she’s hoping to foster increased dialogue among San Carlos residents about the changes taking shape in the city and what can be done to best address them.

“That’s causing some stress and people feeling like the community they bought into is evaporating,” she said. “A lot of the developers want to leave the place better than they found it, but they haven’t really been asked.”

Parmer-Lohan said she has spoken with parents and developers in San Carlos about the scarcity of child care in the city in the hopes a critical resource with a big impact on a family’s cost of living can be bolstered. Rak, Castle and Sara McDowell, who has no relation to John McDowell, joined Parmer-Lohan in casting a focus on working with developers to ensure community benefits such as parks and traffic mitigation measures are included in large projects, and also in pushing residential developers to include affordable housing units in plans for new projects.

Though he acknowledged the housing shortage is a regional issue, Rak noted San Carlos can contribute to the county’s stock of affordable housing and pegged stretches of Old County Road and East San Carlos Avenue for future study as transit-oriented areas where higher-density developments could be accommodated. Castle favored forming a Peninsula-wide development association bringing nonprofits together with developers and cities to look for sites where high-density housing developments can be accommodated across the county.

As chair of the city’s Economic Development Advisory Commission, Sara McDowell said she has heard from San Carlos business owners about the difficulty of hiring local workers and emphasized the importance of working with nonprofits, developers and state agencies and develop strategies for boosting the city’s stock of affordable units.

Though she acknowledged developers have the option of paying in-lieu fees instead of including affordable units in residential projects, she said officials should encourage developers to build affordable units where possible and consider studying underutilized city properties as potential housing sites.

“I think it’s the creative out-of-the-box thinking that we need to go for,” she said. “I’d like to revisit [in-lieu fees] on council and really push for the affordable units to be built instead.”

Having grown up in San Carlos, John McDowell said he’s observed the small-town charm that’s attracted many to the city disappear in the face of unchecked development. Though he voiced support for efforts such as those the San Mateo County Community College District is taking on to provide workforce housing, he also advocated for taking a look at how office developments drive demand for housing and exploring a moratorium on commercial development, which he said could ease the housing shortage while affording the city time to study the impact of its current zoning.

“I’d like to see the City Council take the approach of revisiting our General Plan and look at the zoning issues we have here,” he said.

Rak, who also served on the board of the San Carlos Elementary School District, also acknowledged the challenge of managing a yearslong discussion about recommended changes to the city’s residential zoning standards. Aimed at addressing concerns about the mass and scale of new homes and remodels while also affording homeowners the ability to meet the needs of their families, proposed home-size regulations were released in May after months of meetings between the city’s Single-family House Advisory Committee, on which Parmer-Lohan served. Conversations about what changes would be most effective have continued at Planning Commission and City Council meetings since then.

Most of the candidates agreed restrictions on the floor area ratio, or the ratio of a building’s total floor area to its lot size, could provide guidance for homeowners and architects while also limit the impact of new home projects. Acknowledging the variety of lots in the city, Rak advocated for councilmembers to include in whatever set of recommendations they approve a provision to study the impact of the changes in 18 months or two years and make sure they understand their effects and can adjust as needed.

“We need to keep looking at this issue because it’s a complicated one, but … I think it’s going to take more time to get it right,” he said.

Both Castle and John McDowell supported the recommendations crafted by the volunteer group Good Growth San Carlos, which has advocated for a maximum floor area ratio in line with neighboring cities among other recommendations aimed at mitigating the effect of large home projects on neighbors and the neighborhood.

For Castle, who has seen several large homes go up in White Oaks and impose on their neighbors, the city’s current standards should have been more carefully studied before they allowed such large home projects. He noted officials and residents have made progress on developing new standards in recent months, but didn’t think there should be any rush to approve new recommendations before the three new councilmembers are elected to give the conversation the space it requires.

“I don’t feel there should be any rush to judgment to the council,” he said. “You can’t really make a hard and fast rule for any particular type of property.”

Most of the candidates felt the city’s decision to contract with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office for public safety services and the Redwood City Fire Department for the city’s fire services after the 2008 recession made sense for the city and didn’t compromise the quality of those services. For Parmer-Lohan, ensuring the city’s planning department is appropriately staffed and paid a livable wage is critical given the high volume of development proposals and plans the city must review. Though he acknowledged some departments in the city may need additional staffing, John McDowell supported using a contract model out of concern for the potential of layoffs in an impending economic downturn.

The candidates also lauded the council’s decision earlier this year to use $7 million of San Carlos’ unfunded liability reserve to pay down the city’s employee pension obligations. Rak and John McDowell advocated for using reserves to pay down the city’s pension liabilities during strong economic times to avoid having to cut services during a slow economy. Concerned about the turnover in full-time employees, Castle voiced support for studying how other cities and states are addressing their pension obligations.

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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