Gilroy
– After two years of professing zero interest in Gilroy’s top
elected position, City Councilman Craig Gartman announced Wednesday
that he is
”
exploring
”
a potential bid for mayor.
Gilroy – After two years of professing zero interest in Gilroy’s top elected position, City Councilman Craig Gartman announced Wednesday that he is “exploring” a potential bid for mayor.
The announcement of a possible challenge this fall to Mayor Al Pinheiro comes as Gartman rides a wave of public support, stemming largely from a dissenting vote two weeks ago on a plan to raise pay for City Hall’s top managers.
“Two years ago, the mayor was insistent that I was going to run and I told him I had no plans to run,” Gartman said. “Up until a few weeks ago I still didn’t have a plan to run, but I’m listening to the comments and concerns of the people of this community and the comments I hear are that people believe the council is too easily swayed by staff in making their decisions. They feel they would like to have someone who is willing to challenge recommendations and make sure that the council spends a little more time examining the long-term ramifications of decisions.”
Mayor Al Pinheiro said he was not surprised by the announcement from Gartman, who in the past year has grown increasingly critical of the city’s top staff and the willingness of council peers to hold bureaucrats’ feet to the fire.
“To that I say he needs six new council members, not a new mayor,” Pinheiro said. “Even a year ago when he ran for council, he started differentiating himself. I guess it must be that all six of us or five us (who vote in the other direction) are wrong, or we don’t see the whole picture.”
For more than a year Pinheiro and others have pressed Gartman on his plans for a possible mayoral bid, but the councilman said he did not seriously consider the possibility until two weeks ago.
The “straw that broke the camel’s back,” Gartman said, was council’s April 16 approval of a shift in pay ranges for roughly 40 nonunionized city managers. The program, which will add at least $200,000 to Gilroy’s budget annually, was approved just days before the release of budget estimates showing that officials must cut back spending or risk eroding $27 million in reserve funds within five years.
City Administrator Jay Baksa presented the budget to council two weeks after he submitted the pay-raise request. Prior to the release of the budget figures, Gartman chided city council and Baksa for the proposal. In a five minute speech that drew applause from scores in the audience, he called the measure the most “fiscally irresponsible” proposal he’s encountered as a councilman.
Policy and Politics
In his six years on Gilroy’s top elected body, Gartman, 49, has reveled in the details of development and policy work, unearthing and helping to clear up contradictions and loopholes in regulatory proposals. For instance, he spent hours on the dais two years ago sifting through dozens of corrections on a 100-page development guideline for the Hecker Pass plan.
More recently, Gartman has cultivated his image as a watchdog who demands greater control over the city’s budget process. For the first time this year, largely at Gartman’s insistence, council is playing a more active role in the development of the city budget. Typically, council only has a few weeks in late May and June to review and vote on a largely crystallized document.
“Craig’s very thorough. He’s very analytical and he’s needed on council.” Councilman Dion Bracco said.
But Bracco, who has already endorsed Pinheiro for a second term as mayor, suggested Gartman’s virtues can tumble into vice.
“If you’re just going to question staff on every little thing, it’s a control issue,” Bracco said. “We can’t control staff and have them thinking outside the box if we’re standing behind them second-guessing every move. Do we need to question them more? Yeah, I think so, but there’s a limit to how far we can go before we become a problem ourselves.”
Last year, when Gartman publicly criticized Baksa for failing to notify council of a major mall development targeted for east Gilroy, Bracco dismissed the flap as “micro-managing” City Hall. This week, on the heels of the pay-raise flap, Pinheiro said the city has every intention of “closing the gap” between revenues and spending, and that it is too early in the budget process to criticize future spending. Instead, he painted the budget picture in a positive light, saying estimates of multimillion-dollar hits to the city’s reserve funds are less than originally projected just a few years ago.
“You can take anything in the city and pull it out of the whole picture, focus on it and make it look any way you want to,” Pinheiro said. “I try to balance decisions based on the whole, and I’ll continue to do so. At the end of the day, if the citizens believe Councilman Gartman can do a better job, that’s their prerogative. I have no apologies to make.”
But Pinheiro is not taking chances either. He has already sewn up endorsements from Bracco, Councilman Russ Valiquette and former Councilman Bob Dillon, a close friend and frequent ally of Gartman before he lost a 2005 reelection bid. Dillon said he promised Pinheiro his endorsement in January, long before Gartman announced the possibility of running. He would not say if he would have supported Gartman if the announcement came earlier.
Friends in right places
But Pinheiro may need more than endorsements to beat back a challenge from Gartman. The mayor has frequently found himself on the unpopular side of controversial issues. Prior to the 2005 council election, for instance, he helped push through narrow approval of a housing proposal for Miller Avenue despite protest from scores of neighbors and other city residents. Pinheiro also locked horns with the city’s public safety unions in a failed effort to uproot binding arbitration, a blue chip in labor negotiations for workers who are not allowed to go on strike.
Gartman opposed the Miller Avenue development and steered clear of his initial support for efforts to uproot binding arbitration, ultimately earning the endorsement of the fire and police unions and going on to a first-place finish in the 2005 election. Should Gartman lose a bid for mayor in November, he would still have two years remaining on his second council term.
Following his April 16 vote, Gartman said he received a flood of e-mail and phone calls applauding his opposition to the pay raise plan for city managers.
“I told him I’ll donate the maximum to his campaign,” said John Trinchero, a third-generation Gilroyan. “I’ll go out and raise money for him. He’s the only one on there that’s questioning anything.”
Serdar Tumgoren, Senior Staff Writer, covers City Hall for the Dispatch. Reach him at 847-7109 or [email protected].
