December 30, 2004

Pat Dando: ‘The conscience of the City Council’

By Kymberli W. Brady
Staff Writer

Part Two: A public life
Dando speaks candidly about her political journey

After the birth of her third child, Pat Dando’s decision to become a full-time mom and get more actively involved in her children’s lives segued into an unexpected ascent up the political ladder.

Pat Dando and Chuck Reed were the only councilmembers who voted against taking the Tropicana Shopping Center away from the current owner under eminent domain. In 2002, Dando posed with recent District 10 city council candidate Rich De La Rosa, who is an owner of De La Rosa’s Imports, shopping center primary owner Dennis Fong, and Jose Mendoza, owner of San Jose Men’s Wear.

Her reputation with the Almaden Valley Women’s Club elicited a phone call from Tom McEnery, who asked her to facilitate a debate with his opponent Claude Fletcher, now chancellor for Valley Christian School. A friendship soon formed and after a successful election, Dando volunteered to promote the Measure A Transportation Initiative. In 1986, she ran McEnery’s campaign for mayor and then accepted a staff analyst position in his office, where she focused on education programming, land use and redevelopment issues.

The experience led to a stint as administrative assistant for Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Frank Taylor, until she successfully ran to fill the District 10 City Council seat vacated by Joe Head in 1995.

Dando was re-elected to a four-year term in 1996. After starting way behind in the polls, she came tantalizingly close to winning the mayoral race against Ron Gonzales in 1998. District 10 voters then re-elected her to another term in 2000, and Gonzales named her Vice Mayor in Jan. 2003.

Shortly after 9/11, she was appointed to the National League of Cities Homeland Security Task Force and now serves on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s Performance Review Committee.

In 2002, Dando offered Denelle Fedor, a “lifelong” Democrat, former campaign manager, and senior policy assistant for council member Ken Yeager a position in her office. Despite conflicting party affiliations, Fedor jumped at the opportunity to work for someone she considers “the conscience of the City Council.”

“Partisanship means a lot in San Jose,” Fedor explains. “You’re not supposed to be a Democrat and work for a Republican. Yet, I went from working for the first openly gay liberal council member to a moderate Republican and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Pat’s a new kind of Republican who at times can be more liberal than some democrats. We have more in common than one might expect.”

The public art process—some things never change
Looking back, Dando says the impetus behind her bid for city council centered upon the public art process, including the Council’s approval of the $400,000 Quetzalcoatl sculpture by Robert Graham. The cement serpent, which sits at the south end of Plaza de César Chávez went through “drastic changes and substantial costs” that she says looked nothing like the original bronze design with internal lighting.

“By the time it came to the council for approval, it was a 4-foot computer-generated cement prefab piece of art,” she explains. “I just couldn’t imagine how something could change so drastically and yet no one said anything about it. I thought, ‘I know I can do better than this!’”

However, Dando admits that little has changed in the public art process over the past 10 years—except for skyrocketing budgets, including the $10 million airport art project. She places some of the blame on the council, which has in the past, negated the importance and overall value of public art.

“I find it ironic that what got me into politics in the first place now seems to have generated itself back—especially with the airport art,” she says. “This has always been an area ripe for things that are not what they should be and they go unnoticed. Very often, staff does what they want anyway. I know there are things going on there that are not right and the public needs to be more involved in the process. They should decide what they want and make sure they get what they think they’re getting.”

Real life raises the bar
Before suffering a mild stroke in Nov. 2001, Dando, who’s motto had always been “bring it on” admits that she relished working late into the night, while starting bright and early each morning.

“It was stressful and I thrived on it,” she says. “I heard that stress takes its toll on our bodies, but I was healthy and reasoned that the advice was for other people, not me.”

In 2001, Councilmember Pat Dando as chair of the Family and Domestic Violence Prevention task force organized the fourth annual Elected and Public Officials Walk to End Domestic Violence at City Hall.

Her advice now—especially to women is to slow down and take time for themselves—a recipe for staying healthy that will enable them to do more for their families and businesses.

“It’s very hard to do,” she admits. “I find myself getting right back into burning the candle at both ends and it’s tough because as women, we are programmed to keep so many balls in the air with family, professions, and community. We want to please, to try and make things better.”

In Sept. 2003, Dando spearheaded AB93—which would establish standards and protocol for stroke care at hospitals. After a failed attempt to get it on the legislative agenda, she instead launched the Stroke Awareness Foundation and pushed for certified stroke centers throughout San Jose and Santa Clara County. Earlier this year, with the aid of stroke survivors Chuck Toeniskoetter and Chuck Hoffman, Good Samaritan became the first hospital in the county and third in the nation to be certified. Stanford Medical Center soon followed and Santa Teresa Kaiser is expected to be certified by the first of the year.

“We kind of bypassed the legislation because we felt we weren’t getting the support we needed and we wanted to move faster than the people in Sacramento could move,” says Dando. “They were caught up in other stuff and we felt this was too important. Soon we will have three hospitals in Santa Clara County with 24-hour stroke teams and are working on ambulance service that will allow drivers to take stroke victims to certified hospitals. We could be the first county in the nation to implement this.”

Pride preserved
Dando places the successful implementation of regular police academy training at the top of her accomplishment list, which she hopes will continue a commitment to public safety long after she’s gone.

“Policy may not be a very sexy thing to talk about,” she says. “But I think public safety is the cornerstone of what our community is built on. Without safe neighborhoods and a safe community, forget about everything else.”

Yet, last year, Mayor Gonzales nixed the academy due to budget concerns, a move Dando considers “short-sided and pound foolish.” However, she remains hopeful that he’ll keep his promise to bring the academy back in 2005 and warns that it won’t take long for the city to become woefully short in public safety officers if he doesn’t.

“We all like talking about being the safest big city in the nation,” she says. “But if we want it to stay that way, we’ve got to keep the academy going—especially now because we are going to start to see a lot of police officers and firefighters retire and our [cops to population] ratio is far different than other big cities as it is.”

Dando hails other memorable projects such as the Vineland Branch Library, the restoration of the Old Almaden Winery building, the Almaden Library [scheduled to open in 2006], Jake’s Play Lot, Jeffrey Fontana Park and the Hoffman/Via Monte Community Center as powerful reminders of a community willing to roll up its sleeves and provide a better life for its families.

While president of the Santa Clara County Cites Association, Dando fashioned a pro-active anti-graffiti program that today utilizes 2,000 volunteers, significantly reduces tagging, and helped reduce the city’s $2 million annual tab for graffiti cleanup.

As chair of the Domestic Violence Task Force and passionate supporter of the Family Violence Center, Dando secured private funding to provide at risk women with cell phones and home security systems.

Her work in District 10 resulted in many other programs and services such as the Neighborhoods FIRST! beautification program, The Spot: A Place for Teens, and a community service curriculum to encourage youth volunteerism that has since been adopted by the San Jose Unified School District, to name a few.

A decade of challenges
Probably the most difficult hurdles Dando faced during her reign centered upon hotly debated land use issues that divided Almaden residents. In 1995, she entered office taking a stand on the Guadalupe Land Fill expansion and leaves the community still divided over the passage four weeks ago of the McKean Road Sports Complex.

“As an elected official, you have to be responsible for the decisions you make and be responsive to those you represent,” Fedor explains. “You will never make everyone happy and it’s very disheartening—it’s one of the most difficult things Pat’s had to wrestle with.”

Three years following the shooting death of Officer Jeffrey Fontana, family, friends, officers, and residents gather for a candlelight vigil near the sculpture Vice Mayor Pat Dando helped acquire for the park named after him. The Fontana family says they will continue to hold the vigils until his killer is brought to trial. Photo by Kymberli Brady.

But wrestle she did, attempting each time to come to a compromise amicable to both sides. In 2003, she allowed a zoning change that paved the way for a housing development in New Almaden, but not before encouraging the developer to work with the neighborhood to ease concerns and revise plans down to a density that was more acceptable to the residents and more consistent with the area.

In an effort to address highly charged opposition to the sports fields, Dando reduced the number of original fields to ease water and safety issues, and then allocated $1.2 million to ensure proper construction management, roadway improvements, and monitoring so that the needs of the residents come first. While optimistic, she is realistic enough to expect that appeals will be forthcoming, but admits she doesn’t have much patience for bureaucracy and the process.

“Getting things through the process is probably the most frustrating thing,” she says. “Being in public service is not for the faint of heart. You have to continue to come back and try it another way if you don’t get the right response. You can’t give up.”

“It’s the democratic process and I understand that,” she admits. “The sports fields are a good example of bureaucracy and I’m hopeful that we’ve done everything we could to make it a good project, not only for the community, but to be a good neighbor for the people in the area.”

Passing the torch
As Dando tapes one box shut and starts to fill another, much of the past decade is getting bubble wrapped, sealed and ready for storage. In an effort to smooth the way for her successor Nancy Pyle, Dando has been compiling a transition file over the past several months—complete with information that she feels will be important when Pyle takes her seat on the council.

“I want to make sure I have a chance to do that,” she explains. “Each time we do something, hopefully it will make it a little bit easier for the next person that comes along. Clearly I wish Nancy well and a great deal of success because it will translate into our community being well cared for and our needs being met. That’s the most important thing.”

While she spends her final days tying up loose ends, Dando can’t help but look disparagingly at the negativity surrounding last month’s election.

“I’m really sad that we have seen some of the negative campaigns that happen across the nation creep into District 10,” she says. “I’ve always thought we were so fortunate to have candidates that stayed very focused on the issues. Maybe she [Pyle] will gain more confidence as time goes on—to be able to run on her own merits and not spend time trying to disavow someone else’s credentials.”

Saying goodbye
More than 600 of the who’s who in Silicon Valley paid tribute to Dando during a benefit dinner last month at the Marriott Hotel. Three of her more passionate charitable causes—Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence; The Spot: A Place for Teens; and the Stroke Awareness Foundation reaped the financial rewards from the sold out event.

Friends and colleagues alike hailed her accomplishments over the years, including 79 completed capital projects and another 17 still underway, including the Hoffman/Via Monte Community Center—which will soon bear her name.

What’s next, San Jose or Sacramento?
Asked why she decided to pass on a “sure bet” for State Assembly to instead go for a second run at the council, Dando admits that she would have a tough time getting things done in Sacramento, where elected representatives spend more time embroiled in Democrat-versus-Republican issues than people issues.

“I didn’t want to get caught in that minutiae,” she says. “I felt like I had more I wanted to accomplish here on the local level and I hoped that maybe things might begin to change at the state level so people would get away from partisanship. It’s not a healthy place to be if you want to get things done. If I were to go to the state, I might want to do it in a way where I could really make a difference.”

While rumors that she has decided not to run for mayor have recently surfaced, Dando is the first to say “not so fast.” She is reluctant to announce any decision until after she’s had a chance to mull over an offer from the governor’s office to become the director of intergovernmental affairs.

“I want to take a little bit of time to fully understand what the governor has in mind and I’m very intrigued with the possibilities and the opportunities that he might offer,” she says. “I believe this governor provides an opportunity to look at doing public policy and the work of the people in a different way.”

The final outcome will be based largely on the input of her family.

“That’s how I’ve always made decisions and those decisions have proved to work well for me,” she says.

“Whatever it is I hope to do in the future, they will be involved at the front end in helping me make that decision.”