Steve Kennedy: least effective, or most imaginative Menlo fire board member? Steve Kennedy: least effective, or most imaginative Menlo fire board member? (April 24, 2002)

By Pam Smith

Almanac Staff Writer

Who is Steve Kennedy?

Because he didn't have to go through an election to land a spot on the board of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, voters may not have heard much about him.

Directors are generally elected, but when the number of candidates is the same as the number of openings, they are automatically appointed.

That's what happened in 1999, when the board had two openings and Steve Kennedy and Bart Spencer were the only declared candidates. Their four-year terms end in 2003.

It is Mr. Kennedy's first public office.

After county Supervisor Ruben Barrales resigned in late 1998, Mr. Kennedy was one of at least 11 people to apply for an appointment to the vacancy. (Supervisors chose Rose Jacobs Gibson, then an East Palo Alto councilwoman.)

In an e-mail to the Almanac, Mr. Kennedy described himself as "a low voltage electrician" specializing in telecommunications, a Democrat, and an East Palo Alto resident involved in that city's council of tenants.

A graduate of California State University, Stanislaus, Mr. Kennedy stated that he spent two summers in the 1970s fighting fires for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

He has been working on a video project about urban firestorms, fire safety and the environment, entitled "The Cannonball Express," for eight years, he wrote.

At least two directors have made critical comments regarding Mr. Kennedy's performance as director, claims with which Mr. Kennedy vigorously disagrees.

"You would have to rank his performance as the least effective of the five directors by a wide margin," said Director Peter Carpenter. In his opinion, Mr. Kennedy does not do his homework, or know the issues.

Four directors really have their attention focused on the district's mission, its financial stability and ability to provide service, but he doesn't see the same from Mr. Kennedy, said board President Bart Spencer.

"After two and a half years I don't have much to brag about on the Board," but it is not for lack of trying, wrote Mr. Kennedy.

He had four goals, he wrote: to promote a program to remove and upgrade window bars, to improve fire safety where suburbs and wildland areas meet, to develop a community-based workforce program, and to restrict the use of wood shingle roofs.

His efforts at ingenuity have been quashed, he wrote. "So am I the least effective of the Directors or the most imaginative?"

The bars on windows program was "shuffled off" to the city of East Palo Alto, and the board defeated his request for a matching grant for his video about fire safety, as well as a proposal he introduced "that would have mildly restricted the use of wood shingle roofs," which he says are highly flammable, he wrote.

The other directors also declined his offer to join the board of a nonprofit organization he plans to form, to raise money toward efforts to aid Afghanistan, make window bars on homes more safe, and educate people on fire safety, he said.

With the exception of his proposals, votes are almost always unanimous, wrote Mr. Kennedy.

"It does leave me feeling like a rubber stamp who's out of the loop at times," he wrote.