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Name: Carter J. Warr
Age: 63
Occupation: Architect
Year residing in the district or city: 36
Key endorsements: Nancy Lund, Portola Valley historian; Mary Hufty, Portola Valley Council member; Gary Nielsen, former Portola Valley Mayor; Betsy Morgenthaler, Chair of Portola Valley Open Space Committee; Gary Hanning, President of Portola Valley School District Board of Trustees;
Campaign website: carterwarrforpvtc.com
Questions:
1. What makes you the best candidate and what relevant experience do you bring?Â
I have nearly four decades of success in local business. This fact speaks volumes about my ability to communicate, meet challenges, work through problems, create alliances, mediate disputes, and remain serious about my work while not taking myself too seriously. I am a trusted source of truth in Portola Valley. I tell the truth every time. Living and working within a very small community requires extraordinary trust, respect, and continuity. What you see with me is what you get. I am the same guy every day and every time. I use my gift of creativity in every aspect of life, communication, and reasoning. I share my love of life and people with everyone. I have a proven ability to empathize with all people to understand their real motivation. I have honed leadership skills that empowers people to safely exceed their comfort zones. I am an extraordinary life and career coach helping people focus on their core competencies.
- Architecture, Construction management and Planning Business – 35 years in Portola Valley
-  Planning and building – 47 years total and 38 years in Portola Valley
-  ASCC – 22 years
- ï‚· Accomplished Horseman – 57 years
2. What are your top three priorities as a council member?
- Retaining Rural Character, Protecting Open Space, & Valuing our Town History
- Improving Fiscal Management Policies/Systems with a thorough review of ALL
expenditures and reducing Town waste while living within our means. - Improving Customer Service Levels for our Residents by shifting management to
add focus on recruiting and retaining high value employees and focusing on
Portola Valley first.
3. The town has experienced a high turnover of staff over the last year. How can the council support the efforts to efficiently rebuild a strong town administration?
- Establish town manager priorities that include daily attendance of work in the Town Hall for all employees and exclusively assigned consultants.
- Reinforce the town manager’s responsibility to be a role model of behavior, modeling sincerity, compassion, empathy, teamwork, transparency, responsibility, and customer service.
- Insist on a town manager that embodies a charismatic leadership that encourages team members to follow, believe in the town mission, and who makes it fun to work for the town.
4. How can the town develop stronger relationships with its residents and community members?
By communicating more openly and more directlyrather than throught the lense of the Town Manager. The Council needs to take back establishing the Council Agenda from the Staff. The council needs to have open full council meetings to listen to the issue important to the Committees, Commissions, and the public. The Council should reorganize the reporting requirements of the department directors to report to the Council. These reporting mechanisms will allow the public insight into the operations of the Town.
5. What does the town currently struggle with?
Its finances are a compete mess at this point. Spending has recently been discovered by the Finance Committee and the new Finance Director to have exceeded for several years the income available to the General Fund. There will be struggles to redefine the expenditures that will be afforded. There are rumblings associated with needing to increase revenues. These issues are immediate and will require a struggle to resolve.
6. Financial audits are currently being conducted, but residents have expressed their disapproval for the lack of transparency on the town’s budget. What can be done to get the town’s finances in order for the next fiscal years?
I believe that with the insistence of the Finance Committee and members of the public the current process seems to be working. Never before have so many been involved with understanding the financial problems and reviewing alternatives for solutions moving forward. Moving forward the finance director will need to report directly to the Town Council so the the council can provide the fiduciary oversight the public expects.
7. The Planning Commission and Architectural & Site Control Commission have records of frequently canceling meetings. How can the town make volunteer-based committees more accountable? Should it?
- The Planning Commission and the ASCC volunteers have nearly never been the cause of meeting cancellations. Prior to the current administration in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s these commissions met regularly at a rate of twice per month. The commission cancelations have been the result of planning staff and consultant planners not having projects prepared for the commissions’ review.
- In addition, the planning staff and consultant planners have altered the nature of the commission review process. In the past, commissions were actively solicited for preliminary review of upcoming applications to assist applicants and staff with understanding the issues important to the commissions and the town.
- Finally, many meetings have been cancelled as the result of the Housing Element work. The planning staff and consultants engaged with the housing work opted to avoid Planning Commission and ASCC input and review of the recommendations except for final (always late) review.
- I feel the then staff and third-party housing element consultants were uninterested in understanding the needs and interests of the Commissions.
8. How can the town preserve its small town characteristics? Should it?
- Through diligence, reflection on the strong history of the town, strict conformance with the general plan, planning for improvements within those small-town standards and by the creation of supplemental specific plans to proactively plan for the small-town future.
- Portola Valley should remain a small town. The limited size of its land area, its sloping and difficult topography, its dangerous earthquake faults, its dangerous natural landslide conditions, and inherent risks from wildfires force the town to remain small and lightly improved. Further, the town is bounded on nearly all sides by either county boundaries, jurisdictional limitations, and publicly owned open space that limits the land areas of the town to those originally incorporated in 1964.
