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Mark Dinan, a 15-year resident of East Palo Alto, has served on the City’s Public Works and Transportation Commission for four years. And he is proud of it.
Through the experience, which he calls “fulfilling,” he has learned the strengths and constraints of city entities. In his role, he has been able to do things like open the Bay Trail at Rutgers Street in the Ravenswood Preserve — a park that has historically excluded East Palo Alto residents, he wrote in the East Palo Alto Sun, a blog that he co-founded on city happenings.
Whether it be volunteering for the city – or writing about it – Dinan, who ran for council in 2022, spends a lot of time working with East Palo Alto, and he hopes to further that relationship to make a bigger impact.
Dinan does not take a hard line on most issues, he said, but his main priority is making East Palo Alto livable through forward momentum.
“I want to see a strong East Palo Alto,” he said.
Dinan, who grew up in Wisconsin, received his undergraduate degree in history from Marquette University and immediately went into recruiting with Technipower, a company that places designers, engineers and tech professionals in companies throughout the country.
He moved to the Bay Area through Technipower in 1997, before buying a house in East Palo Alto with his wife in 2009, where he lives today with her and his son who attends Menlo-Atherton High School.
Today, he owns a small business, helping companies — some of which include Roku and Salesforce, among many other smaller businesses — recruit software engineers.
An active member in the community, Dinan’s main concern is liveability, or access to better parks, local restaurants and businesses, safer roads, a community center and parking for residents.
“You have to leave the city to get an oil change,” he said. “You have to live your life outside of East Palo Alto.”
If elected to the council, his first step toward improving parks would be to re-establish a parks and recreation department to ensure there is a team dedicated to local amenities.
The way to manage parks, he said, is not to lock them up, or close their bathrooms, but to fill them with activities and people. He envisions East Palo Alto parks with music events, cafes, clean bathrooms, Wi-Fi and a police presence.
“People to this day don’t feel it’s safe to go to MLK park,” he said, referring to a 2020 murder of a man in the park.
He hopes to create new parks, including some for dogs, on the West side of East Palo Alto and along San Francisquito Creek and would like to work with local schools to open their playgrounds to the public when school is not in session.
Through his work on the Public Works and Transportation Commission, Dinan has also helped reopen the bathrooms in MLK and Jack Farrell parks and install garbage cans on the Bay Trail, he wrote on Facebook.
There’s a mindset that East Palo Alto can’t have nice things, as people have resisted development, he said, but he hopes to spend down some city reserves to improve the community for people who live there — whether for 5 minutes or 50 years.
Along with better parks, he prioritizes development that reflects the needs of residents: more restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters and car-services, among others.
People want to stay in the city, get a drink, feel safe and sleep through the night, Dinan said.
Dinan has spent much of his time as a candidate canvassing and speaking to residents. While livability is one of his utmost concerns, he acknowledges that what people worry about most is whether they’ll be able to continue living in East Palo Alto due to the high cost of rent.
He believes building more, high-density, mixed-use housing will solve this issue.
“New construction and continued investment in affordable housing is key to lowering rent and improving living standards,” Dinan wrote on his website.
Like many other candidates, he is specifically interested in building a variety of housing — some affordable and some for the working class.
Dinan, in favor of more development in the city, believes the East Palo Alto Sanitary District kept rates low through “exploitative labor practices,” which he called unethical.
“No other city does it like this,” he said. “It just collected a lot of money.”
While he’s not sure how much resident rates will increase, Dinan related the entity’s operation to “driving a car for years with no oil change then handing it back” — it had no plans to replace the “80-year-old pipes,” he said.
Along with the sewer system, Dinan aims to invest more in city infrastructure, like water pipes, sidewalks and parking systems. But he strongly rejects the expansion of the Palo Alto Airport, which he believes would affect East Palo Alto residents most by polluting the air even more — with residents already facing disporportinately high asthma rates.
The lengthening of the runway to allow for jets, he said at a Palo Alto City Council meeting, would prioritize convenience for affluent people while excluding East Palo Alto residents from the decision.
Dinan also believes the city needs to invest more in emergency preparedness to combat climate change and possible flood, earthquake and fire effects.
In his second round running for council, Dinan has faced opposition, he said, with some slashing and vandalizing his banners, but he decided to run because he cares about the progress of the city.
“We need people who want to unify the community,” Dinan said.
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