This is fourth and final article in a series of question-and-answer sessions with the mayors of the four towns covered by the Almanac. This interview with Atherton Mayor Charles Marsala was conducted on April 26 by Almanac Staff Writer Andrea Gemmet.
By Andrea Gemmet
It’s easy to see why Atherton Mayor Charles Marsala’s backyard is such a popular spot for parties and fundraisers. There’s a wide expanse of lawn, an ample patio, a swimming pool and a very large outdoor bar.
A guest cottage houses both his office and large game room equipped with a pool table and a foosball machine, among other things.
The affable bachelor, a New Orleans native, moved to Atherton eight years ago and almost immediately got involved in community activities.
He was narrowly defeated by Kathy McKeithen in his first bid for a council seat in 2000. By the time he was appointed to the City Council in 2002, he was a member of Atherton’s Art Committee and Park and Recreation Commission, and had served on the Waste Reduction Committee. An active Republican, he’s also involved in a number of political and nonprofit organizations.
Atherton real estate may be some of the priciest in the nation, and its residents among the wealthiest, but the town itself operates on a small budget that relies heavily on an annual parcel tax.
While Atherton town government has been turmoil-free in recent years, there are still some big issues roiling the community. Atherton residents have turned to the council looking for relief from a myriad of complaints related to massive and long-lasting construction projects.
At its May 17 meeting, the City Council may impose time limits on construction projects. The regulations would put in place one-year, two-year and three-year maximums, depending on the size of the project. Fines for exceeding the time limits could go as high as $250,000.
Q: The City Council looks like it’s definitely going to impose time limits on construction projects. Will this make a big impact on all of the construction-related annoyances?
A: It seems like 95 percent of the homes are in compliance already, and we’re looking at the 5 percent that aren’t. There is a couple, like the one on Park (Lane), (and) there’s one on Stockbridge, that have been going on for years.
In looking at that ordinance, what concerns me is we really need to target the houses (under construction) over three years, not necessarily the ones (that last) a year. If there’s some rain in that year, we could really cause a burden on someone who has a smaller project.
(I’m) thinking why don’t we just look at the three-year projects, and could we get it done with just having an ordinance that says you have three years to build a house under 4,000 square feet?
And also, to look at (its) implications on houses over 10,000 square feet, because there are a considerable number of those. People who have five acres or 10 acres of land, and if they are building a new house, they have parking (for construction vehicles) on site. So why don’t we put something in place for the larger homes, instead of just saying you can apply to the Planning Commission for an exemption?
Q: In terms of dealing with all the things that seem to be driving people crazy, are there other things coming online to help people feel less angst about living in a construction zone?
A: Well, we’re tightening down on the parking plan.
A month ago, I went down Park Lane and stopped at every site, and I was impressed to see that some of the contractors had posted (a sign) at the door (saying) we have been contacted by the city.
As we look at things, we’re adjusting. Part of it has been we didn’t have this size of construction going on in prior years, so we’re having to adapt as we see these large projects go on, to make sure that the residents have a quality-of-life around those sites.
Q: The sheer volume of projects is huge. The last estimate I saw said about 110 or 112 construction projects are going on at the moment. Is that all forms of construction, even remodels?
A: When I went down Park (Lane), it was very representative of what I think is going on. There was one spec home, three of them were minor remodels — two of them were landscaping, one of them was a garage and a kitchen — and there were six new homes that were owner-occupied.
If you looked at what you see happening in town, probably 60 percent of the projects are new homes, 30 percent are adding a garage or doing landscaping, and 10 percent are specs.
Q: From what I was hearing, it seems like the spec homes are the ones that finish up pretty quickly.
A: The spec homes are shorter because when a person builds a spec home, he’s not going to customize it. I know some homes where people have wanted to put in a special ceiling that they’ve brought from Europe, and maybe it’s held up in customs right now. These people buy land in Atherton, and land in Atherton has a value because people can do those things.
Q: It seems that there’s so much renewal of the housing stock in Atherton, it makes me wonder if it’s going to be possible for Atherton to be able to retain historic buildings or historic artifacts when things are getting replaced so quickly?
A: Well, we have several historic buildings, and there are two homes I can think of that people have renovated, where the homes are over 100 years old. They were built before we had height requirements.
People find those homes and they are gems, and they want to keep them because the home is taller than you could build today
The artifacts — we’ve had people donate things to the town. One area we should try to work is how people put some of these things in their will.
Q: I know there’s a historic study that’s been going on. What’s the status of that?
A: There were some letters that went out to residents recently to ask them if they had anything, and if they wanted to declare it and have it evaluated. That process right now is still gathering data on all the possible artifacts that we have in the town. We’ll see it in the next few months.
Q: And then you’ll see what the residents think of it?
A: Yes. It protects a lot of the artifacts and the culture, but at the same time I have concerns about private property rights. We have to balance that, I believe, when we work on something.
Q: That’s a very tough balance for communities to find.
A: That’s why I was thinking we could start promoting the idea that the town is open to putting a plan in place that allows people to donate artifacts to the town. It’s better if someone does something willingly, rather than if you force them.
Q: Atherton’s administrative offices have been looking like a trailer park for some time now. Where does building a bigger town hall and police station, bigger administrative offices, rank in terms of Atherton’s priorities?
A: (Mr. Marsala explained there is a restricted fund, generated from building permit fees, that can be used for office space for the building department.) I think we’re over $700,000. The department has been in the trailers for 10 years, so that money’s been accumulating.
As you know, we have a huge amount of (home building and landscaping) projects in play. The more projects you have, the more permits and the more dollars in fees.
We’re looking at donations (for town offices) as well. There are people who want to make specific donations, and we’ve seen that with the children’s playground (at Holbrook-Palmer Park) that raised $350,000 within a few months, and the Little League field did approximately the same.
There are people interested in the police department. We don’t know the numbers yet, but we know there are some donors who would respond. As you can see what happened in Portola Valley, residents will step up and say, “I want to do something for the town.”
We need to look and see what the potential is. We don’t know how large it is yet; we know it’s worth pursuing.
The other thing is we have to determine if we’re going to remodel the buildings, expand the buildings or build new. We need to start evaluating our needs there.
Q: But in terms of whether this should take priority over, say, roads, drainage or channel repairs, what do you think?
A: We’ve got, as you know, about a $1.5 million (road project) going on Selby Lane right now. We’re going to take Valparaiso (Avenue) on this year with Menlo Park. We’ve been taking care of roads now for several years.
We will not use any of our general funds for the (administrative offices) building. This isn’t taking any of the dollars from roads or drainage. The building will be done solely on fundraisers.
Q: How urgent is it?
A: (The first Town Hall) building lasted for 30 years, and then in the late 1950s they built the new town hall.
When they built it, we didn’t have women police officers, so they use the same locker rooms as the men.
The police station wasn’t built for meeting today’s needs, it’s 50 years old. The restroom for a suspect is the same one the public uses.
So can you get by with expanding it, or do you start over?
We have a lot of concerns right now on public safety if there’s an earthquake. If that building’s not up to snuff, the residents may want us to spend the money to do that right.
Q: You’re a New Orleans native, and you’ve been out there recently and seen firsthand all the devastation that a natural disaster can inflict on an unprepared community. So if a major quake were to strike tomorrow, how do you think Atherton would fare?
A: We would fare much better than New Orleans. Let me show you something. (Mr. Marsala pulls out a plastic bucket of emergency supplies which includes, among other things, a radio, an old telephone and a hand-crank flashlight and battery charger).
So we’re going to be working on educating the residents more on what they’re going to need.
We have an emergency operations coordinator, that’s Sgt. (Eric) Grimm. So I saw where our generator is, what supplies they have, and we’re putting in a well at Holbrook-Palmer Park so we will have water available.
We do have a manual that tells us how backup resources go. In a small emergency, you call in county resources, and if it grows, you call in regional and state.
Whereas in New Orleans, there isn’t much outside of New Orleans and Louisiana, so there wasn’t a lot of places to call for backup.
Eric Grimm has, for five years now, been taking training classes on this, and that’s an advantage we have with our own police department.
Q: Atherton has had a reputation of being a town of walled houses, where residents don’t exactly hang out and barbecue on the street together — although that’s not really true for some neighborhoods. You’ve probably single-handedly done a lot to encourage socializing in Atherton, from what I can tell.
A: (laughing) I’ve brought a New Orleans flavor to it.
Q: What else should the town do to foster a sense of community among its residents.
A: When I started out I was on the Arts Committee, the committee was putting on a lot of great events — concerts in the park. We have a wonderful park.
(Mr. Marsala noted that he played a role in persuading the staff of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to allow San Mateo County to put a proposal on the November ballot to adopt a 1/8 cent sales tax for county parks.)
I, being a moderate Republican, have access to moderate Republicans, and they were able to give me an audience with his staff.
That (tax would) allow us to get $220,000 a year for Holbrook-Palmer Park.
I think it’s important to maintain the park. There used to be a Day at the Park. I’ve been a big proponent of taking care of the tennis courts. People donated the courts, they donated money in the form of fees, upwards of $200 a year for a tennis key. Those activities foster community.
If we redid the Pavilion to accommodate events so that Atherton residents might want to go there again, that’s another way of building community.
We have two historic buildings in the park, the carriage house, which has a second-floor that’s being used for storage, and the water tower. It’s possible, down the road, if we had this $220,000 coming in a year, we may want to finally address opening up the second floor of that carriage house and the water tower (for social events).
The kitchen tour that the (Atherton) Dames put on as a fundraiser for the park, it’s at homes that have taken a while to build. People want to go into a home that’s got a unique theme in it. You frequently will see 30-40 Atherton residents at someone’s backyard party, and that’s a way of mixing.
One thing I thought we should do is having mailboxes in town. We have a post office, but we don’t have (post office) boxes.
We have 200-something home-based businesses, and maybe they don’t want to have their mail delivered to their house. If those businesses could register at an Atherton address, then we would be collecting sales tax revenue, and (it would) also foster community as more people see each other at the post office.
It’s also a service for regular residents who just want to have a mailbox. So I see it as having community, service and financial benefits.
Q: What are your top goals and priorities as mayor for the rest of this year?
A: Working on this facility project (town offices) is definitely a high priority because we do have a window right now where we don’t have to worry about the parcel tax, we have some great residents who have offered to help, and we have a seasoned council.
The administration building is going to be 50 years old. The trailers are a problem. The police facilities, we’ve outgrown them, they need to be modernized.
Another priority is emergency awareness. We have been working with the ACIL (Atherton Civic Interest League). I’m looking at having an event here for all the principals of the schools and homeowner association presidents, and have Sgt. Eric Grimm here to talk.
There’s a new principal at M-A. Years ago it was set up so that we could tune our radios to the M-A radio station to learn what roads are closed, what’s going on here, and what we are doing.
As years go by, we lose that continuity. We need to go back, tidy up some of those things that were in place, and put up a system that allows for (continuity) as people change.
The final thing for me is Holbrook-Palmer Park. I want to get the tax measure passed for county parks. We critically need a park to build that community.
I’d like to see us bring back the staff appreciation dinner. We stopped that about four years ago. We should have an event where we recognize all the people who volunteer for the committees and commissions, and even the fundraising that goes on for the Dames and the ACIL. It wouldn’t cost much, especially if you think of the amount of hours these people contribute.
When I’m at an event, I always have my ear bent for 10 or 15 minutes, whether it’s about a construction issue or the flier about the (barking) dogs. Our staff does go out of its way to handle these quality-of-life issues, and so does the council.
Q: If the council goes forward with a plan to hire some sort of code- enforcement officer, that is meant to handle these quality-of-life issues, isn’t it?
A: A third of the town is out of compliance, maybe more, on the codes.
Q: With rocks in the roadside right-of-way?
A: Rocks, bushes, a boat in the front yard. There are a lot of things that are in the codes.
One concern that I have … we had the code where if you wanted to have a fundraiser at your house, you needed to get a permit 60 days in advance.
That was on the books for about five or six years, after Al Gore had come to town several times, and it had caused chaos. So it was on the books, and no one had applied for those permits. Maybe three people in six years, and I know there were a lot more events that went on in Atherton for political fundraising or charity fundraising.
The other thing about the code-enforcement officer is, I’m very concerned about pension costs, so I want to see us do that without hiring an additional staff member.
I’m hearing approximately 10 years ago, the council backed off on some of these codes. Our staff has the interpretation that the council did (back off), so we got to where we are now.
Q: So overall, do you think the town needs to spend more time on code enforcement?
A: Yes, but before we do, we need to review the codes again and make sure they are practical. We might find, for example, that we’d have to cut so much vegetation out of Lindenwood (right-of-ways) to get it into compliance that we would ruin the character of Lindenwood, and we don’t want to do that.
So we also need to take a step back, just like we did with the special events ordinance, and say, “Does this make sense for us as a town in 2006?”
We want to work out something that is a solution that doesn’t cause more problems.
That’s what I think happened with the (special events permit) ordinance, because Al Gore came to town one too many times, and somebody said, “Let’s put this in place.”
Charles Marsala: New Orleans native
Charles Marsala was raised in New Orleans and graduated from Tulane University with a degree in mechanical engineering.
He runs a business obtaining the rights to sell products nationally or regionally through the Internet. Current projects include ListaToolboxes.com, which sells custom industrial workstations and furnishings, and InteractiveAR.com, which provides accounts receivable products.
He was appointed to the Atherton City Council in 2002, along with Alan Carlson and Bill Conwell, when council members opted to cancel the uncontested election. He served as Atherton’s vice mayor last year, and was chosen by his council colleagues to serve as this year’s mayor.
