Meet the candidates running for Sunnyvale City Council

Sunnyvale could have a new City Council and mayor next year, with multiple seats up for election come November.

Four seats on the Sunnyvale City Council will be on the ballot — the mayor and council districts 2, 4 and 6. District 4 Councilmember Russ Melton is terming out and challenging Mayor Larry Klein for his job. District 6 Councilmember Omar Din did not file for reelection, leaving three candidates vying for his seat.

In late September the candidates attended a San José Spotlight forum where they discussed housing, homelessness and city services.

City voters will also weigh in on two ballot measures. Measure E is a $290 million general obligation bond to rebuild the Sunnyvale Public Library. The renovations will include expanding community areas and event space, seismic retrofitting and modernizing the library’s facilities and electricity systems. The bond, if approved, will be levied at a rate of $27 per $100,000 assessed value.

Measure F asks voters to make changes to the city charter, namely using gender neutral pronouns and adjusting the number of council meetings annually from two every month to 24 throughout the year. It would also remove the citizenship requirement to serve on city boards and commissions.

Here’s a roundup of Sunnyvale’s candidates:

Mayor

Larry Klein

Klein, 57, is the city’s first mayor elected by voters. Prior to that, the position was decided by councilmembers. He served as mayor for two other years while sitting on council. Before being elected to the city council in 2016, he served on the city’s Planning Commission for nine years.

A key component of being mayor is networking and building relationships with other officials, Klein said. When he wanted to bring a drone show to Sunnyvale to celebrate Fourth of July, he said he sought support from another councilmember before introducing the topic. He is also in discussions with the Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley to start an after-school program in Sunnyvale, after meeting CEO Steve Wymer at a separate event two months ago.

“We’re a well run city, but we are handcuffed to a certain degree by that 20-year plan, that 10-year balanced budget. We don’t start a lot of programs,” Klein told San José Spotlight. “I’m happy to see the city is being a little more forward thinking and trying to do things faster and better than what they did before. So, for me, it’s continuing to keep moving the city in the right direction.”

The city is working on safe vehicle parking policies, which Klein prioritized in his first run for mayor. He also wants the city to join the Silicon Valley Hopper ride-share program, which already operates in Cupertino and Santa Clara.

Klein is an advocate for increasing affordable housing in the city, and said he wants to continue work on the housing expansion at Moffett Park. He worked on the city’s plan to add 20,000 homes to the region when he sat on the planning commission, and now wants to see the plans for a walkable neighborhood, with housing and retail, come to fruition.

Russ Melton

Melton, 58, is terming out of his seat on council, but he wants to keep serving Sunnyvale — as mayor. Melton was first elected to the city council in 2016 and served on the planning commission for four years before then. He also chairs the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission, a state-mandated agency that oversees cities in the county’s urban development, and said he’s proud of the organization’s efficiency.

As mayor, Melton said he would prioritize good governance and efficient delivery of public services. That includes working with other governing bodies to move projects forward, like Caltrans or the Fremont Union High School District. Melton said the latter needs to step in to help the city’s push to join the Silicon Valley Hopper ride-share program, because it would support students living in North Sunnyvale, who have limited options to get to school.

Melton also plans on increasing resources allocated to the city’s Department of Public Safety. He said the city’s officers are overworked, clocking a combined 80,000 hours of overtime annually across about 200 officers. He plans on hiring seven more officers and assembling a burglary suppression unit to curb property crimes across the city.

“You don’t want a bunch of stressed out, overworked officers,” Melton told San José Spotlight. “What you want is officers with good physical health, mental health, good work-life balance and opportunity to get sufficient rest because that job is so critical and so difficult.”

Melton said he wants to establish a safe vehicle parking program, which the city is developing. He also plans on hiring more city employees to better maintain services as the city’s population grows, and would focus on maintaining existing city infrastructure, like the city’s sidewalks and sewer systems, than multiple new programs.

District 2

District 2 is in western Sunnyvale, bordered by Central Expressway in the north and the Caltrain tracks in the south. It encompasses Murphy Avenue, the city’s downtown and Washington Park.

Incumbent Alysa Cisneros is running against former Councilmember Jim Davis.

Alysa Cisneros

Cisneros, 37, wants more people to get involved in local policy making. Along with representing District 2 since 2021, she teaches political science at De Anza College, where she encourages her students to engage in local government.

On council, she has pushed the city to expand its services for homeless residents and improve metrics on those services’ success. She also advocated for the permanent closure of Murphy Avenue, which was turned into a pedestrian mall in 2023, and for the city to pursue safe vehicle parking.

Cisneros wants to continue working on improving the city’s housing approval process and quality of life for residents downtown.

“Voters can go back over four years and see how I think about issues, see how I operate, what I do, and I am comfortable letting my work over the last four years speak for me,” Cisneros told San José Spotlight. “I encourage them to go and ask the same of my opponent, because he was on council. … I encourage voters to base their decision on that because you are very fortunate to not have unknowns here.”

Jim Davis

Davis, 72, said he wants to jump back into the elected office after hearing complaints from residents that his opponent has been difficult to reach. Davis said he enjoys engaging with constituents even while not on the dias. He’s a professional Santa Claus who has donned the red coat for downtown Sunnyvale’s Christmas tree lighting for the past 10 years.

Davis wants to prioritize listening to residents’ concerns and plans on holding monthly community meetings. He wants the city to move faster on creating a safe parking site to get RVs off residential streets. He suggested the city acquire the former Orchard Supply Hardware on Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road for safe parking. He also wants to ensure the city’s money is spent efficiently on services, adding he wants to expand the city’s public safety budget.

“We can immediately start safe parking there, and tear down the building and start building low-cost housing in there and just build that out as it goes, but nobody seems to want to move forward,” Davis told San José Spotlight. “We just let everything happen and we react to it rather than be active.”

District 4

District 4 is in southeast Sunnyvale. It’s bordered by Central Expressway in the north and Homestead Road in the south, Wolfe Road and Fair Oaks Avenue in the west and Lawrence Expressway in the east. It encompasses Peterson Middle School and the Lawrence Caltrain Station.

Melton is terming out, leaving the seat open. Charlsie Chang, a government affairs officer, is running unopposed for the seat.

Charlsie Chang

Chang, 31, is running an uncontested race for District 4, where Melton is terming out. Chang is the government and community affairs officer at San Mateo County Transit District, and she’s previously worked for Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian and state Assemblymember Alex Lee.

Chang said her priorities include keeping Sunnyvale residents safe, emphasizing the importance of pedestrian and cyclist safety, especially near schools. She also wants to increase pedestrian safety at major intersections and roads, such as El Camino Real. Affordable housing is another primary focus and she wants to find ways to streamline the city’s backlog of projects and speed up the process.

“I’ve been more comfortable being the behind the scenes person, doing the work, but it was a lot of friends and supporters pushing me (to run),” Chang told San José Spotlight. “(They said), ‘You’re the one who understands how it works, you can do more with the role where you can be that advocate and help people directly.’ I do really appreciate the constituent services aspect of it.”

District 6

District 6 is in North Sunnyvale. Its southern borders are Central Expressway and Highway 101. It encompasses Moffett Park and the Sunnyvale Baylands County Park.

Councilmember Omar Din did not file for reelection, leaving the seat open. Software engineer Beverly Blau, Sunnyvale School District Trustee Eileen Le and finance analyst Richard Lesher are vying for the job.

Beverly Blau

Blau, 39, is a newcomer to Sunnyvale politics. She filed to run when she saw that District 6’s seat was open and thought it would be a good opportunity to throw her hat into the ring.

Blau said she didn’t have any platforms at first, but developed some after listening to her neighbors.

One of her priorities will be preventing the closure of New Wing Yuan Market, which sits on a lot the city has marked for potential mixed-use redevelopment of housing and retail. The developer’s proposal slashes the lot’s retail space, leaving residents worried that North Sunnyvale could become a food desert. She also wants to limit the use of non-recyclable plastic and develop fair rent policies for mobile home communities.

“I volunteered on political campaigns before, I’ve always been curious about it,” Blau told San José Spotlight. “I had a baby last year, so I’ve had life changes that made me realize maybe I want to do something with my life that’s not just work for the man.”

Eileen Le

Le, 37, wants to focus on better accessibility for those who are disabled and greater equity on the city council. With the city planning to build 20,000 more homes in Moffett Park, Le wants the city to be strategic with how it adds resources in District 6. Le said she wants to improve pedestrian and bike access and increase public transit, noting that seniors trying to get from their homes in North Sunnyvale sometimes have to walk a mile to the nearest bus stop.

Le said her experience on the school board has shown her how governing bodies operate and has made her think more about the community’s overall health, to support the city’s children. Having more after-school activities options will improve public safety, especially for those living in North Sunnyvale.

“District 6 is like the local equivalent of flyover country,” Le told San José Spotlight. “People just drive through here, they don’t spend a lot of time thinking, ‘Why isn’t there a grocery store here, why are there no coffee shops?’ It needs to change and you need someone on the dias talking about that.”

Richard Lesher

Lesher has ample experience with managing finances, a skill he hopes to bring to the city council while representing District 6. He decided to run after comparing his qualifications with other councilmembers and not feeling represented by outgoing Din.

Lesher, 52, said he wants the city’s plans to develop Moffett Park to move forward faster. He said the Moffett Park redevelopment could provide an opportunity to add services in North Sunnyvale, since there are few grocery stores and no pharmacies.

“Housing and accessibility are the big things,” Lesher told San José Spotlight. “I’m not proposing any new grand ideas for housing. I’m proposing, ‘Okay, let’s execute what we said we’re going to do.’”

He also said he wants to allocate resources toward hiring a paramedic in the city. The Department of Public Safety is integrated, meaning every officer is trained as a police officer, firefighter and emergency medical technician. Still, the city lacks its own paramedic support and instead relies on the county’s ambulance services.

Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X, formerly known as Twitter.