Election Watch

Incumbent City Councilman Doug DeHaan is running for re-election. DeHaan has served on the council since 2004. DeHaan has lived in Alameda his entire life. He was raised in the West End community of Woodstock and graduated from Encinal High School.

Dennis Evanosky

DeHaan worked at the Naval Air Station for 36 years. He held the positions of budget director, production superintendant and transition personnel director. While at the NAS, he was responsible for budgets that exceeded $500 million.

His interest in the Naval Air Station property did not end with his retirement. He was directly involved in bringing three new tenants to Alameda Point: The first was CalStart, a developer of electric vehicle technology. DeHaan served as chief operating officer and consultant to two other companies he helped introduce to the Point: Alameda Aerospace and Advanced Turbine Technologies.

"In 1990, along with Mayor Chuck Corica, I became directly involved in the effort to retain the Naval Air Station," DeHaan says. "I served in the capacity as the Base Retention Chairman. This was my renewed commitment to continue to serve the community and the base conversion process. The subsequent closure of the base had major economic ramifications for our community and continues to be one of the foremost economic problems the city of Alameda faces today."

DeHaan served as the chair of the base reuse subcommittee for the Base Reuse and Advisory Group (BRAG), which developed the Community Reuse Plan the guiding document for base conversion. DeHaan also served on the Economic Development Commission as a member and chairperson where the key focus was on retail/commercial economic development within the city. "This led to my election as your councilmember, which I am now in the process of completing my first four-year term," DeHaan says.

According to DeHaan, the three core issues in Alameda are the budget, Alameda Point and transportation/traffic. DeHaan says his challenge "is to continue to meet quality-of-life requirements for Alamedans without compromising the needs of present or future generations."

School board candidate Ron Mooney offers the community business savvy and a proven dedication to schools. He is past president of the Alameda Education Foundation and currently serves on its board as secretary. "I am running for school board to provide the community leadership our schools need," Mooney says.

Mooney has learned first-hand the importance of every level of an organization. He started at a young age at a $150-plus million, 200-employee family-owned business and worked his way up to vice-president of operations. He has three children who attend Alameda schools.

Mooney said leadership is a top priority facing the school district. He says that school board members must act as community leaders with integrity, vision and action. "The board needs to lead the discussion of what we want for our schools and how we will fund them, not continually being reactive to the diminishing state funding year after year after year," he said.

Mooney sees the board taking a leadership role in two important areas. First the board must hold meetings and workshops to share the data and vision for Alameda's schools without relying solely on bureaucratic committees and reports. Second, Mooney says the board needs to own a master plan for the schools.

He says that the board needs significant input from professional educators, including the superintendent, teachers, staff, administrators "to create and adopt a district master plan that all can look to for the direction of our schools, that all can look to as a guide for the major decisions we make every year, every month, every day."

Mooney also says the school district must create long-term plans that anticipate shortfalls from the state and that "give our community the information and strategies for making up the differences."

He sees a need to fight for fair-share funding for long-term success. "Simply asking or demanding Sacramento for more funding will not work," he says. "We cannot keep running our schools the way we have for the last decade if we are to meet the challenges of the future."

Mooney realizes that there are no magic answers to the pressing needs of Alameda's schools. "Working together and being a leader is what is needed," he says. "I have the demonstrated ability to do just that for our community."