June 5, 2008

Pyle wins second term by a landslide

By Carol Rosen
Editor

District 10 City Councilmember Nancy Pyle, the only opposed incumbent, won her second term by more than 7,000 votes in Tuesday’s June primary.

Even though it was election night, the City Council held its first Tuesday of the month evening meeting. Above Nancy Pyle celebrates with some of her fellow council members including re-elected Kansan Chu and Pierluigi Oliverio as well as Mayor Chuck Reed, and Councilmembers Madison Nguyen and Sam Liccardo.

Pyle collected 89.06 percent of the vote or 8,314 votes defeating Ashraf Madraswala, who grabbed a mere 10.94 percent or 1,021 votes.

“I am really comforted and extremely happy that the community feels good about what we’ve done and that a good, quality relationship exists between community members and the District 10 office,” she told the Almaden Times when early results showed her handily winning back her seat.

She plans “to finish her five-year plan in four and a half years, keeping up with the projects that residents feel are important such as economic development and community outreach.”

Her re-election also provides continuity to both the district and the council.

Prior to the election, Pyle told the Times she wanted to finish the job she started more than three years ago, to complete the projects she and her staff were working on such as bringing more business into the city and adding fields for children and adult sports activities.

The things she considers most important remain bringing more income to the city—to offset the potential of raising taxes—through new retail business and industry, limiting rezoning of industrial land for homes and public safety. She has ideas of filling Oakridge and other retail areas in her district with a variety of stores that will bring in more shoppers and thus increase sales taxes to eliminate the deficit.

That desire also lends itself to enticing large companies to the area. “Four major companies are poised to come to San Jose and we’ve interviewed many others. We have to make room for them to bring their companies here and to have property available so they can expand. We want to encourage companies to come here, to enjoy the weather and the culture. Right now for every two houses we have one job, we have to turn that around,” Pyle said.

She finds the need to provide fields for youth part of her continuing support for public safety. An outspoken supporter of the police department and its officers, she thinks the money spent on fields throughout San Jose will provide healthy and safe activities for youth keeping them out of gangs and other harmful activities. Education is another key factor in raising good citizens, she notes.

Pyle plans to continue working to maintain streets and parks, keep neighborhoods safe, also to invest resources in youth and senior programs as well as keeping city government accountable.

Throughout her life, the council member has served the public, both as a teacher and a former community college board trustee. She currently serves as chair of the Community and Economic Development Committee and the Santa Clara County Emergency Preparedness Council. She also serves on the Neighborhood Services and Education Committee and is the liaison to the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Disability Advisory Commission.

Besides focusing on legislation to help her district, Pyle has made no secret that she is striving to improve finances for the entire city. She was instrumental in helping provide monies from District 10 for the South Side Police Substation, to be built in District 2 by devoting $2.3 million from the sale of the Corda de Rosa property.

The new substation, she said, will provide police officers with more time to do their work within the area. The police are thrilled with the substation, she said, because they can be more self contained in fulfilling their duties in the southern parts of the city and the substation will provide holding cells and a service yard for their vehicles. It also will save on fuel and long trips downtown, leaving the southern areas with less protection.

Pyle’s office has set up a constituent tracking system to cover concerns and comments. By the end of last year the office had received more than 1,000 calls. Of those, only 39 were unresolved and there were 23 cases in progress that the staff was monitoring.

She also worked hard and earned the respect of fellow council members despite a divisive first campaign, earning the support of her predecessor Pat Dando, now CEO and president of the Chamber of Commerce and her former opponent Rich De La Rosa.

Here’s hoping that success will follow through her second term.