The two candidates for Pleasanton City Council District 3 agree the city should raise its hotel tax and get the Stoneridge Shopping Center redevelopment moving, but they offered different diagnoses of the city's money problems and its water contamination at a recent forum, according to a Pleasanton Weekly account published Tuesday.
Reena Gupta, a small-business owner and business advocate, and Jamie Yee, a former Pleasanton school board trustee who works for the Alameda County Public Health Department, are running for the southwest Pleasanton seat now held by Julie Testa, who is challenging Mayor Jack Balch in the Nov. 3 election.
They spoke Sept. 29 at a Weekly-hosted forum in the council chambers at the Civic Center that drew a standing-room crowd.
Fire season
Both said the city must keep teaching residents to prepare for emergencies after the Little Fire, which burned about 1,000 acres southeast of the district on July 21. Gupta said she wants every household signed up for emergency alerts and every neighborhood to have mapped evacuation routes.
Yee said the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department is stretched thin by low staffing and suggested working with the East Bay Regional Park District on fire mitigation.
Money
Both support Measure HH, which would raise the hotel tax from 8% to 12% over two years. Gupta said "every penny counts" but noted that "a tax on an empty hotel room generates nothing," and argued the larger opportunity is drawing more visitors, conferences and weddings, along with companies from around the world.
She pledged to give her council stipend of about $1,321 a month to the Friends of the Pleasanton Library and said restoring services such as library hours should come first.
