Right after serving a merged 30 years on the Portola Valley City Council, Maryann Derwin and John Richards will not run for office environment this slide. The pair instructed The Almanac they’d like to give others a shot to sit on the council.

The city faces important challenges ahead as they step apart, specifically the ongoing efforts to harden homes from potential wildfires. The town is also doing work by the procedure of receiving the state to approve its state-mandated housing element.

Derwin joined the council in 2005, when Richards in 2009.

Mayor Craig Hughes has pulled papers to run for reelection. Three many others have expressed curiosity in operating: Mary Hufty, Arranging Commissioner Judith Hasko and Dale Pfau.

Derwin, a resident of Portola Valley because the early ’90s, thanked the neighborhood in a July 19 letter for possessing religion in her leadership even when her stands have been controversial.

“As a seasoned elected formal once informed me, ‘If you aren’t generating persons unsatisfied, you aren’t doing your work, and … from time to time you will have to direct people wherever they do not want to go,'” she reported. “Ever aware of the even larger photo and the greater very good, I tried to live by these phrases, wrenching at moments as it could be.”

All through her tenure on the council, Portola Valley finished the Town Centre, designed the Spring Down vernal pond and convened the town’s Race & Equity Committee. She also oversaw the creation of an inclusive local community course of action for the 2023-31 housing component and the passage of the strictest property hardening ordinance in San Mateo County.

As a member of San Mateo County boards and committees, she helped produce the first-ever h2o company in San Mateo County, A single Shoreline, and the very first Highway 101 Express Lanes undertaking. On the San Mateo Library Joint Powers Authority (JPA), she labored to restructure the distribution of funding to make it additional equitable, and authorised funds for new libraries in Fifty percent Moon Bay, Brisbane, and Atherton.

She also served on the San Mateo City/County Association of Governments, exactly where she labored on attempts like growing bicycle/pedestrian obtain, eco-friendly infrastructure, local weather motion and housing.

Former councilwoman Ann Wengert mentioned Derwin represents the finest in town government. Wengert described Derwin as “eloquent, fiery and impassioned.”

“Part cheerleader and portion pusher, Maryann doggedly inspired us, her colleagues, to get concerned with our county and regional counterparts by participating on committees and in regional gatherings,” Wengert stated in a assertion. “Maryann truly warrants credit for Portola Valley’s emergence from its earlier isolation.”

Derwin strategies to endorse Hughes for reelection.

Richards, a retired architect, explained it was simply just time for him to go on.

“I generally made a decision 13 several years is long plenty of on the council,” he stated. “I will miss out on the companionship of the other men and women on the council and acquiring folks in the neighborhood access out with thoughts and reviews.”

Richards moved to Portola Valley when he was 4 many years aged and attended elementary university in the Outdated Schoolhouse ahead of graduating from Woodside Significant College.

“Hopefully we can really bring some of the reduce-money components of culture again into the local community a broader mix than today,” he explained of endeavours to develop additional housing in town. “When my folks moved in this article it was the most affordable place around to dwell back in the ’50s. It is a much healthier neighborhood to have that form of combine.”

As mayor, Richards spearheaded a gas-powered leaf blower ban, “which seems to have built a variance,” he reported.

About a 10 years ago, he helped commence the City Middle farmers current market.

Prior to becoming a member of the council, Richards served as a Arranging Commissioner in the 1990s.

Richards designs to endorse Hughes, alongside with Planning Commissioners Craig Taylor and Judith Hasko for the council this drop. He mentioned the council’s best issues will stay hearth basic safety and housing.