4 candidates vie for 3 Petaluma City Council seats

One candidate has stepped forward to challenge three incumbents for a seat on the Petaluma City Council, filing nomination papers on the final day to ensure a race this fall.

Bill Wolpert, a Petaluma architect and planning commissioner, said he is running for the opportunity to help shape development in the city, especially walkable, transit-oriented mixed-use housing projects. A self-styled progressive, he has never held elected office, but said his five year tenure on the planning commission and five years on the historic and cultural review committee has helped prepare him for the rigors of the city council.

“I’m really passionate about Petaluma,” said Wolpert, 63. “The city needs to hold a larger vision for what is built and developed in town. We need to improve our infrastructure while making the city more manageable for pedestrians and retaining our original character.”

Wolpert will share the Nov. 8 ballot with the three incumbents, Mike Healy, Kathy Miller and Gabe Kearney, who announced campaigns for reelection earlier this year. Wolpert said his stance on environmental issues aligns with Council member Teresa Barrett and Mayor David Glass, the two self-identified progressives on the council.

As a planning commissioner, Wolpert said he has tried to encourage developers to add community benefits to their projects, such as solar panels, enhanced landscaping or preserving a historic building, like the builders did with the Hansen House at the North McDowell Commons project.

“Often, I see projects that are doing the bare minimum,” he said. “I try to get them to step it up a bit and look for something that maintains the quality of the community.”

Wolpert is backed by a group of Petaluma residents who are unhappy with the current council majority and actively sought a candidate who could move the city in a different direction. Dave Alden, a civil engineer with an interest in urban design, who led the effort to recruit a candidate, said Wolpert’s green design background would help shape the city for the better.

“His basic impulses are environmentalism and historic preservation,” said Alden, who has known Wolpert for 10 years. “He’s not afraid to ask questions. He’s very calm and deliberative.”

Wolpert said he would like to work on fixing Petaluma’s infrastructure, including its crumbling street network. He said he backed a sales tax measure for streets, originally proposed by Healy, Miller and Kearney, which ultimately failed to land on the November ballot.

He also supports building the Rainier Avenue crosstown connector as a way of alleviating traffic in Petaluma.

He admitted to not knowing all of the details about the city’s budget, but called the city’s expenses related to employee pensions, which have risen 64 percent in the past five years, “unsustainable.”

To encourage more affordable housing development in Petaluma, something the city has struggled with in recent years, Wolpert said leaders should try zoning smaller lots, and look at changing short-term vacation rental regulations to free up rental housing.

Originally from the Central Valley, Wolpert received a degree in architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and worked as an architect in Pasadena for 20 years before moving to Portola Valley to work in an architecture firm. After the firm struggled during the dot-com bust around 2000, he moved north, first to a house outside of Petaluma in the Chileno Valley, then into the city limits.

He is the owner of Green Building Architects and an avid cyclist, fly fisherman and wild mushroom forager. He lives with his wife, a former culinary arts teacher at Casa Grande High School.

(Contact Matt Brown at matt.brown@arguscourier.com.)