Healy, Petaluma’s elder statesman, has more work to do

Mike Healy is a policy wonk, and proud of it.

The longest serving member of the Petaluma City Council, he has spent his 16 years in elected office pouring over old maps, parsing arcane legal documents and facilitating deals with regional boards - the sort of unglamorous, behind-the-scenes government work that doesn’t make it on council agendas.

A case in point, Healy said he has been for the past year working back channels with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and a developer to reach a deal on a second commuter rail station for Petaluma at Corona Road, a long sought project that could also lead to future development of property downtown.

“Once in a while, you get to achieve something really cool for the community,” said Healy, 58, a Petaluma lawyer specializing in civil litigation. “Most of my council-related work doesn’t occur at the meetings. I try to get out in front of issues, and I intend to continue to do that.”

Healy is seeking his fifth four-year term on the city council in the Nov. 8 election that features two other incumbents, Gabe Kearney and Kathy Miller, and challenger Bill Wolpert, a planning commissioner, vying for three open seats.

First elected to the council in 1998, he served two terms before taking a two-year break, then was elected again in 2008. Healy ran for supervisor in 2010, coming in third in the primary in a race eventually won by David Rabbitt.

In his nearly two decades in city government, Healy has been at the front for some of Petaluma’s biggest issues, including the legal battle over access to the city-owned Lafferty Ranch, new shopping center developments and the ongoing effort to build the Rainier crosstown connector.

He said he was instrumental to getting a developer to include a movie theater in the downtown Theatre District development, and he also was part of the council that built a new wastewater treatment plant and completed the federally-funded flood control project in the Payran neighborhood.

“I’m just trying to solve problems,” he said.

Healy, who considers his political views “moderate to liberal,” is part of a bloc of moderate council members that have had a majority on the council since progressive councilwoman Pam Torliatt left office in 2010. He is a political ally of Kearney and Miller, and the three were elected as a slate in 2012.

Critics of Healy and the council majority, including Wolpert, the challenger in the race, have said the council has become too friendly with developers, often rubber stamping projects without pushing for more community benefits. Wolpert cited the council’s approval of the Riverfront development that did not require a turf sports field, as originally proposed.

Healy said that the need for a turf field was not as great after the city built the synthetic East Washington Sports Fields and the city’s three high schools launched plans to convert grass fields to turf. He said he supports the city building high-density walkable mixed-use projects, like the Theatre District.

“It’s not fair to say that we don’t support it,” he said. “It’s just been hard to achieve. But I think the council has been quite supportive of this” kind of development.

A father of two grown children, Healy grew up in Santa Rosa, graduated from Stanford and received a law degree from the University of San Francisco. He said that he acquired his passion for local government from his father, who served on the Santa Rosa City Council.

“It’s an inherited form of insanity,” he joked.

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