Personal information:
Name: Mary Nolan
Age: 59
Family: Single with two cats. Brothers and sister live in Wisconsin.
Career/current job: I started working as a social worker for In-Home Supportive Services Oct. 1. I have spent half of the last 20 years living overseas and teaching English. I have also taught film at Florida State University, English at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin and English classes at the Developing Virtue Schools in Talmage, Calif. I have been a legal secretary for 12 years and a librarian for two years in other job incarnations.
Education: I have a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, and a master of arts from the University of Oregon, Eugene, both in English. I am three credits short of a masters in special education from San Francisco State University; I am all but doctorate in the humanities from Florida State University, Tallahassee).
Length of residence in Lake County and your particular city: I moved to Lakeport four years ago. Before that I lived in Ukiah a year. I have lived all over the United States, including nine years in San Francisco, three years in Washington, DC, and three years in the Florida panhandle. I lived in Poland for two years, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer. I lived in Ecuador three years. Additionally, I have taught and lived in Saipan, Korea, Palau and the Marshall Islands.
Web site or email address where community members can contact you: My email is
Questions:
1. Please outline your experience serving the local community. Include all community or volunteer service.
Since I moved here I have been an AmeriCorps volunteer in an after-school program in Kelseyville, I served on the Lake County Grand Jury during 2010 to 2011, I have been a Hospice volunteer, I have worked at a group home with developmentally delayed kids, and I am now working with low income Lake County residents as an IHSS social worker.
2. Why did you decide to run for public office?
I decided to run when I read about the proposed water/sewer increases in the Record-Bee. It seemed to me that if our city council was considering a 100-percent increase over the next five years in our current economic climate, it demonstrated a lack of sensitivity and understanding of our community. I decided to run as an average citizen – a kind of Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
3. What are the important qualities you would bring to public service?
I would bring intelligence and analytical abilities and the ability to research and understand problems – all of my academic training has prepared me for that. I have traveled and lived all over the world, so I would bring intercultural sensitivity and global vision. I’d like to think of myself as a local candidate with global vision. I have lived on several islands, and I realize we ALL have “island pyschology.” Some islands are just bigger than others. Lake County is a kind of an island. Lakeport is a kind of an island. We have separated ourselves from other communities in our county – most specifically Clearlake, which we treat as our ugly stepsister, and we view our city as superior to and separate from Clearlake. However, to the outside world, when people read of crime in Clearlake, they don’t separate Lakeport from the rest of Lake County and think, “Oh, I’d like to visit Lake County.” Instead, they make a mental note to stay away from a place often associated with drugs and crime. One of the things Frank Rivero said when he was running for sheriff was that, “We can’t fix Lake County without fixing Clearlake.”
I think our city council must look beyond our city boundaries and forge better relationships with Clearlake and with our county Board of Supervisors. Lakeport is in this with the rest of the county, and the current spate of downtown businesses closing will bring us demographically closer to Clearlake. By that, I mean that Lakeport’s mean income of around $32,000 has always placed our average citizen about $10,000 above the mean income of Clearlakians. All that will change unless city residents can find other ways to bring jobs, businesses, and money into Lakeport.
4. What are the primary functions of a city council member? What are the important skill sets a council member should possess?
A city council member should be compassionate, able to listen to constituents, and able to separate their personal views, needs and desires from what “the public” they represent wants. City councilors should be able to plan for the future, prioritize and envision the way things should be. They should be proactive, not reactive. A city council member should possess above average intelligence and the ability to dig to find the information s/he needs, not merely accepting the testimony of city employees and calling that “working well with city employees.” Frankly, at times the council will have to stand AGAINST city employees. Any politician needs a thick skin, the ability to take criticism, and the ability to be unpopular.
5. What is your city’s single greatest challenge? How would you address it?
Our greatest challenge is filling the storefronts on Main Street. We need a vibrant city again. I attended the council meeting the week Molly Brennan’s and two other businesses closed and it wasn’t even mentioned at the meeting. We need to draw new businesses through traffic slowing on Main Street. First and Second streets should be four-way stops.
In the future I would like to see Main Street as a kind of walking mall. I would invite Pomo tribal elders to work with us to bring a Pomo Cultural Center to Main Street. That center could teach traditional healing, drumming and Pomo boat building skills.
I would talk to some of the spiritual communities that are moving into the county – there is a new Tibetan Buddhist leader in Upper Lake, there are monasteries and meditation centers on Cobb, there is a new ashram which has been given permission to build in Lower Lake. I think we could build Lakeport into a kind of “New Age” community that has store fronts filled with alternative healers, crafts people and representatives from these groups.
I would also like to see more wine bars and a brew pub in Lakeport. Kelseyville and Upper Lake are opening new tasting rooms – why aren’t we? Kelseyville just opened a new brew pub. Why didn’t we get that business?
I would also like to see more upscale antique stores and stores that offer unique crafts from all over the world. We could make ourselves into a kind of Nevada City – a hip, yet historical place with fun shops, fun stuff to do and unique Western architecture.
6. If you are elected, what will your top issue be? What other issues are of particular interest to you?
Bringing new businesses to Main Street and making Main Street into a fun place to walk around and window shop. We also have a score of local musicians and artists who could have their own art store/café. We DO have a local arts council, but I would like to see it be an after-hours hip place to gather. We need places people can go in the evenings to gather and hear good music. And it needs to happen regularly and dependably so that we know we have a place to gather and form community.
We need to increase our feeling of community and to draw people to our community. I believe KPFZ is a great community resource and it is one of the reasons I feel lucky to live in Lakeport. I would like to have the city support the station with underwriting for the city. That would also mean the station could increase its wattage and reach more areas. I would like to see us get more articles about the city in the San Francisco Chronicle. We need a better publicist for the city, so perhaps that is a function I could perform as a person who likes to write.
7. Is there a matter that you’ve seen the council handle that you believe should have been approached differently? If so, how would you have handled it?
YES. I was very disappointed with the way the council handled the water/sewer issue. The way they played the issue in the media, they ONLY got 650 letters of protest. I believe 650 protests is a substantial protest, especially in a city like Lakeport in which so many homes are vacation homes, vacant most of the year, and whose owners probably didn’t take the time to protest. People came forward to protest for six hours of testimony – some of it heart wrenching. I really feel like it was all an empty charade to satisfy the legal requirements of Proposition 218, and once the city council could say the rate hike had been handled in a legal matter they had CYA’d. In this case, following the letter of the law did not make the rate hike morally acceptable, it just made it legal.
8. What ways, if any, would you encourage public and media interaction with you and the city council should you be elected? How would you approach public interaction, especially on controversial issues?
I would be 100 percent transparent, give out my home phone, ask for input and be honest about what I think. I would open more city council meetings to the public. Too much is being done behind closed doors.
I was already approached by one of the candidate’s wives after our candidate forum about something I had said about her husband, and I expect my response in any public interaction would be the same as it was to her: “That’s why they call it a democracy.” We all have the constitutional right of free speech, and I would expect people to exercise it.
9. When you think of your city in 20 years, what do you hope it will look like? When considering that future vision of your city, what would you want your legacy to be in improving your community?
I would love to have Lakeport be famous as a healing center so that people from all over the US flock here the way they go to Sedona, Ariz. I would like to see us close off our shopping area and create a downtown mall like St. Augustine, Fla., has done. We are a historical city. We can build on that historicity by REALLY making Lakeport a port on the lake. Let’s establish a water taxi service so that we can visit other Lake County cities by boat. Let’s have wine tasting boat tours so that those of us without boats can still get on the lake regularly. I see all of us walking on a cobbled Main Street, window shopping in our shops that sell the work of local artists and trinkets from all over the world. I would love to be able to walk into a brew pub and drink a cold beer with a civilized, cultured, group of people. I would like to hear the sounds of jazz, blues, and classical music wafting from doorways and be able to walk in on outdoor concerts. I would like to see more inviting outdoor cafes and see table lined streets of prosperous bars, bistros, and restaurants so that walking down our Main Street would feed my aesthetic sense, my soul and my love of life.
Lakeport COULD be a Moveable Feast. (I’m a Hemingway scholar, so I HAD to get in at least one reference to “my dude.”) I would like my friends who visit me here to return because there is so much to do and they had so much fun they bring others back with them.
Everyone keeps talking about the way Clearlake used to be and how Lake County used to be and they keep talking about bringing back that vision of the good old days. My vision sees a different Lake County altogether. I would like Lakeport to proclaim itself gay friendly, as Clearlake’s mayor has done in Clearlake. I would like Lake County to proclaim itself gay friendly. I would like for us to get more people from San Francisco building weekend vacation homes here so that we would become more like Healdsburg, which is attracting a lot of San Franciscans with its restaurants, antique stores, upscale furniture stores and wine boutiques.
I would want my legacy to be part of a city council that made those things happen – that changed the face of Lakeport. I would NOT like my legacy to be the council member who raised water/sewer rates for the next 40 years, who increased the police presence in the community, or who bankrupted our city through PERS increases to city employees so that now the city must struggle to meet its legal requirements for promises made in more prosperous times. If that were my legacy, I would feel I had failed.
“Some people see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’; I see things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’” – Maybe we need a visionary even more today than we did in the 1960s.
Financial information: See Form 470 below.
Lakeport City Council Candidates - Mary Nolan - Form 470
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