With Incumbents Out, School Board Race Opens Up

Although the Nov. 8 election ballot features 20 elected seats on councils and boards in and around Mill Valley, the race for two seats on the board might be the only one providing any drama.

Friday served as the first of two deadlines for candidates to file paperwork with the Marin County Registrar of Voters declaring their candidacy. All but two of the 20 incumbents are running for re-election, most of them unopposed.

That includes three seats on the Mill Valley City Council, for which all three incumbents – Ken Wachtel, Garry Lion and Stephanie Moulton-Peters – filed to run. George Gordon, a Mill Valley resident since 1968 and a candidate in the previous two City Council elections in 2007 and 2009, took out filing papers but did not file by the 5 p.m. deadline Friday.

All incumbents also filed for the three seats apiece on the Alto and Homestead Valley sanitary district boards, as well as the four seats on the board. The three incumbents for the board all filed and were joined by challenger and Mill Valley resident Scott Wilmore, a strategic planner.

Tamalpais Union High School District incumbents Cindy McCauley and Bob Walter also filed to run for re-election, and no challenger had taken out filing papers by Friday.

The race for the two open seats on the school board promises to buck the trend of unopposed incumbents.

Incumbents Judy Sherman and Janet Miller both decided not to run for re-election, with Miller citing increased personal commitments. Those decisions extend the filing deadline for potential candidates to Aug. 17, but two challengers have already filed and a third is doing so Monday, and all of them are household names in Mill Valley.

Bob Jacobs

While Jacobs hasn’t held public office, he likely won't have a problem with name recognition. Jacobs taught biology and life sciences for 19 years at before he retired at the end of the previous school year, capping a 42-year teaching career. By Jacobs’ count, more than 2,000 students passed through his Mill Valley classrooms, and he worked for 14 principals over that span.

“I loved education and when I retired I decided that I wanted to help out the school district and still be a part of the educational scene here in a totally different capacity,” said the 68-year-old Jacobs.

Jacobs, who serves as a negotiator for the Mill Valley Teachers Association for the past decade, said he’s confident that his deep local ties for so many years propel his candidacy.

Clifford Waldeck

Elected to the Mill Valley City Council in 1997 and serving until 2005, Waldeck has been on a wide array of boards and commissions over the years. The owner of the now defunct Waldeck’s green office supplies firm, Waldeck is a Mill Valley native and graduate.

An environmental advocate, Waldeck served on both the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC).

Leslie Wachtel 

The president of the PTA at Tam High for the past three years, Leslie Wachtel has been involved in the Mill Valley public education scene for nearly two decades. Wachtel was on the Kiddo board for 10 years, was the Old Mill PTA president for two terms and was the chair of the Tam High Foundation for a year.

Wachtel, 55, is married to Mill Valley Mayor Ken Wachtel. All four of their children attended Mill Valley elementary schools. Wachtel said she was drawn to the school board race by the unique challenges facing the district – booming enrollment, shrinking state funding and suppressed property tax revenue - and her ability to broker compromise.

“I work very well collaboratively with people and I’m good at seeing both sides and helping people come to compromise,” she said. “I want the school system to stay as strong as it is. I just have a really deep desire to stay working in this community.”

Stay tuned throughout the next several months for our coverage of the Nov. 8 election.