City Hall veteran eyes Palo Alto council seat

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Keith Reckdahl has spent the past decade at the forefront of some of Palo Alto’s most complex and politically thorny challenges, from the redesign of the rail corridor and adoption of a new business tax to a housing plan that would add more than 6,000 dwellings by 2030.

Now, Reckdahl is preparing for a personal challenge: a seat on the Palo Alto City Council.

Reckdahl, who currently serves as vice chair of the Planning and Transportation Commission, on Monday became the second member of the influential commission to set sights on elected office. His colleague George Lu is also seeking a seat on the council, which will have four seats up for grabs in November.

Though this will be his first campaign for elected office, Reckdahl is well familiar with City Hall, having served on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission for nine years before joining the planning panel. During his time as a parks commissioner, he helped the city develop a recreation master plan that paved the way for new dog parks and restrooms at local parks. He also served as commission chair twice, in 2015 and 2017.

Since then, Reckdahl has been heavily involved in the issues of housing and transportation, both as a member of the Planning and Transportation Commission and as a participant in numerous citizen advisory groups. As a planning commissioner, he helped review the most contentious development proposal in the city’s recent history — the redevelopment of Castilleja School’s campus. He is also playing a leading role in helping the city revise its retail-protection policies and vetting transportation projects such as the ongoing plan by the state Department of Transportation to install bike lanes along El Camino Real.

In addition to his commission duties, Reckdahl has served on the advisory groups that helped develop the city’s plan to build more than 6,000 dwellings by 2030; that crafted a new vision for a portion of the Ventura neighborhood; and that evaluated options for redesigning the rail corridor so that tracks and roads would no longer intersect. He also led the city’s successful campaign in 2022 to pass Measure K, a business tax designed to raise money for public safety, transportation and affordable housing.

Reckdahl, whose background is in aerospace engineering, said in an interview that he learned about the importance of planning when he was part of the working group that was developing a new plan for Ventura, a vision document that the council is slated to approve later this month. During the contentious planning exercise, he saw many proposals that would add housing to the neighborhood without bringing associated improvements such as parks and retail.

With the city under pressure from the state to add 6,086 units of housing by 2030, he said he wants to make sure there’s ample housing added in areas like downtown, California Avenue and the Stanford Research Park. That said, he supports the council’s current plan to add about a third of the mandated housing along and around San Antonio Road, an area that lacks parks and bicycling amenities. While he acknowledged that San Antonio is not ideal, he argued that the preponderance of older and smaller buildings in this area make it more suitable for residential growth than some of the city’s more transit-friendly areas.

“Getting pedestrian and bike safety there will be a challenge and it won’t happen overnight,” Reckdahl said. “But if you’re driven out there and seen what’s there now, it’s really ripe for redevelopment.” 

In making a case for his candidacy, he points to his record of collaboration as a commissioner, a citizen advocate and the leader of the Measure K campaign, which he noted required lengthy meetings about details big and small (the design of lawn signs, for one).

His list of supporters reflects his range of interests. The list of people who had endorsed his campaign include Council member Pat Burt, who is expected to run for reelection in November, and Vice mayor Ed Lauing – who, like Reckdahl, served on both the parks commission and the planning commissions before ascending to City Council two years ago.

“Keith has developed an amazing breadth of experience on city commissions and working groups on all of our critical issues: parks and recreation, housing and land use, retail recovery, rail crossings and much more,” Lauing said in a statement. “He is a leader on issues with an intense work ethic who will be effective immediately on Council.”

Like Lauing, Reckdahl is drawing support from former council members who are associated with the city’s slow-growth camp, often referred to as “residentialists.” The list includes former mayors Karen Holman and Eric Filseth and former Vice Mayor Greg Schmid. In addition to these supporters, has also won endorsements from various neighborhood leaders and fellow civic volunteers, including planning commission Chair Bryna Chang and Commissioner Bart Hechtman, transportation advocates Penny Ellson and Nadia Naik, and Palo Alto Neighborhoods leaders Annette Glanckopf and Sheri Furman.

Winter Dellenbach, a City Hall watchdog, is also backing Reckdahl. In a statement, she touted his commitment to affordable housing and called him “the advocate we need to create thriving, inclusive communities.”

Reckdahl said his three top campaign priorities are thoughtful housing; community vibrancy; and public safety and services. He also noted in an interview that while his list of supporters includes many leaders from the “residentialist” camp, his record includes numerous instances when he supported pro-growth policies that some in that camp would have rejected. In 2021, for example, he supported a somewhat contentious proposal to build 113 apartments at 2951 El Camino Real, in the Ventura neighborhood. 

While that plan was ultimately withdrawn, Reckdahl was among those who urged the council not to outright kill the project.

“Palo Alto does not have the luxury of only accepting housing projects that have no challenges,” he told the council at that time.

Reckdahl, who lives in the Charleston Meadows neighborhood and works at Lockheed Martin, noted in an interview that he wants to transcend the city’s political divides and evaluate proposals solely on their merits. Too often, he said, residents are more concerned about who made a particular proposal than what it entails.

“If the other side says something, half the people dismiss it,” Reckdahl said. “We have to be able to work with both sides.”

In his campaign announcement, he said he believes the key to the city’s success “lies in our ability to listen, work together, and act on the concerns of our residents, with accountability, fiscal responsibility, and by delivering tangible results to restore public trust.”

“Together, we can move beyond factionalized politics and instead continue to foster and expand Palo Alto’s quality of life, implement thoughtful housing growth, and regain connection with our city government,” he said in a statement.