Greg Tanaka: Following the money

Greg Tanaka discusses city issues with the Palo Alto Weekly on Sept. 17. Video by Palo Alto Online.

Greg Tanaka proudly wears the mantle of Palo Alto’s leading fiscal hawk.

Year after year, he is the sole council member who votes against the city budget. Even during a year in which the council cut $40 million in spending, Tanaka believes his colleagues and city management are too wasteful. He repeatedly admonishes them for spending too much on public relations, for raising utility rates willy-nilly, for pursuing too many infrastructure projects and for not stashing enough cash in reserves.

At a September 2018 meeting, he lamented the fact that he is the only person who votes against big-ticket items and accused the city of “burning future generations” with all that waste and of having “no backbone” when it comes to staying within its means.

“We are hollowing out the city now by not sticking to the budget,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka’s positions have often made him an outlier on issues that otherwise had broad council support. In 2018, for example, the College Terrace resident fought a proposal to assist East Palo Alto with a water shortage that forced the city to halt development. While everyone else supported shifting to East Palo Alto an allotment of half-million gallons per day, Tanaka insisted that the city charge East Palo Alto for the water rights, a suggestion that Councilman Eric Filseth called “offensive.”

Tanaka also stood alone last December, when the council tried to pass an urgency ordinance to protect renters from extreme rent hikes just before the state’s own proposal, AB 1482, was set to kick in. Because the urgency measure required support from all participating six council members (Liz Kniss recused because she owns a rental property), Tanaka’s dissenting vote required the council to delay the implementation of the measure by another week to satisfy his desire for more outreach.

He was the sole dissenting vote last year, when the council approved additional severance payments to employees whose jobs were to be terminated as part of the city’s outsourcing of animal services to the nonprofit Pets In Need.

But notwithstanding his budget hawkishness, Tanaka was also the only council member who opposed in June a new lease agreement with the Palo Alto Unified School District that reduced the city’s contribution to the district from $5.4 million to $2.7 million annually. In explaining his opposition, Tanaka said that he wanted to see a more “collaborative” approach between the city and the school district and that he would have preferred to see the city reduce its spending on capital projects and City Hall management costs.

Tanaka’s positions occasionally rankle his colleagues. In September, as the council was preparing to approve a “safe parking” program for vehicle dwellers in the Baylands, Tanaka launched into a series of questions about the value of the land and the potential for leasing it out for a profit. Vice Mayor Tom DuBois, who championed the new program, responded by saying he rejects the idea that the city’s filter should be “maximizing money without taking care of people.” Tanaka ultimately joined the council in approving the program.

Tanaka’s frugal stance on city finances stands in stark contrast with his approach to his reelection campaign, which has amassed an early and commanding lead in cash raised, thanks in large part to donations from local developers. By late September, his campaign had received more than $70,000 in contributions, which includes $10,000 from developer Roxy Rapp, $5,000 from developers John McNellis, Charles “Chop” Keenan and Brad Ehikian and $2,500 from the California Real Estate Political Action Committee.

Tanaka rejected in a recent interview any suggestion that he is in the pocket of the development community and pointed to his support for the recent closures of University Avenue and California Avenue to traffic to promote outdoor dining during the pandemic and support for the “Uplift Local” campaign (formerly known as “Summer Streets”). Some developers, including John Shenk of Thoits Brothers (which also donated to Tanaka’s campaign), have vocally opposed the street closures, he noted.

Yet when it comes to broader land-use questions, the former planning commissioner has invariably sided with the council’s pro-growth faction, having been part of the council majority in 2016 that reversed the prior council’s decision to significantly raise housing impact fees for commercial developments and that approved a divisive downtown development at 429 University Ave. in 2017. Since then, he has opposed exploration of rent-stabilization measures, voted against a plan to lower the citywide cap on non-residential development (the council moved to slash the cap in 2018 despite his opposition) and joined the council’s pro-growth members in scrapping a limit on non-residential development in the downtown core.

Another position that is likely to endear Tanaka to local developers, property owners and corporations is his opposition to a business tax. While the council suspended its multiyear effort to adopt a tax based on employee headcount in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downtown, Tanaka voted against the proposal in January, when he admonished staff and consultants for a survey on the tax that he deemed “misleading.”

An entrepreneur whose company, Percolata, offers data services to the retail industry, Tanaka hasn’t completely ruled out supporting a business tax, though he told the Weekly in a recent interview that he believes it should be the “last resort.” The city, he said, should look at its own spending habits before considering a tax.

“Do we need to have such a large city manager’s office?” he asked in a recent interview. “Do we need to spend on this many managers in the city? … We should start looking at ourselves first in terms of, ‘Are we spending money wisely?'”

Even though his campaign has reaped large donations from the developer community, Tanaka frames himself as a protector of constituents who have fallen on hard times. He holds weekly office hours to get feedback on major community issues and posts videos of the meetings on his Facebook page.

‘We should start looking at ourselves first in terms of, “Are we spending money wisely?”‘

Greg Tanaka, city councilman

He has routinely opposed increases to utility rates, and he chided his colleagues in June for approving raises to city employees during an economic downtown.

“There’s this perception that everyone who lives in Palo Alto is super rich,” Tanaka told the Weekly. “And there are super rich people here. … There are also people like myself, other people who live in the city, who are scraping by. They are taking a payout; they lost their jobs. It’s tough times.”

Read profiles of the nine other candidates:

• Pat Burt: Back in the game

• Rebecca Eisenberg: Swinging for the fences

• Lydia Kou: Playing zone defense

• Ed Lauing: A steady hand

• Steven Lee: Proudly progressive

• Raven Malone: Seeking social justice

• Greer Stone: Keeping it local

• Cari Templeton: Ready to listen

• Ajit Varma: All business

More election coverage:

• VIDEOS: Watch our debate and interviews with the 10 City Council candidates in Palo Alto

• INFOGRAPHICS: Five issues, 10 approaches: City Council candidates explain how they would improve Palo Alto