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Four face off in Menlo Park fire board election Atherton’s detachment proposal, planning for next fire chief and board conduct are key issues By Julia Brown Almanac Assistant Editor
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wo incumbents and two challengers are vying for two seats on the Menlo Park Fire Protection District board this November. Virginia Chang Kiraly and Rob Silano, who have both been on the board since November 2011, are running against Sean Ballard and former board member Peter Carpenter, who decided not to run for reelection in 2018 after serving a combined 15 years on the board. The district covers Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, Atherton and nearby unincorporated areas of San Mateo County, approximately 30 square miles that reaches into the Bay, according to its website. It responded to over 9,000 emergency incidents last year, with most of them being emergency medical incidents. The Almanac interviewed the four candidates via
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questionnaire, asking them about issues ranging from the district’s finances and replacing fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman upon his retirement (he told The Almanac on Wednesday that while his contract is up in June, he’ll decide whether to retire in January) to their views on the town of Atherton examining the possibility of detaching from the fire district. Sean Ballard
A 20-year Menlo Park resident who moved to the city as a young boy and returned in 2014, Sean Ballard says his “sense of obligation” as a citizen has grown over the years. After an unsuccessful See FIRE BOARD, page 14
Magali Gauthier
Station 3 is in Atherton, one of several communities served by the Menlo Park Fire District. Four candidates are competing for two seats on the board that governs the fire district.
Menlo Park council candidate alleges another campaign discouraged him from running. What happened? By Kate Bradshaw Almanac Staff Writer
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n a debate hosted Sept. 30 by the local League of Women Voters chapter, Menlo Park City Council candidate Max Fennell told attendees that he had been asked not to run for the City Council by Karen Grove, who he alleged to be working on behalf of candidate Jen Wolosin. Wolosin denied any involvement and said she was unhappy to hear that it had happened. Fennell, 32, is a professional triathlete and owner of Fenn Coffee who has lived in Menlo Park for about five years. He said that earlier this
summer, just after a Palo Alto Weekly story was published indicating his interest in running for the City Council, Menlo Park Housing Commissioner Karen Grove sent him an email inviting him to a phone call with Planning Commissioner Michele Tate. Both Grove and Tate are also involved with Menlo Together, a fiscally sponsored project of the Foundation for Regional Transit, also known as Friends of Caltrain. It was started with a $40,000 grant from Grove’s donor-advised fund. The project advocates in Menlo Park for policies that support housing, transportation, sustainability
and equity, according to its website. Up until recently, Wolosin was also a member of Menlo Together. Both Grove and Tate were acting independently of their roles with Menlo Together and city commissions and were not acting on behalf of Wolosin’s campaign, Grove said in an interview. Fennell said he wasn’t clear on what the scheduled call would be about — he thought they wanted to talk about the situation with the police chief, since one of the early topics he started speaking about publicly was police reform. “The next thing you know, it turned into an interrogation of
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if I was qualified to run,” Fennell said of the phone call, which took place in the morning of June 22, according to Grove. Fennell said Grove said he shouldn’t run and should support Jen Wolosin’s campaign instead. Grove said she did not tell him not to run, but said Fennell could consider moving to District 5 and running against unopposed council incumbent Ray Mueller. That way, she could support them both, Grove said. Grove told The Almanac that she has since apologized to Fennell. “I clearly had an impact I did not want to have,” she said. She said she was excited to learn that “a diverse voice was
considering a run,” but it wasn’t until they got on the phone that she learned he was a District 3 resident, which disappointed her, she said. “I had already endorsed Jen,” she said. “I couldn’t support both if he were to run in District 3.” She said the conversation from there “shifted to different ways to effect change in the ways he wanted to,” and called it a “collaborative conversation about change in Menlo Park.” Tate was also on the call. As a former housing commissioner, she said she asked Fennell whether he had considered See MAX FENNELL, page 12
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