Local Elected Officials, Community Leaders Volunteer at Largest Santa Clara Event
By Robert Haugh
It’s one of the longest-running community events in the Mission City and lots of community leaders volunteered at the 37th Annual Santa Clara Art & Wine Festival. By mid-afternoon Saturday, wine glasses were already in low supply. Many believe Saturday was one of the best attended festivals in recent memory.
We were there to see who showed up and who didn’t.
Who Showed Up
- Mayor Lisa Gillmor was pouring wine in the Friends of Park & Recreation booth – her 35th straight year attending the event.
- Councilwoman Teresa O’Neill was pouring wine at the Santa Clara Schools Foundation (SCSF) booth.
- Councilwoman Debi Davis, the Mission City Community Fund chair, was in the organization’s booth promoting the popular dinner in November.
- Councilwoman Kathy Watanabe was serving Irish nachos at the Santa Clara Sister Cities booth.
- Councilwoman Patricia Mahan was spotted, though we are unaware if she volunteered at any booths.
- Former Police chief Steve Lodge volunteered in the SCSF booth, as did SCPD Assistant Police Chief Dan Winter.
- Former Parks and Rec director Larry Wolfe was manning a beer both.
- The entire Parks and Rec commission was on-duty all weekend.
- Interim City Manager Rajeev Batra made an appearance on Sunday at the City’s jobs booth.
- County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, Pierluigi Oliverio and Jason Baker were at the festival both days, sharing information on their campaigns while meeting with Santa Clarans. Ellenberg and Oliverio had booths in the free speech area.
No-Shows
Among those who didn’t attend were:
- Vice Mayor Dominic Caserta
- Councilmember Pat Kolstad
- Police Chief Mike Sellers
Addendum: we’ve been alerted that Sellers did show up on Sunday afternoon, volunteering in a wine booth. We apologize for the oversight.
This was a fun event 😀
This was a nice event. The weather was perfect. That may be why the attendance was so good.
Wow, Mahan, Caserta, Kolstad and Sellers – the four people that would like you to believe that Santa Clara is going down the toilet didn’t help out or even show up for an annual event that is a good temperature gauge for how things are in the city they were elected to represent. Maybe they didn’t want to see first hand that their perception isn’t quite the reality they’d like to have you believe.
Robert, thank you for your participation in the El Camino Real specific plan project.
Technically, I did not participate, I just recorded information and engaged folks who were participating at the City’s booth … It was interesting … Maybe more on that another day. I thought it was interesting seeing what folks picked on the list of 16 pictures …