13 candidates contest park board seat

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Mar 5, 2006 | by Douglas Fischer, STAFF WRITER

Thirteen hopefuls have applied for the East Bay Regional Park District board seat left vacant by Jean Siri's death in January.

On March 14 the board will choose one person to represent the ward, which runs from Pinole to North Oakland and includes Berkeley, Albany and El Cerrito.

Candidates run the gamut from a former mayor to a community college student, with a former police chief, a former park district board member and three former city council members added for good measure.

The board's pick must defend the seat in the November election.

The candidates are as follows:

- Shirley Dean, a Berkeley city councilwoman for 16 years who served as the city's mayor for eight years, until 2002. She's widely seen as a moderate in a city famous for its liberal politics.

- Whitney Dotson of Richmond, appointed by Siri to the district's Citizen Advisory Panel, who has long been involved in community and nonprofit groups.

- Michael Eakin, a retired general contractor and current student at Contra Costa College. He lives in El Sobrante.

- Abigail Franklin of Berkeley, an investment banker in tax- exempt finance at Goldman Sachs & Co., who recently went on leave to spend more time with her 4-year-old daughter.

- Richard Illgen, an Albany attorney who served in the 1980s on Berkeley's Rent Stabilization Board and Planning Commission.

- Norman LaForce, Sierra Club leader and former El Cerrito council member who help spearhead the effort to defeat a proposal for a group campground at the Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve.

- Debbi Landshoff, Sierra Club member and chairwoman of the Richmond Parks Committee.

- Ellyn Levinson of Berkeley, who served for 23 years as an attorney in the California Attorney General's Office.

- Rosmary Bower Loubal, a member of the El Cerrito Parks and Recreation Committee and a Sierra Club member since 1960, when she immigrated to the United States.

- Joel Mackey of El Sobrante, former executive director of the East BayHabitat for Humanity and a current California State University East Bay instructor on nonprofit management, public policy and real estate law.

- Ronald Nelson, Berkeley's police chief from 1982-90. Retired and living in Berkeley, he serves on the University of California's Police Review Board.

- Nancy Skinner, a Berkeley City Councilwoman from 1984-92. A longtime environmental activist, she's seen as a member of the city's progressive faction.

- Carroll B. Williams, who lost the seat to Siri after the board appointed her to it in 1991. She is a retired University of California, Berkeley, lecturer who spent seven years on the Berkeley Unified School District Board in the 1970s and '80s.

The district's seven-member board oversees 65 parks covering 95,000 acres in Alameda and Contra Costa counties and an annual budget of $130 million.

More information about the park district can be found online at http://www.ebparks.org. The Board's March 14 meeting begins at 2 p.m. at the district headquarters, 2950 Peralta Oaks Court, in Oakland.