By Khalida Sarwari
“Think regionally, but act locally” is a motto that has guided Manny Cappello in many decisions he’s made as a civic leader over the past six years. And now that principle will propel the new mayor as he takes over the reins at city hall this year.
Cappello, 52, began serving his first stint in the mayor’s seat on Dec. 2, but he’s no stranger to 13777 Fruitvale Ave. Having first come on board as a planning commissioner in 2005, he has collected the requisite experience, as he put it, to execute his mission “to understand what the concerns and the objectives are for the region as a whole, but to ensure that our values as a community are maintained.”
Cappello will put that objective into practice in the coming year as he takes over management of some of the biggest capital projects that have recently come down the pike. Among them are the $4.7 million Prospect Road improvements project and $5 million reconstruction of the bridges on Quito Road. They’re both expected to get underway sometime in the spring, according to Cappello.
For the first time since the recession hit, the council is bumping up its allocation for road maintenance, from $1 million to $2 million in 2016, said Cappello. At their retreat, council members will look into how they can set aside money for that endeavor.
Also in 2016, Cappello and his colleagues will continue to allocate funding for further improvements at the Saratoga Quarry Park and work with the San Jose Water Company to expand the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail, a 50-mile stretch leading to the Pacific Ocean. The city is awaiting approval from the water company, which owns a part of the trail.
“Hopefully we can get the easement solidified, at which point we can start work on the design process and maybe construction,” Cappello said.
Another area of focus for the city this year will be continuing to work on a master plan for the Village. This year is when the bulk of the planning will take place, said Cappello.
“The key thing with that is to make sure we end up with a plan for the Village that delivers value and benefits to the community,” he said. “It’s not an exercise, in my mind, to determine which shops we want and which location, but one that takes into account how we residents would like it to be utilized.”
Cappello said he envisions the Village as a place where neighbors can run into one another, take their dogs for a walk and just hang out–in other words, a place that serves the needs of the Saratoga community first.
“I don’t want people to think we’re going to wipe it out and redo it,” said Cappello. “This is more a project to get a sense of ‘what do we envision?’ and over the course of the next 10 to 20 years we can move toward that. It’s a long visioning process.”
Here again, he deems it his and his colleagues’ responsibility to deal appropriately with regional pressures while maintaining the values of the community they’ve been elected to serve, especially in terms of challenges such as affordable housing and the Highway 85 expansion project.
“I think when you look back at the most controversial issues that we’ve faced in the last 10 to 15 years, it’s usually been around the realm of trying to ward off the pressures from outside the city that force us to change who we are and how we live,” he said. “We have successfully, in my opinion, been able to maintain our character and whenever something is threatening, that is when we hear from our residents the loudest, and we should be, because again, that’s really to the core of who we are as a community.”
Cappello was appointed to the council in 2010 to finish out Susie Nagpal’s term. Nagpal, who Cappello considered a close friend, died from lung cancer that year. He was elected in 2012.
Prior to that, he was heavily involved in coaching and running various athletic programs for youth, including the American Youth Soccer Organization. He served on that group’s board of directors for some time.
Cappello’s background is in business and he has worked for Lockheed and Applied Materials. He graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a bachelor’s in business administration and received an MBA from Golden Gate University.
He currently serves on the executive board of the Santa Clara County Cities Association, the county’s housing and community development advisory committee, the West Valley Sanitation District board of directors, Saratoga’s finance committee and the Saratoga Area Senior Coordinating Council’s board of directors.
A second-generation Italian-American, Cappello was born in Denver and raised in Palo Alto. He moved to Saratoga in 1992. He has a 25-year-old daughter, Sarah Rose, who works for a staffing agency, and 23-year-old son, David, who works as an engineer at SunPower.
His favorite thing about living in Saratoga, he said, is that the city feels like an oasis in the heart of Silicon Valley.
“I really love walking downtown and running into people I know or sitting in one of the outdoor seating areas of a restaurant, and again neighbors and friends come by and you see them,” he said. “It’s like this place that’s so charming and so different, and I love that about us.”
Link: Saratoga Mayor Manny Cappello shares his goals and objectives for 2016
