Meet Jeff Kaskey, Candidate For Livermore City Council District 3

LIVERMORE, CA —Patch reached out to all candidates for running for Livermore mayor and city council with identical questions. Here are the responses from Jeff Kaskey, a candidate for Livermore's City Council District 3.

Responses have not been edited.

1. What is your personal, educational, and professional background?

Born in New Jersey, grew up in Maryland and Ohio and went to college at Case Western Reserve University in Electrical Engineering. I was hired away to a local start-up before graduating and was then recruited to Lawrence Livermore Labs in the AVLIS program where I spent 8 years. I shifted to the Silicon Valley, working as engineer, manager and director at large companies such as Integraph, Sun Microsystems, Rambus and Applied Materials, as well as many startup companies. During my daily train commute I met my wife Loretta and we have been married 20 years.

After about 4 decades in a mix of electronic and systems engineering jobs, I bought a small company in Livermore, The LAST Factory, which I currently own and operate.

2. How long have you lived in Livermore?

Since 1981, 43 years

3. What brought you here?

I was recruited to Lawrence Livermore National Lab

4. How have you been involved in the community?

I have engaged with the community both through the City, as well as through local nonprofits. I have a good knowledge of the workings of City staff and have been very effective in getting things done with the City. In my non-profit work I have negotiated and collaborated with the City to get City support, create safe and exciting programs and preserve and share our local history and culture. I bring a level of long-term City and community engagement unmatched by any of the other Council candidates.

My engagements through the City include two terms on the City's advisory Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) and as a member of the Downtown Steering Committee. Further, I have participated in outreach sessions, meetings and workshops regarding parking, General Plan update, downtown planning, the airport, homelessness, transit and Tesla Park. My time on HPC saw the preservation and restoration of the Southern Pacific depot. I am proud that I originally proposed its reuse as a transit hub to the city in 2006, which was finally accomplished about 10 years later.

In my non-profit engagements, I have been on the board of the Livermore Cultural Arts Council (LCAC), Livermore Heritage Guild (LHG), Livermore Lions, Livermore Valley Arts and volunteered with Asbury Church homeless services and with Del Arroyo 4-H. On LCAC I helped bring back the popular Tuesday Tunes. In LHG I was president for 10 years, during which time LHG took over management of the City's historic Hagemann Ranch (I am still curator of that site), collaborated with the schools to create a new local history curriculum for Livermore 3rd grades, and launched the revitalized HistoryMobile, a mobile museum we take to each Livermore elementary school for hands-on local history. We also started a still-ongoing project to restore the last Livermore-area one-room schoolhouse and bring it into the City for use with school groups and community events. Also as part of LHG I frequently give tours and talks to Livermore residents and visitors regarding our local history. Due to my combined roles with LHG and 4-H, I was offered a spot in Alameda County's Stop Waste Environmental Educator Training (SWEET). The lessons I learned in those classes have enabled the ranch to divert manure to provide quality compost to local gardens from Hagemann Ranch. We currently supply community gardens such as Fertile Groundworks, Sunflower Hill and Holy Cross Church, some local school gardens and many individual gardens.

5. What do you feel are some of the biggest challenges facing the city?

We have an excellent City, yet there are indeed some challenges. Strategically, we have seen the Planning Commission and General Plan group study a plan to significantly break the Urban Growth Boundary on our eastern side, while Dublin is pushing at our western edge. Financially, though we don’t show a deficit, we have millions of dollars in unmet infrastructure maintenance needs. Many people are concerned with issues closer to home, including traffic safety, clean water and a vibrant downtown. There is also a broad general concern over the issues that result in homelessness. Everyone will have their own evaluation of the biggest challenges and it is Council’s job to not just listen respectfully, but respond effectively to those concerns.

6. What are your plans for addressing them?

The Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) issue is a task of holding the City Council and Staff to a very strict standard of compliance and resisting developer pushes to break the boundary. We came close to proposing a break in the UGB with the East of Greenville focus area and while it is paused for now it is still on a warm back burner. I protested at Planning Commission that the UGB must be respected, and will continue to do so. On the Dublin side there is also a challenge that will require careful negotiation with Dublin and the county.

We can do better than just having to find more money for infrastructure maintenance. Sophisticated planning tools can replace simplified schedules of when items need repair or replacement. Combine that with effective communication so the public knows their potholes or streetlights are not being ignored but rather will be completed by a certain time.

For the issues of traffic safety, different neighborhoods have different challenges. The best way to address these is to engage directly with the local residents. People living on East Avenue need to be at the table when we talk about East Avenue solutions. More generally, many residents have asked for a more individual police presence beyond seeing officers cruise past on the main streets.

For clean water we need to continue to apply pressure to our regional water boards to expand testing of possible contamination sources so we can better understand our risk of exposure to dangerous chemicals including PFAS. We also need to stay tightly engaged with our water suppliers to ensure that our supply is clean and proper treatment is being planned, based on the source contamination issues we discover.

The issues causing homelessness are complex, and the City does do a significant amount of work already. Some of the City’s best efforts are done in partnership with local non-profits and that is the main direction we should continue to take. There are some actions, such as enabling safe parking areas, where the City can step up and play a role to quickly improve stability for some of our local unhoused. It is the City’s responsibility to see that services are provided in an environment that provides safety to the service recipients and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Regarding the varied list of concerns and perspectives, it is critical that City Council respond and act respectfully and thoughtfully to resident input. Demeaning insults from council need to stop. At a recent Council meeting about downtown housing, one Council member accused citizens of “sowing hate and division in our community.”

Besides violating Council’s own Norms and Values, that is the opposite of how we will
resolve the many complex issues facing our City.

7. What makes you the best candidate?

I have significantly more experience working with the City and its residents, as noted above in my answer regarding involvement. I have negotiated with the City from the outside perspective of a non-profit, and advocated for the City from my role on City commissions. My years living here give me a deep perspective on how Livermore has evolved to this point, and my years of researching and teaching local history helps me understand this City's character. I have skills and training in problem solving, and lots of experience in bringing diverse teams together to achieve a plan. With the diversity of views and interests found in Livermore, my range of skills and experience makes me the best candidate for City Council.

8. Outside of politics, what do you enjoy doing?

Fortunately I very much enjoy running my small Livermore business and being deeply involved volunteering in the various local non-profits, in particular working on preservation and programs at Hagemann Ranch. I do a bit of bicycling, and my wife and I enjoy shows at the Bankhead and dining in local restaurants.

9. Any other comments?

I have been canvassing the streets in my district getting to know many more neighbors. I hear familiar themes and also learn new perspectives I had not considered. It has been a rewarding experience for me and makes it clear that the way forward is to respect the voices of our community. We do not always agree, but my interactions with residents have been extremely instructive and enjoyable. In addition to the decades of my own Livermore experience, I enjoy continuing to learn about my Livermore neighbors.

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