City Council Candidate: Lorrie Kalos-Gunn

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of six profiles of Millbrae candidates.

Lorrie Kalos-Gunn believes the city needs to better manage its finances and facilitate the business application process to attract investment to Millbrae. 

Vital to the city’s financial stability is what she calls a “strategic plan” that will help build up cash reserves and provide permanent solutions to recurring problems. Kalos-Gunn is a six-year Millbrae Planning Commissioner and a San Francisco Fire Department battalion chief who has run unsuccessfully for city council twice before. 

“It’s very sad that a lot of the same issues that I ran on then are still here today four years later,” she said.

In 2007, a family death derailed her campaign. And at the time, she also received flak from the SFFD for using her work phone for political purposes and for allegedly campaigning in uniform, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

She said she didn’t use her phone for political reasons, but rather for personal matters – which firefighters are allowed to do, according to SFFD policy. And, she never campaigned in uniform, but merely used a picture of herself in uniform for campaign materials, she said.

“My ethics and my integrity mean everything to me,” said Kalos-Gunn. 

Even so, SFFD spokeswoman Mary Talmadge said that is still against department policy. 

“We don’t want it to look like the SFFD is endorsing a candidate or a political view,” she said.

Kalos-Gunn referred to the situation as a “misunderstanding with her superior” at the SFFD, and said she came out it a better person. 

Now, as a candidate for the third time, she feels the current council is exacerbating issues rather than clearly directing city staff.

For example, during an August council meeting regarding , she said that “the city manager was looking for an A or B answer, [whether to hire a full-time chief or outsource services to the Sheriff's Department].” However, instead of directing city staff to pursue one option, the council “gave her an A, B or C answer...which is no answer.”

And, she said the council should have asked which jobs the city would have to eliminate to fund a new chief and reorganize the Police Department.

It’s these type of situations that frustrate Kalos-Gunn, and one of the reasons she is running for city council.

Another is to increase community involvement in city decisions. Specifically, she wants to ask residents for suggestions at various town-hall-style meetings, like would people be willing to pay more taxes for more services?

She loves Millbrae’s small-town feel and said that in order to retain it, thereby excluding big-box stores and their tax revenue, citizens must sometimes share the city’s operational costs.

Although she is not an adamant proponent of raising taxes, she said “a little bit more may not be such a sour pill if people truly understood why.”

As a planning commissioner, she witnessed city bureaucracy alienate several potential new businesses. One of her main goals as councilwoman will be to streamline the city’s building application process to accelerate development.

Click Here to learn more about Lorrie Kalos-Gunn.