Meet Mark Armstrong, Candidate For San Ramon Mayor

SAN RAMON, CA — Patch reached out to all candidates for running for San Ramon mayor and city council with identical questions. Here are the responses from Mark Armstrong, a candidate for mayor.

Responses have not been edited.

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

Here is a bit of information about me:

• Elected to my second term on the San Ramon City Council in 2022 having first been appointed to the City Council following the 2020 election.
• Served as Vice Mayor in 2023 to include time as acting Mayor.
• Graduated in 1981 from the United States Military Academy, West Point, where I studied Civil Engineering and am a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the U.S. Army War College, and earned master’s degrees in Military Arts and Sciences, and Strategic Studies.
• Retired as a Colonel from the Army following a 30-year Infantry career serving in various Army, multi-service, interagency, and command and staff assignments in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Indo-Pacific, and the Caribbean.
• Later continued my public service with FEMA Region IX based in Oakland, serving in several senior leadership positions supporting disaster response and recovery events in many States, Territories, and Tribes across the country.
• Retired again in 2018 after nearly 41 years of combined uniformed and civilian federal service.

2. How long have you lived in San Ramon?

20 years. I moved to San Ramon in 2004.

3. What brought you here?

I’m a California native and was born and raised in the Bay Area.

After graduating from West Point, I served a full career in the Army. As a military family, we moved 12 separate times over my career, where I had the opportunity to experience a wide variety of communities. As I approached retirement, I could have moved anywhere, but San Ramon was my first choice. I chose San Ramon 20 years ago as my wife and I wanted to raise our family here. Like many, I chose San Ramon for the quality of life that we all enjoy – quality of the schools, parks, open spaces, and safety.

4. How have you been involved in the community?

Locally, I have participated in numerous volunteer and speaking activities in San Ramon
and the surrounding area.

As an Eagle Scout myself, I served as an adult leader and Assistant Scoutmaster as my two boys progressed through Scouting to earn their Eagle Scout rank. I have also helped Scouts with Merit Badge requirements and have mentored prospective candidates desiring to go to one of the Military Service Academies.

I was also one of the charter member of the Dougherty Valley / San Ramon Rotary Club and am a volunteer at Forest Home Farms, San Ramon’s Historic City Park. As a hobby beekeeper, I have also provided classes to local schools, Rotary Clubs and for charitable organization fundraisers.

I have also graduated from Leadership San Ramon Valley, as well as completed the
City of San Ramon Government 101 Course and Citizen’s Police Academy.

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

My priorities are:

• Public Safety
• Protecting our Neighborhoods
• Preserving Open Space
• Enhancing the Quality of Life for San Ramon residents
• Fiscal Responsibility
• San Ramon is a great City. We are fortunate that we don’t have a lot of major problems
• that need fixing, but we do face some challenges. A couple of those are:
• Protecting our existing neighborhoods
• City financials (which drive all the other priorities)

6. What are your plans for addressing them?

• Protecting our existing Neighborhoods:

Like all California cities, we are obligated by numerous state laws to meet mandated housing production goals. Failure to meet those goals can result in aseries of penalties, including loss of funding, loss of the ability to control localzoning decisions or issue building permits, or being taken to court by the Attorney General of California.

Recent state laws have significantly modified basic long established city land use planning. Cities now have significantly less discretion and time to review housing developments, including fewer opportunities for public participation. A city’s ability to reject housing projects, based on the type, location, density, and design of multi-family or single-family housing developments has been sharply curtailed– making it difficult to preserve land for other important city needs.

Many cities can only meet these obligations by allowing the conversion of undeveloped or underdeveloped land. This includes areas initially designated for neighborhood-serving businesses, single-family properties, or vacant lots, allowing for the creation of new high-density housing within or near established residential neighborhoods.

Rather than that approach, I support our current vision to locate mandated new housing on older office building or commercial sites by working with the owners of the Bishop Ranch and other commercial properties. This approach aims to preserve existing neighborhoods to the greatest extent possible. However, it will take years of consistent commitment by our City to do all that is possible to implement this approach.

• City financials:

We have a safe city, superb parks, good roads, great facilities, and wonderful services and programs for our residents. The things we love about San Ramon and our great quality of life costs a lot of money. We have a $131M budget which includes a $63M General Fund budget for basic operations and maintenance.

But like other cities across the country, San Ramon has been affected by rapidly rising costs the last few years just like all of us as individuals. Lately our expenditures have been outpacing our revenues. We had to make significant cuts in spending this year to balance our budget. Not only did this include difficult cuts in things like library hours, parks maintenance and deferred infrastructure improvements, but we had to cut some staffing too which equates to potential
cuts in programs and services.

While we made some annual cost of living adjustments and modified some of our user fees to increase revenues, we had to make up for a $17.6M deficit. Like all our residents, we need to live within our means but we can get there in multiple ways.

I will continue to push for thoughtful ways to reduce spending and increase our income, and prioritize public safety, road maintenance, restoration of library hours, preservation of our programs for youth and seniors, and maintenance of our 60 parks.

7. What makes you the best candidate?

Experience and leadership! I have held a variety of leadership positions during my years of military and civilian service. In both of my previous careers, I was responsible for analyzing complex issues, making informed decisions, and working collaboratively to solve problems under difficult, sometimes stressful situations. As a current member of the City Council, I understand the concerns of our residents and the challenges and opportunities to keep San Ramon a great place to work, live, play, and raise a family.

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

I am active in numerous volunteer initiatives and speaking engagements, drawing on such diverse interests as beekeeping, fishing, hiking, gardening, cooking and traveling.

9. Any other comments?

I am not a politician. Before applying and being appointed to City Council in 2020, I had never run for elected office before. I have no ambitions of running for State or Federal government positions. I’m a resident who has lived in San Ramon for 20 years and intend to stay here. You can find more information about me at my website: https://www.armstrong4sanramon.com.

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