John McAlister, Nicholas Hargis announce intentions to run for Mountain View City Council

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Kicking off the campaign season, two candidates recently announced their intention to run for Mountain View’s City Council, hoping to secure one of the four seats up for grabs in the November election.

John McAlister, a small business owner, is seeking a third term on the dais, after serving as a City Council member from 2012 to 2020 and as mayor in 2015. McAlister sees another turn on the council as an opportunity to continue working towards pragmatic solutions to help Mountain View prosper, he said.

Nicholas Hargis, a congressional aide for U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, is a newcomer to local politics, but has a lot of experience in regional policy work and a fresh perspective to make Mountain View a better place, he said.

With strong personal and professional ties to the community, McAlister and Hargis are familiar with the top issues facing the city and have plenty of ideas they want to share with voters ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

John McAlister

If you’re looking for McAlister, there’s a good chance you’ll find him behind the counter at Baskin-Robbins on El Camino Real. Serving up scoops of ice cream to customers has helped him connect with the community, McAlister said, noting that politics was not on his mind when he opened his first business about 40 years ago.

Since then, McAlister has served two terms on the City Council and five years on the Environmental Planning Commission. Even so, McAlister does not view himself as a politician, but rather as someone who has served in elected office to help the community.

“I’m the type of guy that sees a problem and is part of the solution,” he said, adding that he has a big stake in the city as a lifelong resident, family man and small business owner.

Mountain View has gone through a lot of changes since McAlister was a child growing up among orchards. The city has transitioned into a more urbanized environment that has fallen short on addressing the needs of its growing population, he said. For these reasons, McAlister views housing, infrastructural development and open space as some of the biggest challenges facing Mountain View today.

Running for City Council is an opportunity to tackle these issues head on. With housing, McAlister wants to make sure there is a variety of options available for residents, like condos, apartments and subsidized housing. He is supportive of the city purchasing older properties and turning them into affordable housing, something that should have happened a long time ago, as construction costs have shot up, he said.

McAlister, who served on the VTA board of directors, also views intermodal transportation as a high priority that has not gained enough traction. An integrated public transit system is important for both environmental and convenience reasons, he said, adding that it can help address the housing and job imbalance in the region.

For similar reasons, McAlister wants Mountain View to take bolder steps in becoming a “smart city” that anticipates the future needs of its residents in an environmentally sustainable way. Some ideas that McAlister proposed include treating recycled water for potable use, like San Jose.

He also wants to expand broadband access to help underserved communities, an issue that he became deeply familiar with during the pandemic when he was serving on the council. Putting down piping for fiber broadband also would help attract more corporations to Mountain View, McAlister said. “We want to be a city for the future. We got to start planning now,” he said.

McAlister’s longtime experiences as a business owner and entrepreneur also makes him well suited to serve on the council, he said. McAlister expressed some dismay that the city’s downtown revitalization efforts have largely focused on restaurants. Retail is an important part of addressing storefront vacancies, he said, noting that the city’s performing arts center was an underutilized resource that could bring more visitors to Mountain View if it diversified its offerings.

Collaborating with others on these issues was another one of his strengths, McAlister said, adding that working well with the rest of the council was critical to getting things done too.

McAlister plans to hit the campaign trail by reaching out to voters, going door-to-door and talking over ice cream. Listening to community concerns is what first motivated him to get involved in local politics, he said, an approach that he plans to continue if reelected to the City Council.

Nicholas Hargis

Although Hargis is a new face in city politics, he said he is ready to tackle some of Mountain View’s biggest challenges with a robust policy platform that supports the city’s progressive stance on housing and the environment, as well as a host of other pressing issues.

A Los Altos native, Hargis attended St. Francis High School in Mountain View and later went to Harvard University, where he studied government and economics. Hargis credits these experiences for shaping his development as a whole person; his studies at Harvard also propelled him to hone in on inclusive frameworks that involve everyone in policy making processes, he said.

Since then, Hargis has further developed his policy chops as a congressional aide for U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), working as a senior field representative and constituent caseworker. As part of the job, Hargis covers the city of Mountain View and neighboring jurisdictions, providing him with a strong regional perspective, he said.

Hargis has been a Mountain View resident since 2021 and credits the community as his inspiration for running for City Council. “To hear the level of progressivism in our city is incredible because it really matches with my worldview, and I want to build on that,” he said.

Hargis has identified four pillars to his campaign: equitable growth, public safety, sustainability and community wellbeing. Within each area, Hargis has developed specific policy plans that he would promote if elected to the council.

“I think the big picture is that the city is changing rapidly, and I want to make sure that we grow in a united way,” Hargis said, adding that housing is a top priority area.

While recognizing Mountain View’s achievements as a “prohousing city,” Hargis says more needs to be done to build affordable units for moderate and low-income households. Hargis also wants to strengthen the city’s tenant relocation assistance and mobile home rent protection ordinances to protect vulnerable populations and ensure the wellbeing of the entire community, he said.

With his focus on inclusive policy making, Hargis has proposed to redouble the city’s efforts and implement an equity-based budget that takes into account historical discrimination and inequities that have impacted communities. He wants to see 40% of the city’s capital improvement budget go to underserved and underrepresented communities, he said, adding that there are federal programs, like the Justice40 Initiative, that support these kinds of efforts.

Hargis also supports investments in public safety, stating that police and fire departments need the appropriate resources to perform their jobs effectively. For these reasons, he supports a revenue measure for a new public safety administration building and also backs a recent city proposal to install automated license plate readers to deter crime and assist law enforcement investigations.

Transportation safety is another high priority area for Hargis, which he said should be considered in the same sentence as public safety. He supports the city’s Vision Zero Action Plan and says he would focus his efforts to ensure it was implemented effectively.

As an environmental advocate, Hargis said he would continue to promote the city’s sustainability goals, while advocating for more opportunities to streamline the city’s permitting processes for electrification. That advocacy includes access to open space, and he said he has visited every park in the city, about 45 of them, paying specific attention to the facilities, like bathrooms, benches and hydration systems.

Hargis plans to bring his inclusive perspective to the campaign trail as well. With Spanish as his first language, Hargis says he can connect to a wide swath of the community and plans to have a bilingual website to help inform voters about his policy platform.

“I’m a student of democratic processes. And I’m very focused on making sure that everyone feels included in our city’s policymaking,” he said.