School district trustee and 2 incumbents poised to win Fountain Valley City Council seats
A school district trustee, the sitting mayor and mayor pro tem led a field of 13 candidates vying for three Fountain Valley City Council seats in the midterm elections, according to the latest tally by the Orange County Registrar released Friday night.
Jim Cunneen earned the top spot in the race with 5,538 votes, 15.41% of the 34,383 ballots counted so far. He has served on the school district’s board since 2014, and if the latest election results hold he will be entering his first term as a member of the City Council.
He was also a member of the Fountain Valley Planning Commission. Current Mayor Patrick Harper applauded his background in public service and said “he’ll be a good addition to the council,” during a brief interview over the phone Friday.
Harper was apparently reelected to his seat on the governing body with 5,289 votes or 14.71%, based on the latest results. He was closely trailed by current Mayor Pro Tem Kim Constantine, who had received 5,268 (14.66%) of the votes.
“I think the fact that two incumbents got reelected indicates that voters and residents are happy with the direction the city is going in,” Harper said.
He, Cunneen, Constantine and many of those who vied for a council seat this year described the competition as civil, and that many of those who did not know each other beforehand wound up becoming friends. First-time candidate Darrel Mymon-Brown said Constantine helped her learn how to file the paperwork she needed to run and gave her tips on how to conduct a campaign.
The two of them shared election night dinner at Silky Sullivan’s Tuesday evening as preliminary vote counts were announced. Mymon-Brown said she was “disappointed” to come in at ninth place, but said she was encouraged to see Constantine remain on the council.
“Keep going,” Mymon-Brown said to Constantine that evening. “We need you there.”
Fountain Valley has a total of five seats on its city council. Members are paid about $500 each month for their service.
“People are running because we want to be aware, and we want to have more awareness for the residences and the businesses,” Constantine said.
Harper said he’s looking forward to continuing the council’s work on several projects already in progress, especially the creation of a regional homeless shelter in Garden Grove and installation of fiber optic cable throughout Fountain Valley.
Constantine said she looks forward to tackling Fountain Valley’s finances in the next session, and hopes to promote better transparency and outreach from the city regarding upcoming events and current issues affecting residents.
Cunneen, set to be the newest member of the group, said during a brief interview Friday he will likely be spending the next few weeks getting up to speed on current and upcoming council business.
Cunneen was one of only two candidates who voiced support during a candidate forum in September for high-density housing projects. Those are one of several possible solutions to satisfy the state mandated Regional Housing Needs Assessment, which requires city officials to plan the construction of nearly 5,000 additional units by the end of the decade.
Harper said Fountain Valley ought to take a “balanced” approach to addressing the housing crisis, and that he felt the requirement of 5,000 additional residences in a city that presently has about 19,000 homes was somewhat onerous. He added that officials have identified 12 sites for proposed high-density housing, and that he felt confident adding new units in those locations will have only limited impact on current residents.
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