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Published on 11/24/1999 All articles from this issue

John Moss will be 'millennium mayor'

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue

Special to the Town Crier

Los Altos Councilman John Moss was slated to be elected mayor last night by his four colleagues on the Los Altos City Council. The mayoral position is a one-year term that rotates among the councilmembers. Moss has served two years of his first four-year term on the city council.

The 57-year old Princeton University graduate has his work cut out for him.

On Nov. 2 Los Altos voters said yes to additional services in the areas of recreation, maintenance and public safety. But in the same vote, residents turned down an increase in the utility tax, which councilmembers had hoped would pay for the new services.

That, Moss said, is the "biggest challenge" facing the city council in the year ahead. The council must "rethink our priorities and the use of the limited funds we have," Moss said in an interview at his home last week.

"We on the council keep asking the staff to do things, yet we don't take anything off their plates," he said

Moss said what is really needed "is two independent studies of the police and planning departments. We are trying to get a handle on how much work is reasonable and how much staff is needed to get the work done that needs to get done."

Another issue Moss sees facing the council is the review of the city's design guidelines and getting them "completed and in effect."

Moss is also concerned about traffic. He likes the traffic management program the council recently approved. "But to do things" like speed bumps or narrowing corners "requires money.

'There are horrible traffic jams around schools. The council recently appointed a city/schools traffic task force to see what we can do to make traffic better," he added.

Additionally, Moss would like to continue improving recreational facilities. "We have so many families with kids. We need (the recreational facilities) more than ever before."

Moss and his wife Jackie were married in 1972 and moved to Los Altos in 1974. The first of their two daughters was born a year later. "We bought our house, made our nest and filled it with children," Moss said.

Moss grew up in Hudson, Ohio, population 1,500. Today there are five families from Hudson living in Los Altos. "It's amazing. We all love a semi-rural, a semi-residential community, and Los Altos represents that," he said.

Moss calls himself "a small town kind of person" and says Los Altos is "a great place, friendly, a pretty town with a small-town feel."

Both John and Jackie believe in community service. Jackie was "a stay-at-home mom" when their girls were little, and volunteered at Loyola School, Moss said.

"Whenever daddy needed to do something, her arm would shoot up. 'John can do that,'" she'd say.

Marge Gratiot, superintendent of the Los Altos School District, was principal at Loyola School when the Moss girls were students there. Often the last two people to leave a school function were Moss and the principal, Gratiot said. They were often on the clean-up detail, sweeping, folding chairs and cleaning together.

Moss ran for the school board in 1989 and served eight years, including a term as president.

"He's a very special man," Gratiot said. "He has genuine decency and he's honorable. I know that's an old-fashioned thing to say," but "he always stuck by his principles, of doing what's best for all the children in the district. He was always able to keep the larger goal in mind." Gratiot describes Moss as a man with a "core of integrity. It's just there," she said.

At the same time Moss was expanding his role in volunteering, so was his wife. She served on the PTA council as well as in the classroom. "I could have lived at Loyola," Jackie said. "I was there all day every day."

However, Jackie doesn't drive, so "when activities got away from my ability to ride my bicycle, I shifted to John," and his activities, she said.

She currently works in downtown Los Altos as the office manager for the Real Estate Inspection Group.

Moss works as a strategic alliance manager for Agilent Technologies, a recent spin-off from Hewlett Packard. As mayor, he earns $300 per month, as do the other councilmembers.

Outgoing Mayor Lou Becker said Moss is "a good team player, an excellent leader and a good consensus builder."

Moss said serving on the city council is "the ultimate volunteer job. It's a lot of work with a lot of rewards. You meet wonderful people and do things that help improve the community."