Elect Jim Waschura to Los Altos Hills City Council 2026
Thoughtful Leadership. Clear Communication. Empowering Residents.

Thoughtful Leadership. Clear Communication. Empowering Residents.


Jim moved to Los Altos Hills 28 years ago. He has deep roots in the community and understands the importance of preserving what makes Los Altos Hills special for families across generations. As a husband, father, and grandfather, he brings a long-term perspective to decisions about neighborhoods, safety, open space, and quality of life. He believes Town government should protect the character of the community while planning responsibly for the future.

Jim’s Planning Commission experience gives him direct knowledge of how Town policies affect residents, property owners, and neighborhoods. He has worked through complex land-use issues, including Housing Element development standards, multifamily housing requirements, pathways, slope, creek and ridgeline protection. This background helps him ask insightful questions and focus quickly on fair, workable solutions.

Jim brings professional experience in business, engineering, and decision-making to public service. He understands budgets, tradeoffs, accountability, and the importance of clear communication. His background helps him evaluate issues carefully and work toward decisions that are both principled and practical.

Jim has spent years learning how Los Altos Hills operates, from planning and building to public works, finance, legal matters, ordinances, Town code requirements, and public meetings. He understands that good local government depends on transparency, responsiveness, and follow-through.
Please reach us at jim.waschura@gmail.com if you cannot find an answer to your question.
Public safety, police, fire, emergency services. Efficient capable Town administration. Housing Element Plan programs required to prevent builder's remedy projects, Expand solutions for meeting RHNA Housing quotas using ADU, SB 9, Duplex/Triplex and multifamily projects that contribute to protecting the town's semi-rural character.
Large lot sizes. Deep setbacks. Open spaces. Pathways. Creeks. Horse-riding facilities. Landscape screening around development. Current construction setbacks from property lines (40 FT front and 30 FT side and rear), provides 60 FT home-to-home spacing. New state mandates reduce ministerial project approval setbacks to as little as 4 FT from a property line.
Protecting the ideas represented in the founding "Green Sheets" document by a voter ballot initiative may sound appealing, but it is not well matched to the actual threats facing the Town. A ballot initiative could express strong resident support for semi-rural features such as large lots, deep setbacks, pathways, open space, limits on commercial activity, and the keeping of horses and other animals. But many of the pressures residents are most concerned about come from state-mandated housing laws that local voters cannot simply override. If state law requires reduced setbacks, increased density, ministerial approvals, or objective standards, a local referendum may not provide the protection residents will expect.
Codifying broad Green Sheets principles too rigidly will have unintended consequences. Rules such as never giving back a pathway easement without voter approval, or freezing present policy language forever, limit the Town’s future ability to correct mistakes, adjust easements, resolve conflicts, respond to changed conditions, or comply with higher law. What begins as protection of Town character becomes an obstacle to practical governance.
The question is not whether the Green Sheets values matter. They do. The question is whether a ballot initiative is the right mechanism to protect them with. The values may be better protected through carefully drafted ordinances, objective development standards, public process requirements, and clear policy direction, rather than by locking broad aspirational language into a voter-protected framework that may be both under-protective and over-restrictive.

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