Los Gatos Weekly-Times

News

Not much sleep for McNutt while running business, town, campaign

By Jason Sweeney

If you want to know what Mayor Diane McNutt is up to, just visit her blog. She has been keeping track of all of her doings as mayor of Los Gatos for nearly a year.

These days, McNutt's yellow and black signs are all around town, urging voters to re-elect her to the town council.

McNutt said campaigning this time around is easier. "First of all, you know what you're doing. This time I could look back at what I did four years ago and repeat the things that worked, and drop the things that didn't. You just know what to anticipate."

She anticipates a lot of late nights as she balances her campaigning with her career, and with her duties as mayor. "You just kind of give up sleeping," she said.

McNutt is a 34-year resident of Los Gatos. She is a former reporter, but left the newspaper business to start her own public relations firm, McNutt & Company, Inc., which she has run since 1982. Her husband, Michael Cronk, was a longtime reporter for the San Jose Mercury News.

McNutt's first taste of community service in Los Gatos came when her daughter, Jillian, entered Louise Van Meter Elementary School. McNutt volunteered to be a room mother at the school, which led to more responsibility as a cookie chairwoman for her daughter's Girl Scout troop.

McNutt went on to chair the Los Gatos Museum Commission, the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce, the Los Gatos July 4th Celebration, Leadership Los Gatos and the Los Gatos Film Festival. She was also on the steering committee for the Measure A campaign in 1990, which first initiated a parcel tax for the Los Gatos Union School District.

"The more you get involved in the community, the more you are aware of what's going on, and the more you want to get involved," she said.

She said there was no single burning issue that prompted her run for the town council. "It was more that I wanted to participate in setting policy, making decisions and having a long-lasting impact in the community."

When she first took her seat on the council four years ago, the economic climate in the Santa Clara Valley had just gone from boom to bust. The dot-com bust was starting to affect city budgets throughout the region. The council struggled to make cuts in order to balance the budget.

Since then the economic climate has improved. "We're pretty stable right now," McNutt said. However, costs will rise and revenue can be precarious, she said. "We have to be really fiscally conservative to make sure there is enough money to provide the services that people rely on--like police and the library, for example."

If re-elected, McNutt intends to live up to her campaign slogan, "Preserving what is best ... improving what could be better." As the town develops a master plan for upgrades to its 40-year-old civic center and library, she expects the next council will spend a lot of time attempting to improve those things that could be better. The Los Gatos Public Library is one area where she sees a need for improvement.

She also hopes to work on other public facility improvements, such as an improved senior center and youth sports facilities. "We're going to have to be real creative and ingenious thinking these things through.

McNutt is proud to have had a hand in the creation of the Los Gatos youth commission that was established three years ago. She said one of her greatest accomplishments was her role in the establishment of the Leadership Los Gatos program. As chairwoman of the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce, she proposed the program to the council members, but they were skeptical, she said. "I knew it was something that was going to work here," she said. Leadership Los Gatos is now in its sixth year.

"What strikes me this time in this campaign is that it's a very humbling experience," McNutt said. "I opened an envelope last week, and there was a $10 bill in there from a senior. For that person, that $10 is a big deal. That means as much to me as a check for $250 or $500. It's humbling that people can be so kind and supportive."