*This article has been updated to include which districts current councilmembers live in.
Windsor has three official candidates vying for the vacant fifth council seat in the upcoming special election.
Either Evan Kubota, Stephanie Ahmad or Michael Wall will join the Windsor Town Council as a regular council member in May, following the town-wide vote April 12.
According to Town Clerk Irene Camacho-Werby, current planning commissioner Jeffrey Leasure, who had pulled papers and set up a campaign website, did not file papers by the filing period’s close on Jan. 14.
The town council has been plagued by vacancies since December 2020, when then-councilmember Dominic Foppoli left his seat mid-term after winning the town’s first at-large mayoral position in the November 2020 general municipal election. A special election was held in April 2021, but by the time the winner, Rosa Reynoza, was seated in Foppoli’s former council seat in June, Foppoli had resigned following a sexual assault and misconduct scandal.
The vacancies have left the council prone to deadlock since the former mayor’s resignation led to Sam Salmon, by appointment, leaving his own regular seat to assume the mayorship. The four-year term of the contested council seat, which Salmon had won in 2018, will end in December of this year — just eight months after the election.
Whoever wins in April will not be able to run for this specific seat again in this November’s election, as it will be replaced, alongside two others, with seats selected specifically by Windsor’s first, second and fourth districts. The new district system, by which only Councilmember Fudge has been selected since its first implementation in 2020, requires candidates to live in the district they will represent.
According to Camacho-Werby, both Mayor Sam Salmon and Vice Mayor Esther Lemus live in District 2, alongside Ahmad, and Councilmember Rosa Reynoza lives in District 1, alongside Kubota and Wall.
With none of the current councilmembers living in District 4, there will be at least one new councilmember come December.
Candidates in November’s general municipal election can also run for the two-year, at-large mayoral seat, if they choose not to run in their residential district.
On Jan. 7, SoCoNews asked the three community members who had pulled papers at the time — Ahmad, Kubota and Leasure — some basic information about themselves and their candidacies, and their positions about two important items. The initial prospective candidates’ stances on the Civic Center project, and whether Windsor should call a special election to return to an appointed mayor with five districts instead of four, were included in this article.
On. On Jan. 14, SoCoNews posed the same questions to Wall, who pulled and filed papers after the article had been published. Kubota and Ahmad’s information has been included after Wall’s.
Michael Wall
Michael Wall, who ran for the town council in 2016, lives in Windsor with his wife and their two children. He first moved to Windsor in 2005, where the couple first lived in one of the condos on the Town Green.
Wall said he doesn’t oppose development generally, but does oppose the Civic Center project “in its current form,” saying the project’s scope has changed drastically.
“There was too little transparency or community input as the developer worked behind closed doors to expand the scope of the project. Also, much of our community has reservations about this specific developer and his concerning environmental record. This special election is for a very short tenure on the town council, and (the Civic Center project) is the most pressing issue we will be addressing,” Wall said.
Regarding the process for selecting Windsor’s mayor, Wall said he was in favor of calling a special election.
He said, “Windsor voters have oftentimes been denied a voice in local issues. Our community deserves the opportunity to determine who and how they are represented by local government.”
Wall is a consultant for the healthcare industry, where he said he helps hospitals save money and improve their quality of care.
Wall lives in District 1.
Stephanie Ahmad
Stephanie Ahmad is a past president and current trustee of the Windsor Unified School District (WUSD) board of trustees. She grew up in Windsor and returned to raise her own children in the town.
As to why Ahmad is running, she said. “I care about this community — I want it to be the best possible place to live for all of its residents. I love that it’s a multigenerational community and that we also attract young families.”
She said that she is undecided on the mayoral selection process and the Civic Center project issues. Regarding the mayorship, she said, “I see the value in having district positions and one at-large mayoral position representing the will of the entire town. At the same time I currently serve on the school board where the president role rotates on a yearly basis and in my experience it’s a very good and fair system that encourages collegiality.”
For both projects, Ahmad told SoCoNews she would decide after talking to community members on both sides of the issues during her campaign.
“I plan to have a lot of conversations with residents about the Civic Center project over the coming weeks and months. I want to hear from folks who are on all sides of the issue. My inclination when there’s a complex decision to be made is always towards learning, gathering information and being transparent,” Ahmad said. She encourages voters to contact her to share their viewpoints.
Ahmad earned a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley before earning her law degree from Stanford in 2011. She works as a senior associate attorney at an international law firm.
Ahmad lives in District 2.
Evan Kubota
Larkfield-native Evan Kubota, who lost his Coffey Park home in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, relocated to Windsor in December 2017, where his two daughters attend Windsor schools. He told SoCoNews he was running because he has “watched the current council members navigate a wide range of challenges over the years, sometimes admirably and sometimes in less-than-ideal ways.”
“I was surprised and disappointed with the way the Foppoli matter was handled by the council and in listening to some of the recent comments on the matter it still appears there are some who lack personal accountability for the events that took place and the damage it caused to the community and the victims,” Kubota said.
Kubota is not in favor of the Civic Center project, saying the project has raised “significant concerns surrounding the direction the town is heading, and whether some current council members have an appropriate view on the long-term vision for Windsor.” He called the project financially impractical and said it will damage Windsor family-oriented identity.
Regarding the process for selecting Windsor’s mayor, Kubota said he supports a fifth district position with a rotating mayor. He said the district system better represents minority voters, and an appointed mayor would prevent potential recurrent vacancies that would “create ongoing challenges to the smooth running of the council.”
Kubota is the director of operations for Execushield, In., a Bay Area private security firm, where he oversees a staff of 250 security officers across northern California.
Kubota lives in District 1.
