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The town of Portola Valley removed the Wildfire Preparedness Committee‘s vice chair on April 5, the latest in a spate of members to leave the committee in recent months. It’s making it difficult for the committee to operate. The committee’s April 5 meeting was canceled when there weren’t enough members present to reach a quorum.
Recruitment for the committee won’t come easily, with “all the vitriol, conspiracy theories and legal threats directed at the town and committee volunteers about housing and fire safety issues,” in recent months, said Mayor Craig Hughes in an email. The committee, which is designated to have nine members, shrank to five on April 6 when another committee member resigned, citing pressing personal commitments pulling her away from the volunteer position.
Two members of the Town Council and a wildfire committee member agreed to oust Dale Pfau from the committee, which advises the Town Council on ways to reduce wildfire danger and increase resident resiliency in an emergency.
Town officials declined to state why they removed Pfau, who is the chair of the town’s Emergency Preparedness Committee, from the wildfire committee. Pfau, who was one of the founding members of the wildfire committee, could not be reached for comment.
Hughes, who is also a member of the committee, noted it’s not common to remove a committee member from their position.
Portola Valley Neighbors United, which was founded in January 2020 to “respond to several difficult town issues and preserve the town’s rural nature,” said Pfau “has been a candid and thoughtful” vice chair of the committee.
“He is a strong proponent of wildfire prevention and safety for our community,” they said in a statement. “He has spoken up clearly for prioritization of wildfire safety as a necessary precondition for future development of fire-prone hazardous areas of town. For that reason, he has also pressed forcefully for the need to revise and update our safety element as an essential precursor to compliance with RHNA (regional housing needs allocation — the town is tasked with designating 253 of units of housing for development in the 2023-31 cycle) mandates or amendment of our housing element. Our town has benefited greatly from his outspoken candor and his sound guidance will be sorely missed.”
Tensions between residents and town officials have intensified, with some hiring attorneys in recent weeks to investigate actions by town committees and council members, including one “massive” Public Records Act request filed by attorney and former San Jose mayor Chuck Reed related to the Ad Hoc Housing Element Committee and its consideration of changing the zoning of the Nathhorst Triangle neighborhood for denser housing development.
Vice Mayor Sarah Wernikoff ( on March 21), Megan Koch, Jennifer Youstra, Karen Vahtra and Marianne Plunder have all resigned from the committee in the last half year. Those who have resigned have cited the large time commitment of the committee. The town designates an hour and a half for committee meetings, but the last two meetings have each run three hours long.
On April 5, the wildfire committee was set to discuss alleged Brown Act violations by a committee member on March 1. Two law firms representing residents Rusty and Kristen Day, Ron Eastman, Bruce and Shirley Roberts, James Rooney and Jim and Ellen Vernazza, brought forward the allegations.
They accused Wernikoff of violating the Brown Act by sending text messages to the town manager and other committee members about committee business during the March 1 meeting. Someone took screenshots of Wernikoff’s text messages, which appeared during the meeting when she shared her screen with audience members.
Town Attorney Cara Silver said texting during a meeting is permitted, provided a member does not send text messages to a quorum, which Wernikoff didn’t do.
Wernikoff resigned from the committee before the Brown Act accusations came about, citing the time-consuming nature of the committee and the fact she’s also on another time-intensive committee, the Ad Hoc Housing Element Committee.
Also on the April 5 meeting’s agenda was a presentation by committee member Robert Younge on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s guidance on fire hazard mitigation strategies.
Process to remove a committee member
To remove a member of a town committee, the mayor, the committee’s council liaison and commission or committee chairperson — for the wildfire committee, it’s Michael Tomars — all concur that a member is not fulfilling his or her duties. Examples given include repeated failure to attend meetings, violation of ethical standards, disruptive behavior and repeated failure to abide by commission/committee handbook rules. In those circumstances, the mayor may revoke the appointment of a commission/committee member, according to the town’s committee handbook. If the mayor is the council liaison, as Mayor Craig Hughes is for the wildfire committee, then the vice mayor, Wernikoff, acts in place of the mayor.
Fire prevention has been a lightning rod issue in town, with some members of the community calling for the town government to do more. This winter, residents started an online petition urging council members and staff to cede some of their control over development to the Woodside Fire Protection District, in light of new state housing laws that encourage building. The residents, who have voiced an ongoing lack of trust in town officials, said the district is the most equipped to make the best decisions to protect them against wildfires.
The petition also asked the town to require that all future buildings in Portola Valley be spaced at least 30 feet apart until the Woodside Fire Protection District fire marshal comes out with the new fire code later this year. The committee did not make a recommendation to the council to institute a building setback in November.
The committee, which originally formed in 2019 under the name Ad Hoc Wildfire Preparation Committee, needs five members to reach a quorum; only four were at the April 5 meeting. The four present were: Jennifer Hammer, MJ Lee, Robert Younge and Nona Chiariello. Absent were Tomars and Youstra.
Committee members could not be reached for comment.
Five committee resignations
Six members have left the committee since last November.
Youstra resigned in an email on April 6, saying she’d planned to announce it at the April 5 meeting. She said she had to step away to care for a family member and because she’s taken a new job.
Vahtra resigned on Nov. 2, 2021, according to meeting minutes.
Koch’s name last appears on the board agenda for the Dec. 7, 2021 meeting. Koch said she was resigning from the wildfire committee because “she does not have the extra time she had when she took this on,” according to Dec. 13, 2021, meeting minutes from the Architectural and Site Control Commission, which she sits on.
Koch said that she’s been yelled at in public about the committee not adopting more strict rules for building in town to prevent fire, but also has received hugs from residents for her work.
“The meetings are longer and more frequent than she was prepared for with her other commitments and conflicts to deal with,” according to the meeting minutes.
Marianne Plunder resigned from the committee sometime before the Conservation Committee’s Jan. 25 meeting where she announced it. Chiariello replaced her, according to meeting minutes.
Complaints about misinformation, lack of civility
Tensions have been rising between some residents and town officials over housing development and wildfire prevention efforts.
Frankly, if you are going to dish out crazy mud, you can’t expect not to get a little dirty.
Rebecca Flynn, PVForum creator
Rebecca Flynn, who runs the town’s online social network PVForum, posted on the site that a few people in town are on a moderated status “because they have shown themselves to be unable to post respectful messages.”
“They have been rude or vicious to others on the PVForum, to people in town, or to me personally,” she wrote. “This means that I have to waste my time (frequently) approving all their new postings before they are allowed to reach the PVForum. Unfortunately, several of them CONTINUE to attempt to post offensive messages that either spuriously attack people in town or in government without providing facts or legitimate sources or they send messages full of misinformation, conspiracy theories, gross inaccurate generalizations, or disrespect. I do not allow those types of messages through.”
She goes on to write, “frankly, if you are going to dish out crazy mud, you can’t expect not to get a little dirty. … I’m glad that most people in Portola Valley are respectful and prefer a lively debate about the issues based on facts and legitimate information.”
Wernikoff said that over the last four months, town staff and council members have “spent an inordinate amount of time debunking misinformation.”
“It’s super frustrating,” she said. “It takes an enormous amount of time but it doesn’t help the community.”
For example, a flyer circulating in the Nathhorst Triangle neighborhood last month stated that the “actual density” of new units in the neighborhood would be three- to four-stories high, even though the town has not yet specified how tall the buildings would be if the area were to be rezoned.
Next wildfire committee meeting
The canceled April 5 meeting hasn’t been rescheduled yet. The committee is scheduled to meet on the first Tuesday of the month at 4 p.m.
Hughes said that the town will see if there are any time-sensitive issues which can’t be handled outside a meeting, and may just wait for the next regularly scheduled meeting if there’s nothing pressing — “which is how we normally do it when a committee can’t gather a quorum,” he said.
For example, the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Committee had a meeting on April 6, but had missed its previous two due to lack of quorum, he noted.
Angela Swartz — great article! This community is lucky to have you as a reporter.
I heard that Pfau was removed because he was being antagonistic and disruptive on the committee, and his behavior was a main reason other committee members were quitting. But then Pfau hired a lawyer and now the town can’t say anything about that.
All this antagonism…when people feel like they’re being attacked, they become defensive and have a harder time listening with an open-mind. That’s human nature. How can we de-escalate? All these grown-ups yelling about and hurling insults. The future generations need us to figure out a more skillful way to deal with conflict and to work together. I appreciate community activists working on these issues but, please, let’s try and see the bigger picture (that the youth already does see and will inherit) and figure out how to do this work more skillfully — without acting antagonistic and adversarial. That behavior might make us feel powerful, but it’s demoralizing for everyone and actually makes communication harder. We’re all in the same boat.
Also, I’m on a couple town committees and I think texting during a meeting is fine, and even helpful, as long as the brown act isn’t violated, which it sounds like it wasn’t in this situation. Texting during a meeting is just one of infinite new scenarios and possibilities engendered by technology. Not necessarily a bad thing.
Dear Almanac,
Regardless of any post hoc excuse given to justify Dale’s removal from Wildfire Preparedness, it is clear to many that Dale’s “crime” was simply his insistence that the Safety Element update be completed before moving forward with the Housing Element update. The California Constitution states: “The protection of the public safety is the first responsibility of local government and local officials have an obligation to give priority to the provision of adequate public safety services” (Art. XIII, § 35). That is not what is happening in Portola Valley. If there were any other reason for the dismissal, one might wonder why he remains chairman of the Emergency Preparedness Committee. No, Dale has rightly and consistently insisted that the Safety Element be given highest priority, and that residents be given access to and allowed to participate in the process. His letter to PV Town Council, coauthored by the two other safety committee chairs, can be read on pg 173 of the March 23, 2022 Town Council meeting agenda.
With regard to the “extremely frustrating…misinformation” which “doesn’t help the community”, your example is a flier that showed a picture of 3-story apartment buildings. A similar photo was shown by Planning Director Laura Russell, in a meeting where Fire Marshall Don Bullard was asked if their fire truck ladders could reach 4 stories. “The flyer” was distributed in a neighborhood which, without any outreach to or communication from the Town to the affected residents, was proposed to be rezoned for up to 20 units per acre. I don’t know what 20 units per acre will actually look like, but I’m guessing it’d be something similar to what is depicted in the photo. Rezoning would be catastrophic for the residents of that neighborhood, who are at risk of losing their homes and the equity they’ve built up. I don’t understand how, or in what way, notifying these residents of the risk they face is “unhelpful”. Unhelpful to whom?
Ron Eastman
PV
Again the reporting is done without actual investigating. Mr. Phau has only been trying to get the town to put fire safety building standards and safe evacuation plans in place before building very high density housing in this very high fire area. He is trying to save lives and property after witnessing the killing wildfires the last few years. I applaud and thank Mr. Phau
I would like to add to the conversation that Dale has been an excellent chair of the PV Emergency Preparedness Committee. I am on that committee and appreciate his leadership over the past year and a half.
It is most unfortunate for everyone in PV that we can not find the right tone to wrestle with the difficult problems and issues we face. We need to dig deeper and find the right way to disagree and reach consensus on how to solve the issues we face. We can’t claim to be a great community if we don’t do this.
Jerry Shefren
In regard to the first comment by PV Lover, who feels that texting during a meeting is just fine—-and is a member of several town committees—it’s NOT just fine. It’s NOT fine to text other members of the committee you are sitting on, and other town committee, or text members of the town council, or text the town manager. It’s INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR for someone who is supposed to be listening, serving with an open mind, and considering what is being said at the meeting in which they are present.
If you feel the need to inform other members of other committees, the town council, or the town manager or other employees about the business currently being conducted at a meeting you are in, please wait until after the meeting. Using the excuse that it doesn’t violate the letter of the Brown Act is a way of rationalizing your own behavior.
It’s amazing how perfectly nice people can flip to become instruments of their own personal agendas when elected or selected for a position in power. Just serve the members of the town—ALL of them, not just the ones you agree with, or whom push forward your own personal projects. Thanks.
PV under the current town government has become a mess. There is too little transparency, too much playing fast and loose with the truth, instances of “skirting” of the Brown Act, nasty name calling and innuendo by members of the government and the manager of the PV Forum, and importantly very little progress on the important issues of town planning and fire safety. The town pays consultants for everything down to decisions about painting a red curb so fire access is maintained, while still getting next to nothing done. The whole situation has become absurd. At very least we need some new blood in the town government. An election in coming and it will be nice to see who is running.