By Linda Taaffe

Los Altos

os Altos Councilman John Moss and Mayor King Lear both announced last week that they plan to run for re-election on the Los Altos City Council this fall.

Each is completing his first four-year term on the city council. Their two seats will be decided during the Nov. 6 election.

Moss and Lear were the only candidates last week who had taken out nomination papers, said a spokeswoman from the Santa Clara County Registrar’s Office. The candidate filing period began July 16 and closes Aug. 10.

Moss, 59, and Lear, 63, won the four-way race for the two vacant council seats in the 1997 election.

Lear, a retired engineer and 30-year Los Altos resident, kicked-off his campaign last week with a cook-out at the home of former Los Altos Mayor Bob and Marion Grimm. He said traffic, preserving neighborhood integrity, maintaining downtown’s viability and updating the city’s General Plan are his top goals.

During his four-year term, Lear has taken the lead in tackling some of the city’s traffic woes. He helped initiate the Neighborhood Traffic Task Force, which supported the motorcycle traffic enforcement team and helped write the Neighborhood Traffic Management Plan. He also helped initiate the Joint City/School Traffic Committee.

Lear was a strong advocate for building a movie theater with 200 public parking spaces to the city’s list of development options for the property on First and Main streets.

Moss, an engineer at Agilent Technologies and a 23-year Los Altos resident, said he plans to continue working toward the goals he set forth for his current term. Establishing and publicizing city government priorities; slowing the erosion of Los Altos’ small town neighborhood character; and improving relations between the city and schools are among Moss’ top goals.

Moss was responsible for getting the council to rethink and reduce its goals from a list of 42 goals and sub-goals to five or six key annual goals.

Moss supported the single-story overlay plan that allows neighborhoods to preserve their character. He was among the council majority who voted down “an oversized six-plex of movie theaters” in favor of a “small hotel that will contribute to the European village character of our downtown.”

During Moss’ term, he said, the council has proactively worked with both the elementary and high school districts.

to enable them to rebuild their schools with minimum impact on the neighborhoods in which they are located. The city is moving forward with plans to build a regulation-sized gym at each intermediate school that will greatly benefit school physical education programs.

Moss is currently chairing a fund-raising effort to provide $350,000 for critical equipment for the two new performing arts theaters at Los Altos and Mountain View high schools. In return, the high school district has agreed to allow the theaters to be used by the community when not being used by the schools.