There are two very good reasons to vote against Measure C. Simply summed up, it’s not needed, and it could do more harm than good.

The Los Altos initiative on the Nov. 6 ballot claims to protect parks and open space from being sold to developers. It requires voter approval for any change in city-owned property, be it sale, lease or rezoning. But we’re convinced the measure’s creators’ intent isn’t necessarily saving parks, but saving parking lots – the downtown parking plazas, specifically.

Get ready for a busy local election season. Depending on where they live, voters in Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View could be deciding among more than 30 candidates. In addition, there are five measures on the Nov. 6 ballot that involve the three communities.

The Town Crier plans to cover each of the pertinent races as Election Day draws near. Here’s what you can expect:

Our Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District is one of the best in the state. It isn’t that way by accident – the district has historically benefited from strong leadership from its board of trustees, particularly in recent years.

Incumbents Debbie Torok and Fiona Walter are both highly deserving of another term on the board. Both are intelligent, committed and responsible.

It took many by surprise, but the Los Altos School District’s recent decision to change targeted sites in Mountain View’s San Antonio neighborhood for a 10th school seems like a good one.

The new site, where the Kohl’s department store is located, is larger and has a property owner far more willing to negotiate than the owners of the initially targeted parcel – the site of the Old Mill/Safeway property at California Street and San Antonio Road.

The Los Altos School District needs steady leadership, and continuity in that leadership, to oversee some complex issues facing the district – among them the 10th school site process and the sensitive handling of Bullis Charter School relations.

Incumbents Bryan Johnson and Vladimir Ivanovic have demonstrated good leadership, and they deserve another term. Newcomer Shali Sirkay also deserves election to the board based on her work with the Los Altos Mountain View PTA Council, the district’s Citizens’ Advisory Committee for Finance and the campaigns for the past two bond measures. Furthermore, her gracious, positive personality is needed to offset the animosity we see in the district community from time to time, particularly over Bullis Charter School.

It’s early June, another election is behind us, school is out, summer is around the corner and we’re all thumbs.

Thumbs-up: To the Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District, whose students will get to enjoy updated and expanded facilities thanks to voters’ June 5 approval of Measure E. The $295 million bond cleared the 55 percent threshold required for passage quite comfortably and, with 67 percent of voters in favor, would have cleared the two-thirds majority required of such measures in the past. As a result, work on upgraded cafeterias, libraries and modernized classrooms is scheduled to begin next year and wrap up in 2020.