Candidate is running against Morgan Hill rancher Johne Baird and
incumbent Rosemary Kamei, also a Morgan Hill resident.
Morgan Hill – His fliers finally ready, Terry Mahurin wanted to get a jump on the campaign, but his wife, Peggy, had other plans – a weekend trip to Mendocino County to celebrate her cousin’s wedding anniversary.
“I actually had no choice in this,” Mahurin said. “After you’re married for 42 years, you learn there are choices and no choices. This was a no choice.”
So Mahurin’s plan to knock on doors all over South County was put on hold for a few days – precious time for a political neophyte with little money and no name recognition hoping to fight his way on to the board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
“All you can do is show up and talk to the people who invite you to speak before them, get out an hand out fliers and get a few signs scattered around,” Mahurin said. “That’s about the best I can do, and it’s not a bad effort to get out and work the precincts and let people know who you are. I’m more confident now than I was a month ago. By the end of this, I think my name will be out there.”
So far, Mahurin’s biggest investment has been in a painted sign in the bed of his pickup truck. His fliers are decidedly low-tech, but his reasons for running are anything but simple. Morgan Hill resident Mahurin wants to freeze the district’s budget and water rates, refinance its debt and limit its activities. Mahurin is on a reform mission.
“Two years ago, … I was set on a journey that I never would have dreamed would bring me where I am today,” he said, referring to his first investigation into rising water rates. “It was more of curiosity at that point, but I began to wonder why rates were increasing. When I finally understood, I became severely annoyed.”
His interest was piqued when he met San Martin resident Bob Cerruti at a water district rate setting meeting in 2004. Cerruti has railed against the district for years, and Mahurin was intrigued when Cerruti made a presentation on the history of rate increases.
The two quickly learned they were of one mind in believing that district needs reform in budgeting and operations, and decided that Mahurin is the best public face for that argument. “I felt he’s the better person,” Cerruti said. “I think he can do more to change the thinking of that board. They need to get a handle on how and why money is spent.”
Mahurin is a retired engineer with an impressive resume. As an employee with North American Aviation in Los Angeles, he worked on the heat shield for the Apollo Command Module. And he’s received several patents, including a method of using ultraviolet light to cure silicon rubber. That innovation prevented toner from spoiling the rolls on early printers.
His gripes against the district are no mere boilerplate rants about higher and bad service. Mahurin does research – a lot of research. It’s not unusual for him to pad his letters of complaint with sections of the district’s bylaws and copies of 50-year-old newspaper articles.
“He used a lot of the information I collected going back all the way to 1995,” Cerruti said, “but he’s gone way beyond what I looked into. He’s really an excellent person as far as looking into the details.”
And for the last two years, Mahurin has devoted himself to parsing the district’s $264 million budget and devising ways to arrest the agency’s steady stream of rate increases. South County rates have nearly doubled since 2000.
“The first thing that needs to be done is that this needs to be stopped,” Mahurin said. “It’s been done through incrementalism. The first step to do that is to freeze the budget and not dig this hole any deeper.”
In Mahurin’s view, rates have been rising in concert with the district’s expanding staff. In recent years, the agency payroll has grown to include about 900 employees. At the same time, it has stretched its purview to include more creek and stream maintenance and is investing heavily in recycled water programs.
Mahurin thinks the district should purvey water and prevent flooding only. He doesn’t believe the agency needs to import water from the Central Valley Project through the San Felipe pipeline and wants the water in Anderson Lake to be reserved for South County.
Most of all, Mahurin wants a complete overhaul of the way the district manages it capital projects and debt. He thinks the district has wasted millions by not using reserves to pay down faster its investment in the CVP.
“They need an independent and ongoing finance and audit subcommittee,” he said. “None of those members have the financial expertise to understand the complexities of a large institution. The difference between me and them is that I seem to be the only who recognizes that.”
Mahurin is up against Morgan Hill rancher Johne Baird and incumbent Rosemary Kamei, also a Morgan Hill resident. Kamei defended her colleagues’ ability to handle the district’s financial complexities and said Mahurin is too focused on his small part of her district, which includes south San Jose and Los Gatos.
“Representing the district is about more than just water rates,” Kamei said. “The issues in each of the different communities are diverse. He seems to think this all about water rates and it’s not.”
Mahurin said he’s running against Kamei as much as he’s trying to get a seat on the district board, and he acknowledges that, as one of seven directors, he would have limited power.
“If I lived in San Jose and knew what I know today, I would run for whichever seat was available,” he said. “The only thing I can do is speak out and talk about things that are not being talked about.”
Matt King covers Morgan Hill and Santa Clara County for The Times. Reach him at 779-4106 ext. 201 or mk***@*************es.com.
