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San Ramon City Council candidates Richard Adler and Chirag Kathrani debated development, housing and the city’s approach to budgeting at a District 2 election forum earlier this month.
Adler was appointed to an interim seat on the council in early 2025 to replace Mark Armstrong, who was elected mayor in 2024. Kathrani ran against Armstrong in that year’s mayoral race and applied for appointment to the interim seat.
At the Oct. 7 forum, held at the Roundhouse Conference Center in Bishop Ranch and moderated by DanvilleSanRamon, Adler emphasized his connection with constituents while Kathrani criticized the sitting council’s decision making.
Adler noted his work with the city kicked off prior to his appointment, as he previously served on San Ramon’s Senior Citizens Advisory Committee and advised its Teen Council. He also served as president of the Dougherty Valley Rotary Club.
“I like to go out and listen to the residents of the community and hear what they have to say,” Adler said. “I understand the concerns having to do with growth, and I want to ask the right questions when I’m on the City Council so that I can make the right decisions for the voters of San Ramon.”
Kathrani criticized Adler and the rest of the council over changes to the city’s public review process for General Plan amendments. Measure G, passed by voters in 1999, required a supermajority — or four out of five members — to make changes to amend the city’s General Plan. The measure also required three public hearings for changes. However, the city updated its zoning ordinance in recent years, removing the supermajority requirement in favor of a simple majority. Those changes also reduced the number of public hearings required.
“This was fundamentally a voter-approved law that cannot be deleted without going back to the voters,” Kathrani said.
Adler said he’d heard “a lot of pushback” from Kathrani on that topic and clarified that the supermajority was eliminated to keep the city in compliance with state and city laws. The updates were approved by the council in September 2025; the staff report prepared for that meeting noted the changes were intended to align the ordinances with the city’s General Plan 2040 and its state-required Housing Element.
Kathrani said he would repeal those changes if elected, along with zoning updates he said resulted in “special provisions” for Sunset Development, which owns Bishop Ranch. He also critiqued the ongoing redevelopment process for the neighborhood.
“I believe this plan needs to be redone properly,” Kathrani said. “It has to be mixed with housing. This will bring our younger families into our city, increasing our business and retail base so that we have real business in our city.”
Adler said he was sensitive to residents’ concerns about the redevelopment of Bishop Ranch, particularly regarding traffic. He said that would be mitigated with “smart technology,” adding that the new housing and businesses were not expected to bring unprecedented amounts of traffic to the area.
“It’s interesting to note that even though we’re going to have new residents over a period of time, when you look at what was there before and you look at Chevron – you know, you would have a time during the day when people would get out of work, and the traffic would be really disruptive to the city,” Adler said. “But actually, they have determined that the traffic should be better than it was prior to building homes in that area, so I’m encouraged.”
Adler said he believed the benefits of additional housing and redevelopment at Bishop Ranch outweighed the costs, adding that affordable housing would hopefully allow younger generations to settle in the city.
Kathrani also emphasized the need for affordable housing but said the city was going about it in the wrong way. He called for a greater focus on for-sale starter homes that are “affordable by design.”
“There is a lot of mischaracterization that happens when we say affordable housing, and almost all of the affordable housing being built in San Ramon are for rent,” Kathrani said.
That creates a problem, he said.
“If you only have rental affordable in one corner, we are actually creating a Section 8 kind of a system, which we really believe is not the right thing for the city,” he said.
Kathrani said affordability and efficiency would be his focal points in assessing the city’s budget as a councilmember.
“One of the most important cost cutting, I would say, is budget offerings that we are having in almost any development, like Iron Horse bridge. The budget for that was probably more than $4 million,” Kathrani said. “Millions of dollars get passed in the consent calendar. I’ll question all those spending, because once we start questioning, I think we’ll get better control of our expenses.”
Adler said maintaining a balanced budget would continue to be a priority for the City Council but added that the city’s finances have been temporarily stabilized by the passage of a 10-year, 1% sales-tax measure in 2024 that is expected to net the city about $16 million annually for its general fund. Adler highlighted his support for Measure N and pointed out Kathrani did not support the measure.
Kathrani, meanwhile, said Adler has “never said no” during his time on the council. “In the entire city of San Ramon in the last two years, there are only two times somebody has said no for any decision,” he said. “So I’ll be the voice which says no at times when it’s required, not just follow the quorum.”
Adler said he believed unity and teamwork were vital to the city’s operations.
“I share your concerns about our rapid growth in the city, but when we’re looking ahead, I think you want a leader that is going to bring people together and to bring out the best in our community,” Adler said. “When I stand up in Memorial Park and I look at that amazing eagle sculpture ‘Liberty’ and I see Mount Diablo and I see the plaque dedicated to the fallen victims of the 9/11 attack, I’m grateful to live in San Ramon.”
Despite their differences, both candidates said they had high ambitions for economic development in the growing city.
“We are attracting a growing number of tech people, satellite companies, startups, healthcare, and it needs to continue because we’re getting a lot of highly compensated executives that come in,” Adler said. “I think we could be a mini-Silicon Valley, frankly. And because it’s more inexpensive than where I used to live on the peninsula, and we have a beautiful area, I think we can attract that. But we need to be more creative.”
Kathrani said his focus would be on smaller businesses and entrepreneurs like himself.
“One of the key problems over here in San Ramon is the ecosystem for the business. We can be hopeful when our council members talk about business, but we do not have any strategy to bring the businesses,” Kathrani said.
He said city staff needs to be “very focused on doing outreach to all the businesses.”
“Every day I’m knocking on doors, and I’m finding some C-level executives in our city,” he said.
Other topics discussed by the candidates at the forum included public safety, community engagement and public transportation. To hear the candidates’ full answers to all questions, watch the video of the forum embedded in this story above or on the DanvilleSanRamon YouTube page.
