Capitola City Council appoints planning commissioner Susan Westman to vacant seat

Quick Take

Capitola has a new city councilmember, the second in more than five months, after the city council voted Thursday to appoint Susan Westman to fill a vacancy left by former councilmember Alexander Pedersen.

Westman is a Capitola planning commissioner who previously served as city manager and community development director, first working for the city in 1981.

Longtime coworkers, friends and family, including Westman’s daughter and grandson, came to speak on Westman’s behalf at the meeting.

Westman touted her experience as a planning commissioner and said she would “get the ball rolling” in her work for the city.

“We’re all lucky to be here,” Westman said. “We want to make sure it is a community that continues to be welcoming for all kinds of people: young families who move in, people who want to retire, people who are renters, people who can afford to buy.”

Thursday’s vote is the second time this year that Capitola’s city council has had to fill a sudden vacancy. Former mayor Yvette Brooks resigned her seat in January to become CEO of United Way of Santa Cruz County. Westman also put her name forward for that open seat, but the council voted to appoint former mayor Margaux Morgan. Morgan lost a November 2024 reelection to now-councilmembers Orbach and Gerry Jensen.

Pedersen, who was elected in 2022 and would have been up for reelection next year, abruptly resigned last month, citing harassment by a local citizens group involved in a contentious debate over the future of the Coastal Rail Trail in Capitola.

Pedersen bought a house in Santa Cruz in February and continued to rent a home in Capitola, a move some residents said made him ineligible to continue to serve on the council.

In both cases, the city council opted not to hold a special election to fill the vacancies, saying appointments would save taxpayers an estimated $50,000 in costs to hold a vote.

Westman was one of 14 candidates for the vacant seat, though one later withdrew. The list also included New Brighton Middle School athletic director Enrique Dolmo Jr., who finished fourth in the 2024 contest for the Capitola City Council and also entered the running to fill Brooks’ empty seat in January. Former city treasurer and planning commissioner Peter George Wilk also entered the race, along with Daniel Castagnola of Castagnola Cafe and Deli.

Wilk won the vote of Orbach, who said she was concerned that for the second time councilmembers were “substituting their own opinions for 9,000-plus people in the community.”

Specifically, she expressed worry about the future of the Coastal Rail Trail. Since Pedersen generally supported the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission’s approach to the rail trail, Orbach said his replacement should hold similar views.

“The city’s RTC seat is at stake and tens of millions of dollars in grant funding are at risk. It would be easy to select the person with the most experience to fill the position but I cannot do that if it involves turning a blind eye to the most controversial issue in our county,” Orbach said.

In April, the Capitola City Council unanimously rejected an RTC plan to route the rail trail off the rail line and onto the Park Avenue, saying it likely violated Capitola’s Measure L, a 2018 ballot measure that prevents the city from diverting the trail off of the Capitola trestle bridge onto city streets. Westman wrote an op-ed in support of Measure L and endorsed Greenway’s Measure D, which supported the effort to scrap plans for a passenger train in the county and exclusively build a wider mixed-use path. That measure was defeated by county voters in 2022.

“I think it’s important that we all work together, we hear from all our citizens and we’re capable of making compromises,” Westman said.

Westman will serve through December 2026.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.