Races for Cypress City Council were still tight as votes were counted Tuesday, with Mark Plager and Leo Medrano holding slight leads over Kyle Change and Glenn Button at the end of the night for the 3rd and 4th District seats.
Two other candidates, Gayel Kaplan and Blaze Bhence, are further back.
Early results also had Cypress voters approving Measure S, which would allow 676 affordable housing units to be built on the Los Alamitos Race Course. If Measure S fails the city will have to find a different spot for more homes to meet state mandates.
LIVE ELECTION RESULTS: See a chart of the latest vote counts
None of the council candidates are incumbents, guaranteeing residents two fresh faces on the city’s top leadership board.
Chang, a public health statistician, believes city leaders need to be more transparent and inclusive with residents.
“At times, it feels as though the city has deliberately withheld information or even misled residents,” Chang said in a newspaper questionnaire. “Our city must improve its communication with residents and actively include them in major decisions that impact our community. Any planning that requires community approval is destined to fail if the community isn’t involved in the planning process from the start.”
One of his challengers, Kaplan, a local attorney, said he would like to see a planning committee created to better manage the many changes coming to the city of Cypress, especially when it comes to more dense housing.
“The City Council has too many other duties to oversee the intricacies of well-designed future development,” Kaplan said. “A planning committee’s sole concern would be how to integrate the new housing units of all types into our small city without harming the quality of life for current and future residents.”
District 3 candidate Plager, a small business owner and environmental commissioner, said in a newspaper questionnaire that the city can better meet the demand and mandates for more housing by re-zoning commercial properties.
“These mandates imposed by Sacramento will dramatically change the character and appearance of Cypress,” Plager said. “Fortunately, Cypress has undeveloped commercial property which may be zoned and planned to help satisfy the requirements of Sacramento and preserve and protect the expectations of current Cypress residents.”
Running for the District 4 seat, Bhence, a business owner, also saw the absence of a planning commission to oversee development in the city as a pressing concern for Cypress.
“We currently are one of the very few cities that does not have a planning commission,” Bhence said. “Without a plan, we plan to fail and we have failed on the Lincoln corridor and other areas of the city. We have much more to build out in the next decade, and we should have a planning committee to support good initiatives and plans.”
District 4 candidate Button, an engineer and business owner, has served on the Cypress Senior Citizens Commission. If elected, Button wants to push back against “Sacramento’s ill-conceived” housing mandates.
“To meet these housing element responses, communities with single-family homes are being driven to zone for higher-density projects with multi-family condos or apartments,” Button said. “What residents prefer, but Sacramento will not allow, is for less housing growth in our city.”
Medrano, another candidate in District 4, is a businessman and has served as a city commissioner. He also opposes the state’s housing mandates for local jurisdictions.
“Cypress residents want to keep Cypress the way it is, and nearly all Cypress residents don’t want more traffic and more parking problems,” Medrano said. “The worst solution for this housing problem is to concentrate housing in areas that already struggle with traffic issues.”
Measure S asks voters to approve zoning changes to allow 676 homes to be built at the race course, boosting the city’s housing stock. The City Council approved its state-required housing plan in 2022, but voter approval is needed for the part of the plan that changes zoning at and around the race course.
Proponents of Measure S have argued that it will produce more housing opportunities for future generations. If voters do not support Measure S, the city will use an alternate plan to add an additional 766 units on Lincoln Avenue, officials have said.
The Registrar of Voters said following election night, results will be updated daily at 5 p.m., except weekends, until the counting is complete.
