Mayor Candidate Karen Rarey Aims To Make Brentwood Even Better

Karen Rarey doesn’t really need to say it. Her actions over the past 25 years as a troubleshooter and consensus builder have made it clear that Brentwood is a special place for her.

"I truly care about this community and the direction that it's going in ... It's my heart and soul," she says.

A Councilwoman since 2016, Rarey is vying to become Brentwood’s third-ever elected female mayor, following earlier trailblazers Catherine Palmer and Barbara Guise. She is among seven candidates in the Nov. 3 election looking to succeed 17-year mayor Bob Taylor, who retired.

With an infectious grin and genuine nature, Rarey has presided over numerous boards, commissions, and foundations. She arrives early, stays late, and gets things done. Residents admire her because she listens to their concerns not as a figure head but as one of them.

Brentwood resident Cheri Cruey says Rarey “absolutely” should become the next mayor. She appreciated how Rarey gladly spent time with a group of concerned residents about Highway 4 road noise.

“She’s just genuine,” Cruey says. “She’s not doing this; she doesn’t want to move up the food chain and become governor; she just wants to make Brentwood as perfect as it can be. It’s the hidden gem of Contra Costa County.”

Helping small businesses recover from the COVID-19 crisis is top of mind for Rarey.

“I’ve already started doing that,” she says. “I requested a future agenda item which should be coming back on Tuesday night where we can either provide grants or workshops, one-on-one counseling that helps identify what’s needed for a company to recover and grow.

“COVID has created a lot of hardships, and I think the city, if we’re going to continue having our small businesses -- the backbone of our entire town -- we need to help them or we’re going to have a lot of shuddered businesses and recovery will take a whole lot longer.”

Moreover, in Brentwood’s natural splendor you just might see Rarey fearlessly riding her bike dodging squirrels on a local trail or on Marsh Creek Road. She seems uniquely qualified to steer health-conscious businesses to Brentwood – where the suburbs nestle with farmlands.

“Some of that is exactly what we’re going to market to these companies,” Rarey says of the city’s strategy. “People want to live where they work, where they play. In Brentwood you have the new Deer Valley Park, that’s opening at the old Roddy Ranch golf course, and you have Contra Loma, Black Diamond Mines, Round Valley and Big Break. You can go during your lunch hour and do stand-up paddleboarding at Big Break or Orwood or go kayaking or just jump on a mountain bike and take off down the trail out to Round Valley.

“Being able to market that will help drive businesses out here because businesses are now looking at health; they want things for their employees so that they can become healthy or that they stay healthy. It’s a big driving force in all businesses.”

To Rarey, the 2011 Brentwood Citizen of the Year, there is no problem too big or too small to work through.

Regarding the Highway 4 noise issue, Rarey took the time to meet with over a dozen homeowners early one weekday morning at Cruey’s home in Trilogy and listened to the noise herself. She did her own study with a decibel reader and got the group to attend a Council meeting and get the issue on the agenda. Over a period of a few months the city voted to spend the money on a study.

“She listened, she understood, and she went to bat for us,” said Cruey, who moved to Brentwood from Danville and has sold real estate for 30 years. “… What we have in Brentwood, I’m sure people take it for granted, it is an amazing city with such diversity and such opportunity and such quaintness.”

Meeting residents where they are underscores Rarey’s approach to politics. She’s Mrs. Fix-it from a policy perspective.

“If something comes up there is a way to fix it, that’s the way I look at making a difference here in Brentwood,” Rarey says. “We are at a turning point, which is why I got on the Council in 2016. If we didn’t start bringing jobs into this town, we weren’t going to be fiscally sustainable into the future, and so that was very important to me at that time and still is.”

Karen and her husband, Paul, have raised four children in Brentwood, and Paul also had three children in Southern California. The couple has six grandchildren. Their ‘kids’ are all between the ages 22 and 40.

Rarey’s drive to make things better in Brentwood began right after she moved here from San Jose in 1995 seeking affordable housing. As a volunteer treasurer at Garin Elementary School, she got right to work.

“I became a neighborhood activist when the neighborhood started falling apart when the houses did, and my actions resulted in $7 million in repairs by a residential developer, two new parks in our development and some new building codes,” she recalls proudly.

“From there it just blossomed. I was appointed to what was called the Brentwood Advisory Neighborhood Committee. (Our slogan) was, ‘You can bank on us to get things done.’ … City Manager (Jon Elam) oversaw us, and we helped resolve issues in our neighborhood before they became problematic in the city,” she continued.

How far have things come in Brentwood in the past 25 years?

“I always like to tell the story that when we moved here there was 10,000 people and only two stoplights in town and a rush at the post office a day or two before Christmas was maybe two people in line and they had the fudge waiting for you,” she recalls with a laugh.

Rarey credits local businessman Wayne Francis as being “very important” in her campaign as a cheerleader and advisor.

Her parents helped shape her giving nature with their charitable work. Her mom (Marian Murray) was involved in the American Women’s Volunteer Service in the South Bay, serving as its president several times. The group provided for families in need and would donate food and presents during Christmas time.

Karen’s dad (Rob) volunteered in the Boy Scouts with her three brothers (Gregg, Mark, and Brad) and spent a lot of time in the garage trying to help scouts get merit badges.

“It kind of formed that initial volunteerism, but it didn’t really take hold until I came out to Brentwood,” Rarey recalls of her parents’ influence. “I had kids young while I volunteered at the (South Bay) schools. I had to take things home with me because I had young kids, I had babies, and you just can’t bring babies into classes, although you could out here in Brentwood. I put my daughter in a backpack and worked in a computer lab. Down in San Jose it was kind of taboo to bring kids in, but in Brentwood it was acceptable.”

Unlike in Brentwood’s two-stoplight days, the city faces more complex problems in 2020, but Rarey is working hard to strike the right balance.

“Growth is difficult. Change is hard for a lot of people,” she says. “We moved here loving the small-town feel and that’s something that is vital to me, to continue that small-town feel. To have the agricultural lands around us, that is very important to me, but we’ve got to help our farmers become sustainable.”

Along those lines, Rarey has been part of a group with the County for the past year working on an ag land use zoning.

“I pushed hard on getting bed-and-breakfasts and farm-stays and farm-to-fork cafes that are out on the farmland, so that smaller farmers or even bigger farmers can have another source of income that they can rely on to help them become sustainable, so that they won’t want to sell their land to a housing developer who tries to annex it into the city,” she says.

“We have some of the richest farmland here and to think that you only have to drive a couple minutes and you are out in the farmland. It’s an incredible feeling to be that close to nature.”

Rarey’s nature, of course, is to see Brentwood continue to bloom.

For more info. visit http://karenrarey.com/meet-karen