Gaines Will Not Run For City Council; Weintraub Will

CALABASAS, CA — On July 7, Calabasas announced that it will be holding its municipal elections Nov. 3, the same day as the general presidential election. Candidates will have from July 13 to Aug. 7 to file, and if an incumbent decides not to run, the deadline extends to Aug. 12.

The seats of Mayor Alicia Weintraub and Councilmember Fred Gaines will be on the ballot, city spokesperson Bob Burris confirmed. Weintraub, who has been mayor since November and will be stepping down next November to make way for a new councilmember as part of the city’s rotating system. Weintraub confirmed to Patch that she will be filing to run for another council term past November. Weintraub has been on the Council since 2015.

Gaines, on the other hand, has confirmed that he is not running, citing two terms and 10 years under his belt, his new role as chairman of the Valley Economic Alliance, and wanting to spend time with his new grandchild as reasons for his decision.

“I served two terms…and I feel it’s a good run. It was just time to move on,” he said. “I love the city and I’ve enjoyed working with the city, but I don’t have any plans to run.”

Gaines recently made waves on a June 10 City Council meeting when he talked about witnessing many acts of racism in the city, saying “Some of the most horrifying and overt racism I have ever experienced came from city staff and residents regarding the hiring and recent resignation of our former city manager[Gary Lysik.]”

Gaines told Patch that he was not implying that racism played a role in Lysik’s resignation, which was related to different ethics complaints. He said that he simply wanted to call attention to comments he reported hearing related to the fact that Lysik’s wife is Black, and that Calabasas struggles with racism just like many other places.

“I wanted to point out that our community is not absent from these issues, both in terms of actual racist incidents from time to time,” he said. “I don’t think Calabasas is full of racist people – it’s full of beautiful, wonderful nice people that don’t think of themselves as racist, but it is a time to think in the context of how society operates as to how others look at us, and many of the points they make are true. If you look in the urbandictionary for 10 of 15 years, it has ‘calablackless’ as a word.”

Gaines said that he had made his decision long before Lysik’s resignation or the Black Lives Matter protests forced a number of public conversations on race, and that had no role in his decision. He said that he watched the city’s town hall on race on June 29, and called it a “good start.”

Gaines served as mayor from 2013-14 and again from 2017-18, and cited helping build and fund the library, city hall, senior center, and Lost Hills bridge as some of his proudest accomplishments.