The mayoral and council races in sleepy Del Rey Oaks promise to be spicy, per usual.

Some local cities won’t have interesting elections this November – Seaside recently canceled its election because all candidates are running unopposed – but Del Rey Oaks is not one of them.

Year after year, the small city of just under 1,600 residents continues to be a drama queen.

The most recent of those dramas – it’s still going on – is related to the alignment of the first funded segment of the proposed Fort Ord Regional Trail and Greenway (FORTAG), a 28-mile trail loop connecting the Rec Trail to the former Fort Ord from Del Rey Oaks and Seaside to Marina.

A referendum on the proposed alignment of the trail, which would travel through two city parks and Angelus Way before passing under Highway 218 to connect to the Frog Pond and Carlton Drive, came before voters in June; proponents of the trail won out by just 12 votes.

Why that matters in this election is that the final approvals for 1.5-mile FORTAG segment will still need signoff from the City Council, and that won’t happen until after a new council is sworn in.

Mayor Alison Kerr is being challenged by Councilmember Scott Donaldson, a retired veteran and West Point graduate who’s lived in Del Rey Oaks since 2016 and previously served on the Planning Commission. Kerr has been a vocal supporter of the trail segment – which is being facilitated by $10.3 million in state grants – while Donaldson has been a skeptic, and continued to push the possibility of re-locating the trail onto Canyon Del Rey (which is owned by Caltrans) even after Caltrans said it was a no-go.

But Donaldson says he is not against the trail and will support going forward based on the outcome of Measure B. He says he just wanted to give voice to the residents who had concerns about it. “They had no choice on the trail [alignment],” he says.

FORTAG aside, one of the main things Donaldson is running on is to heal the divisiveness the proposed trail created, though it’s fair to say the residents became divided well before FORTAG. (If Donaldson loses in his bid for mayor, he still has two years of his council term remaining.)

Kerr is running on her accomplishments as mayor. That includes helping facilitate “the best financial situation in the city’s history, with a financial reserve of nearly $2 million,” she says, which sets the stage for a long overdue update of the city’s general plan. She has also been a champion of transparency and parks, among other things.

The council race has three candidates competing for two open seats: Louise Goetzelt, a veteran who previously served on the council as an appointee; Jeremy Hallock, a contractor who previously served on the Planning Commission but resigned last October; and John Uy, a naturalized Filipino immigrant who teaches Tagalog at the Defense Language Institute, and whose resume includes a master’s degree from Harvard.

Goetzelt says she was unavailable for comment, and Hallock did not respond to requests for comment. Uy is endorsed by both Kerr and councilmember Kim Shirley, and says he got involved in local politics after seeing the controversy about the city raising the Pride flag the last two Junes.

Uy, who is openly gay, was the first person to ever raise the Pride flag in Del Rey Oaks (in June 2021), and was shocked it became a subject of controversy.

“I told the mayor: ‘Why do we have to fight over this every year?’” he says.

But his major concern is road safety – he regularly walks his dog across Canyon Del Rey, but has to sprint across the highway to do it (until, or if, FORTAG is built).

He wouldn’t be the first minority to serve on the Del Rey Oaks council – Robert Franco was a former Latino mayor – but if elected, he might be the second.