Michael Chang Becomes Cupertino Mayor Again

By Sam Chu Lin
Special to AsianWeek

On Tuesday, Nov. 19, there was not an empty seat in the council chambers of Cupertino City Hall as the packed crowd witnessed City Controller Kimberly Smith swear in Michael Chang as this Silicon Valley community’s new mayor.

It is the second time the head of DeAnza College’s Asian American Studies department has become mayor. He was elected to the Cupertino city council in 1995 and in 1999 became the first Asian Pacific American or person of color to be the city’s mayor.

Following the ceremony and congratulatory speeches, there was a reception. With Silicon Valley hit with high unemployment and an economic slump, Chang realizes there are many challenges ahead.

“The theme will be: How will we maintain services and enhance services despite a very challenging economy,” he stated. “We will revitalize the Valco Shopping Center (where there are many vacancies). We lost our developer. We now need to put the pieces together and find a new developer. It’s a key retail outlet in the city.”

Cupertino is also building a new $22 million city library and Chang says he will soon launch a $1.2 million effort to furnish the library. The new mayor recognizes that the city has a high concentration of APAs, and he sees the need for the community to continue appreciating its diversity.

“We will work on celebrating our diversity and bring our community together,” he added. “We want to do this on a multi-level. We have a lot of different cultures represented here. It will be important to demonstrate equal employment opportunity to everyone and hire the best people as diversely as we can and just move forward and build this very strong community that we have.”