The Emeryville Connection: A news magazine published by the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce
BUSINESS BRIEFS
Angela Baranco-Mason Named to Planning Commission
Emeryville’s newest planning commissioner, Angela Baranco-Mason, comes to the panel with seven years experience of volunteering in the community and an internship as a subdivision planner.
Baranco-Mason, a native of Louisiana, was appointed by the City Council on July 17 to fill the vacancy created when incumbent Paul Germain chose not to seek reappointment. Her appointment will expire June 30, 2010. The council in June reappointed commissioners Patricia Jeffery and James Martin each to three-year terms.
Since 2000, five years before she moved to Emeryville, Baranco-Mason has been involved in Emeryville schools and youth programs. “My son was attending Anna Yates Elementary School on an inter-district transfer from Oakland because it was closer to his baby sitter,” said Baranco-Mason, an environmental protection specialist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco.
What initially attracted Baranco-Mason to Emeryville was “the small-community feeling I perceived among its residents when my son attended Anna Yates,” she said in her application.
“The rapid growth I’ve seen over the past few years is both something I appreciate about our city and something that somewhat concerns me…I think we are at an important threshold where we must weigh carefully the possible outcome from every decision made today—especially if we want to remain in a city where families and retirees are drawn, as well as the upwardly mobile singles and couples,” she wrote.
Calling housing one of the critical issues facing Emeryville, Baranco-Mason wrote that Emeryville must work to provide housing for all, to continue supporting its diversity by “thoughtfully considering the variety and quality of the units and spaces around them.”
“It means looking at how the structure and location of both residential and commercial building affect human interactions as well as how people and traffic move in and through Emeryville,” she added.
Baranco-Mason holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisiana and a master’s in urban and environmental planning from the University of Virginia where she interned as a subdivision planner in the Albemarle County, Virginia, office of planning. She also worked as a parks and recreation general plan intern in Lafayette, La.
Subdivision planning was boring, she said, so she moved into environmental planning which she found more agreeable.
Although Baranco-Mason says her community and school activities eat up much of her free time after work, she lists water color painting and dog training among her hobbies.
John VanLandinham is a writer for The Emeryville
Connection. If you have a question or comment, please contact him at ecocnews@gmail.com
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