Interview with Dublin Mayor Sherry Hu

By Starlite Team

Starlite team got a chance to interview the Dublin city mayor Sherry Hu. She was kind enough to answer all the questions asked by the Starlite team. Thank you Mayor Sherry Hu for your time and patience. Below is the transcript from that interview.

Starlite team: Hi Mayor Sherry Hu! First of all, we would like to say thank you for making the time and space for us. We would also thank you for accepting our request for this interview.

Mayor Sherry Hu: It’s nice to meet you guys too! It’s my pleasure to do this. Can you guys tell me which grade you guys are in and what school you guys are in

Starlite team: Well, we are in 5th grade, and we go to Murray Elementary. We wanted to contribute to our community by starting Starlite news. Should we start asking you the questions?

Mayor Sherry Hu: You guys can start asking me the questions.

Starlite team: So our first question is, What’s your history with Dublin, CA?

Mayor Sherry Hu: I came to the city about 15 years ago and when I came here, I had 2 children, so my children were younger than you guys at that time and the reason why we came here was because we loved this city, we wanted our kids to go to good public schools, so we moved over here. I became a city council member about 5 years ago, and then I got reelected as mayor, last year around this time.

Starlite team: How long do you intend on staying as mayor of Dublin?

Mayor Sherry Hu: Yeah, so the mayor’s term is only for 2 years, so my term will run up next year around November, 2026, and then I will be up for reelection. So, if I go up for reelection, I will get another 2 years and I would be very happy to serve as mayor for this city again for all the residents and that’s how I thought I could do this term. 

Starlite team: Our third question is, Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Mayor Sherry Hu: So this is a very good question. In 10 years, I still see myself as living in our beautiful city of Dublin. I think I will still do a lot of community service even if I’m elected in a different position. I would just volunteer, you know, just to help out for the city I really love. I think doing voluntary/community work is very important, and I’m happy to do more work for our city of Dublin. 

Starlite team: That’s really nice. So our fourth question is, What changes have you made in Dublin so far?

Mayor Sherry Hu: Since I became mayor, we actually have done a lot of work. If you realize, we have a lot of new parks, so many things have happened. We made it because a lot of people like parks. We also just opened Wallis Ranch park. Have you been there? 

Starlite team: Um, No we haven’t.

Mayor Sherry Hu: We also will be opening a new park. It’s going to be called the Forest park.

Starlite team: That’s wonderful!

Mayor Sherry Hu: Yeah, we also have many events like the Saint Patrick’s day parade, and the Christmas tree lighting. We have Dublin as a great city. 

Starlite team: Okay, so the next question is what changes in Dublin do you want to make?

Mayor Sherry Hu: So that will be a question that kind of connects to our previous question, so we make our city a better place in many different ways, we make it into a safe place, we have a lot of beautiful parks and communities, and we actually have a lot of new businesses open like restaurants and coffee shops. All these things are thriving in our city, this helps people in reaching their needs you know. 

Starlite team: Great, so another question we want to ask is what is your hobby?

Mayor Sherry Hu: My hobby? Oh, that’s a good question. I actually love cooking. During Thanksgiving holiday, I participated in 2 cooking events. I invited my own family too like my parents and my sisters. I also baked turkey, I made sweet potatoes, and cooked vegetables. Every year I baked turkey, and I even invited some of my friends over to my house and I made soup and cooked vegetables, so it’s pretty cool. 

Starlite team: Wow, so moving on towards our question. So what were the top 3 biggest problems of Dublin and how did you face it?

Mayor Sherry Hu:  Yeah, so I would say right  now, you mean right now, the top situations, right? So I will say it this way.

Although we tried our best to keep Dublin safe, our city is expanding. And we are in this current, you know, environment. So we still have some safety issues happening. And we, you know, we’re a big city. So we try to make that, like, better and safer. And we use a lot of cameras, we use technologies, we also engage residents and businesses together. So keep safe, keep our city continue to be safe. And even safer is still a priority for us. So I will say, you asked the question, I’ll say this is number one. So second thing I will say, I don’t want to be too controversial, but we do,  we are in the environment, you know, like a federal government, the state government,  the local government, and residents may have different opinions on many different things, right? Like, everybody has their own thoughts. So I will say how we make sure we listen to each side or each other respectfully, and discuss situations calmly and collaboratively, and make best decisions based on, like, considering everybody’s opinions are very important. I’ll just keep that a little bit, what to say, a little bit more like an abstract way  because working with everyone, and understanding everybody is different, we have different  ethnic groups, you know, different parties, different situations.So how we work collaboratively is very, very important, right? So that will be my second priority or challenges here.  So, I will tell you the third one. Third one would be, we still need to keep our city very, like running very efficiently, you know, we need to keep the roads high, like at high quality, we need to make sure we provide good, good quality services to our like residents, our businesses, right? So there’s a lot of very fundamental services we are providing, and how we make sure we continue to provide high quality services in the most efficient way, cost efficient way, that’s very important too.

Starlite team:Our next question is: What would you do if you had a million dollars?

Mayor Sherry Hu: Yeah, so if we got an additional million dollars, right? That would be a great idea. So let me think about if I got a million right now from a budget or something like I can use either on my own.

Okay, I’ll tell you what I want to use. I want to help nonprofit organizations. The reason is, we do have a lot of good nonprofit organizations, you know, they help to reach out to underserved or underrepresented people, or some people in need, you know, like, we will say, I hope that everybody here, like we  have a pretty good life here, right? You know, our parents are working, and we have good schools to go to. We have our clothes, I have books, we have a lot of things. But there are some people, they are, they are, you know, in need of things, like, they may not have a holiday, like gifts, for example, like Christmas gifts, they may not have, they may not even have enough  food. There are people just near us, they are in poverty, or they are in need of something, they are disabled people, you know, they have mental issues, or they have some situations where they need help, and I would like to help them.

Starlite Team: If you weren’t a mayor, what would you be?

Mayor Sherry Hu: Okay, I say so, so that’s another thing a lot of people don’t know so being mayor is not a full-time job It’s more like, you know, you’re helping the community so I do have my uh professional full-time work that I need to do. So I am a professional like a tax planning, investment planning advisor.  That’s my full-time work for them.  So I have to do that work in order to, you know, make a living. I have to say this way. So mayor is a more like we do additional work volunteering work um part-time work um for the community

Starlite Team: That’s really nice! We have another question: What is one thing you wish people knew about our city?

Mayor Sherry Hu: I wish people knew about city is I would like people to to learn how local government works because I actually realized a lot of people, they probably learned about how federal government works and some people have some knowledge about how state level but not many people really understand how the city works and for example, I constantly get a question about how people complain about schools, for example but the city, you know the city of Dublin and our Dublin united school district are totally separate agencies and we actually don’t have any authority over the school district, but people don’t have ideas about that, and also even as a city there’s a like for example the people complain about power outages.Have you all experienced power outages in the past year? Yes And I was very I feel very bad as well, but we know like a power was distributed by PG&E and also there’s issues we wanted to make that work better, but it’s not in our authority to do so. Like an authority so we can only try our best to help the resident to ask so we want people to really understand and be more understanding, you know like because I constantly heard people kind of criticize or get mad of the city For reasons we you know, we cannot deal with that. You know, we don’t have authority over that.

Starlite Team: If there is one thing you would say to the world, what would it be?

Mayor Sherry Hu: I just want everybody to help out with the community work with volunteer work because it’s very important for everybody to do their part.

Starlite Team: What do you believe are the most important qualities for a mayor to have? 

Mayor Sherry Hu:  I actually  think the most important thing is to be a kind person, you know, they’re willing to help out.

Starlite Team: What quality do you like most in our city?

Mayor Sherry Hu: A quality I like about our city, right? I like a lot of things about our city so I would say I do like our diversity. You know, we have a lot of different ethnic groups and we are in harmony with each other, right? It’s pretty cool.

Starlite Team: In your point of view Dublin is an expensive city?

Mayor Sherry Hu: It is a very expensive city, but it’s also much better than a lot of other cities.  We also have a great quality of life. I think it’s worth it.

Starlite Team:  How much progress has Dublin made compared to other cities?

Mayor Sherry Hu: Our city’s finances, right? so we are in a Positive very positive surplus position, which means our general fund revenue is way more than our expenditure. So we are in a very positive surplus position. And we are doing very well financially in other cities. They are actually trying very hard to balance their budget like they’re hard to make things work, but we make that super well because we always work on things efficiently, you know always trying to be conservative responsibly.

Starlite Team: How was your journey to becoming mayor? 

Mayor Sherry Hu: So at first, I never thought about becoming a mayor. It was never in my plan or in my thoughts in any part of the dreams I had, so what happened was I like to help people and I like to volunteer. So I started by volunteering in Cope elementary school when my kids went to that school and I was a room parent. I don’t know if you have you know, so I was a classroom parent I was doing volunteering work and later on when they went to middle school. I was helping with the parents faculty club And then I was always trying to help the non-profit organization as well And I just I just think you know, it’s a it’s a good to be a helpful person, you know help the church and later on when there’s a city council member position open and I think people see me as a person who can Who loves to help others and who can step up? Like assistants stand up when there’s a need in the community. So there the leaders asked me to run for the position and I was okay.  Let’s try it out. So that’s how this started I would say in my journey is I just I just to me most important is to be a kind person to help out, you know to make other people’s life better whether it’s Just be myself or you know non-profit organization or helping out the schools or be the elected officials or be the mayor or Anything else it’s the same thing to just do what you can do to help out.

Starlite Team: Okay, so this is our last question: If you had to choose other than Dublin what city would you be the mayor?

Mayor Sherry Hu:  So I really like Dublin. I wouldn’t think of any other cities. 

Starlite Team: That should be the end. Thank you so much Mayor Sherry Hu fro spending your time with us!

Mayor Sherry Hu: You’re very welcome!