Richard Mehlinger

Richard Mehlinger, Council Member

City of Sunnyvale

Board of Directors

Bay Area Water Supply & Conservation Agency

Richard Mehlinger was appointed by the City of Sunnyvale to the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency (BAWSCA) in January 2024, following a year serving as “understudy” to former Sunnyvale Councilmember and Board Chair Gustav Larsson.  The city provides water to its urban industrial and residential customers.  California Water Service Company also serves several small areas within the city. 

Mr. Mehlinger was elected to the City Council in 2022.  Prior to his election, he served as Chair of Livable Sunnyvale, a local organization advocating for housing, transportation, sustainability, and equity, as well as Chair of the Sunnyvale Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, where he worked to improve bicycle and pedestrian connectivity within the City.

A Long Beach native, Mr. Mehlinger attended Harvey Mudd College for undergraduate studies, where he graduated with a double-major in Computer Science and History in 2009. He has especially taken to heart the college’s mission statement, which states that the college “seeks to educate engineers, scientists and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities, social sciences and the arts so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.”  Mr. Mehlinger then earned a Master’s Degree in History at UC Riverside in 2011, where he concentrated on modern European history and the history of games.

A software engineer by trade, Mr. Mehlinger has resided in the North Sunnyvale since 2011, and so has enjoyed the excellent tap water provided by the Hetch Hetchy system and safeguarded by BAWSCA for the entirety of his time living in the Bay Area.  In what little remains of his spare time, Mr. Mehlinger enjoys cycling, writing, chess, and video-games—especially city-builders.