It's fair to say that Crystal Gray, a current Boulder City Council member and a candidate for re-election, has at least one thing in common with many other candidates.

She moved to Boulder in 1969 from one of the coasts - in this case, Palo Alto, Calif. - and instantly fell in love with the city's natural environment. Gray's former husband was pursuing a Ph.D. in economics and earned a teaching assistant position at CU, and the young couple (with a child) was assigned to family housing at Chautauqua.

"I walked out my back door into the Chautauqua meadow, and I hiked there every day with my baby and my backpack," said Gray. "What a great experience - I was never going to live anywhere else after that."

She has, as suggested, lived in Boulder since then, and has also amassed a voluminous record of community service that helped lead to her first election to council in 2003.

The short list includes terms with the city's Parks and Recreation Advisory Board (PRAB), Open Space Board of Trustees (OSBT) and Downtown Design Advisory Board (DDAB); board service with the Affordable Housing Alliance (AHA) and a stint as co-chair of PLAN-Boulder County (PBC).

But it all had to start somewhere, and Gray actually became involved in city planning before she was appointed to a formal board.

She said she moved from Chautauqua to what is now known as the Whittier Neighborhood (near Whittier Elementary), and witnessed her neighbor running a bulldozer through the front door of a home that she described as a "beautiful little Victorian."

So, she naturally called her mother.

"I said 'Mom, how could he do this?'" said Gray. "And she said it was probably because it was zoned for more units - you can go down to the city and tell them that you want to re-zone it."

Gray and several people paid a visit to the city, filled out petitions, and succeeded in getting a re-zoning approved that she said would be more conducive to family living.

"Then, people started investing in the houses, and re-doing them, and our block was teeming with little kids who went down to Whittier," said Gray.

Her next large project was an attempt to get a neighborhood park, which she said was successful even if it did take 15 years. The first objective was to obtain about five acres to the east of Spruce Pool, but it would have cost $500,000 and Gray said the council at that time "gasped." No deal - but the neighborhood eventually got a park at Folsom and Pearl Streets that she said was "about a third of the size" and cost $800,000.

"So, that little vision finally bore fruit, and I guess my lesson from all of that was 'perseverance,'" said Gray.

And her parks perseverance helped lead to a career. She said the council saw her determination to get a park for Whittier and appointed her to the PRAB in 1979 "to placate me for a while," and she earned a master's degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Colorado-Denver.

"I went to neighborhood planning sessions in the late 1970s, and I kind of realized that I liked the concept of helping to shape cities and neighborhoods," said Gray. "But I really wasn't a planner - I was more hands-on and implementation-oriented. So, I looked into landscape architecture, which was a better fit for me because it fit my desire to be outdoors as much as I can."

Today, Gray is the Director of Parks and Community Resources for Adams County. She was hired as a parks planner for Adams (apparently despite not really being a planner) in 1983, and earned her current job in 1990.

She also served on the city's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Committee from 1976 until 1981. She said the committee was in charge of deciding how about $1 million in grant money would be allocated, and said it funded the first buildings for the People's Clinic and the Center for People With Disabilities. It funded roof and siding upgrades at Chautauqua and projects for the San Juan del Centro housing community.

"What I learned about the city is something I carry with me today, and it's the valuable work that our nonprofits do," said Gray. "They had to explain why they needed the funding, and how they were going to use it, and I really got to see the need. I think it just naturally led me to work with Robin (current council member Bohannan) on social sustainability issues."

But she worked on one component of social sustainability - affordable housing - long before being elected. For comparison, Gray said her rent in the Whittier home that she eventually bought was once $90 per month, and (to put it mildly) typical Boulder rent prices have increased a bit since the 1970s.

Gray worked on the Affordable Housing Alliance (AHA) with John Wolff and Tom Lyon from the local firm Wolff-Lyon Architecture, as well as Boulder resident Matt Cohn. For example, AHA partnered with the city on the 1996 Poplar Place project - a 14-unit development at which homeowners helped reduce the cost of construction with "sweat equity," or doing some of the work themselves.

"It just grew out of our experience of living in Boulder for a long time, feeling really grateful that we were able to buy our homes, and wanting to pass that along to other people," said Gray.

She was by no means an unknown in Boulder when she ran for council in 2003, and finished second in the race for six open seats. The only incumbent in the race, Boulder's current Mayor Mark Ruzzin, beat her by 24 votes.

Four years later, she said she is proud of how the current council implemented a "three-legged" approach to city issues - weighing the likely impacts of an action on economic, environmental and social sustainability.

She also said she has helped push the council and others into greater recognition of how CU and the federal labs in Boulder (NIST, NOAA) are economic engines as well as scientific jewels of the community. And Boulder had a fairly major scare during Gray's term when the Oklahoma congressional delegation launched efforts to move two NOAA labs from Boulder to Norman.

Gray said the council, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, Colorado's congressional delegation and others worked to keep the labs in town, and said she thinks the episode led to recognition that the labs are important to the state as well as to Boulder.

If re-elected, Gray said she hopes to be able to say at the end of her term that the city's parks, libraries, nonprofits and cultural groups can be adequately funded. She hopes that the city's Climate Action Plan and partnerships with CU will succeed in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the lowest level of any university town in the nation.

But she knows she can't do it by herself, and said watching locals work towards positive goals is one of the greatest rewards of serving.

"You are always surprised by the good work that the community does, and on council you get exposed to that at a greater depth," said Gray.