Professional and Civic Vita

Education

Master of Public Administration with Distinction, California State University, Chico. Coursework ran from fall 2008 through May 2010; the thesis and completion process carried through 2015. Randall was hooded through Political Science / Public Administration, with a focus on housing affordability and municipal economics. The timing was deliberate: he entered graduate school as the financial crisis was turning the economics he had studied, and the Southern California housing market he was working in, into a live demonstration. The coursework took two years; the thesis, characteristically less cooperative, took another five.

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration — Finance , California State University, Chico.

Bachelor of Science in Economics , California State University, Chico.

Professional experience

Randall Stone Financial — Financial Planner, Enrolled Agent, Real Estate and Development Consultant, 2004–present. The practice integrates planning, taxation, property, development feasibility, and financial analysis.

Bean Counting Firm, Inc. — Tax Department Manager and Enrolled Agent, 2022–present.

California State University, Chico, College of Business — Lecturer in Real Estate Finance, 2017–2023.

Former California real-estate broker license — expired/retired — salesperson license in 2004; broker license in 2005; home sales in Southern California; Northern California client representation; supervision of agents; and development work beginning in July 2005. The brokerage license is no longer active and is not intended for reactivation.

Securities and insurance history — Securities qualification history includes the Series 7, Series 66 and Series 31 examinations; current investment-adviser registration is through Randall Stone Financial in California. State insurance licenses held earlier in the career are expired/retired and are not part of the current practice.

Housing and development

Site selection, development financial reports, sources and uses, capital stacks, public finance, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, community-development needs, housing affordability, accessibility, transit-centered development, and feasibility.

Bidwell Park Apartments , 1197 East Eighth Street, Chico — co-developed with his younger brother; 38 units; 100% affordable; households at approximately 30% to 60% of area median income; accessible and adaptable; located on a major transit corridor; restricted for affordable use for 55 years.

Government and public service

Democratic Action Club of Chico / Butte County Democratic organizing — Leadership across multiple election cycles before elected office, including service as DACC chair/vice-chair and vice chair of the Butte County Democratic Central Committee (2004–2006). In 2008, Randall also served an operational role in the shared 600 Main Street Democratic headquarters; his firsthand archive identifies him as master lessee and IT lead. Contemporary CN&R coverage documents DACC leadership and the headquarters’ role in the Obama general-election effort.

City of Chico — Councilmember, 2012–2020; Mayor, 2018–2020. First Hispanic/Latino elected to the City Council and first Hispanic/Latino Mayor in Chico history.

Butte County Assessment Appeals Board — Member, 2017–2025; Chair, 2019–2025. The independent three-member board hears evidence from taxpayers and the Assessor and makes legally binding decisions about locally assessed property values.

Butte County Association of Governments — Board of Directors, 2012–2015 and 2018–2020. BCAG is the countywide joint-powers authority, metropolitan planning organization, regional transportation planning agency, and policy board for B-Line transit.

Butte Regional Transportation Corporation — Board of Directors, 2013–Present. The role connected transportation policy to capital development and regional transit infrastructure.

Americans with Disabilities Transition Committee — Member, 2013–2021, before, during, and after Council service. The work addressed access routes, architectural barriers, public services, communications, and the City’s obligations under the ADA and Section 504.

League of California Cities — Board of Directors, 2018–2020; Sacramento Valley Division board service, 2013–2020; policy work in housing, community and economic development, governance, transparency, and labor relations.

Butte Countywide Continuum of Care — Chico Council representative, 2018–2019, connecting local government with the regional homelessness-response system.

Camp Fire Housing Recovery Task Force — Member, 2018–2019.

Butte County City Selection Committee — Chair, 2019–2020.

Community leadership

Out of the Darkness suicide-prevention event, Chico — selected as emcee, circa 2013, based on firsthand recollection; exact date and program documentation pending archival confirmation. His remarks drew on his experience growing up in an emotionally and physically abusive, destabilizing home and the long-term effects of childhood trauma. His participation was not connected to a suicide attempt of his own.

Shalom Free Clinic — President. The volunteer-staffed Chico clinic provides free physical, mental, and behavioral health services to uninsured and underinsured children and adults. Krista Stone serves as Board Secretary.

When Randall joined the Board, the organization was nearly out of cash and its thrift store was producing losses the clinic could not sustain. He made closing the store a condition of joining, then helped rebuild Shalom around the clinic. Public filings corroborate the subsequent improvement in net assets and operating capacity; the internal decision history is a firsthand account pending minutes and bookkeeping support.

Special Olympics Butte County — nearly two decades of executive leadership, coaching, operations, and service.

Safe Space Winter Shelter — core volunteer, board member, and Treasurer; direct shelter work and homelessness advocacy.

Ballet Folklórico Rosas de María — Seeds of Tradition — co-founder and Treasurer.

Chico Running Club — former president and board member for more than a decade; race director and long-running participant. Board service concluded in 2026.

After COVID, declining participation led the Board toward ending races and folding. Randall and Krista Stone opposed dissolution and carried the work that kept the club alive. The club is now active and growing; the internal deliberation remains identified as firsthand history pending Board records.

Chico Junior High School cross-country — volunteer assistant coach, 2026–present.

Golden Empire Amateur Radio Society — more than a decade of board service with Krista Stone; roughly a decade teaching amateur-radio licensing classes.

Recognition

Two-time League of California Cities Leadership in Action Award recipient.

Claude Whelchel Memorial Community Service Award, recognizing disability-access and community service work.

People Who Make a Difference Award — Butte County Coordinating Council, Area 2 Board, 2015; awarded jointly to Randall and Krista Stone.

Athletics and outdoors

A useful warning label: In a 2019 profile, The Washington Post wrote that Randall “appears tuned to a frequency slightly higher than those of most Chico residents.” The full profile is here. It remains a surprisingly efficient operating description.

Current life includes being a soccer and swim dad, runner, cyclist, pool and open-water swimmer, downhill and backcountry skier, snow camper, tent camper, hiker, flat-water and whitewater kayaker, EUC rider, active-transportation parent and more-than-once skydiver.

This did not begin as a midlife fitness project. Competitive swimming is documented at age five with Laurelwood Swim Club; organized running was underway by age eight. The first Rapp’s Triathlon was in 1983 at age nine. From 1983 through 1993, Randall raced roughly 150 triathlons across USTS, ITU, Chicago Sun-Times and other circuits in about half the United States, reaching national rankings, Team USA in 1992 and 1993, the 1992 United States Triathlon Series national-championship season, and 1993 Tri-Fed Triathlon All-American recognition. Original 1992 USTS and 1993 All-American award artifacts remain in the personal archive and are being digitized; period race and federation records are separately tracked in the athletic source archive.

Water remained part of the pathology: four Alcatraz-to-San Francisco swims beginning at age fourteen, including Escape from Alcatraz history with the Double Dipsea. Later years added more 5Ks, 10Ks and half-marathons than anyone sensibly counted.

Before he was licensed to drive, he logged tens of thousands of bicycle training miles on Peninsula, coast and Mount Hamilton routes. At Foothill College, cross-country and track continued, including cross-country MVP recognition. He remained an amateur throughout triathlon, working and using sponsorships to cover the conspicuously non-amateur costs of travel, equipment and race entries; he also worked at Fleet Feet Sports on the Peninsula.

One circa-1989 recollection is too good to discard and too unverified to promote as fact: Randall remembers a prominent national triathlon journalist observing that his sponsored-amateur support exceeded the earnings of roughly 90 percent of professional triathletes. The clipping and precise attribution remain on the archival wanted list.

His driving record has been considerably less cinematic than the road test that started it: Randall reports no at-fault accidents. On his seventeenth birthday, the applicant immediately ahead of him suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure and the test vehicle caught fire. Once everyone was safe, Randall helped, then took his own road test and scored 100 percent. The DMV portion of the story was mercifully less eventful. This anecdote remains firsthand biography.

Outdoor planning has occasionally treated weather as an advisory rather than a veto: a ten-day snow camp beginning February 26, 2010 near Meiss Meadows at roughly 8,800 feet; June tent camping in San Felipe, Mexico; and July tent camping paired with a same-day Grand Canyon descent and ascent during exceptional heat.

Amateur radio

Amateur Extra K6RCS , formally licensed in 2004. What began as amateur radio did what technical hobbies do when insufficiently supervised: it expanded from 80 meters through 70 centimeters into digital, SSB, AM, FM, CW, SSTV, EchoLink node 206608, APRS, Winlink, QSO One, openSPOT4 Pro, field communications and the increasingly elaborate Team Stone systems.

Heritage and representation

Maternal heritage: Mexican-American, with a family story that is specific rather than decorative. Randall’s maternal grandfather was a Cristero from Jalisco who fled Mexico after the family’s involvement was exposed, reaching the first Catholic church on the U.S. side in Nogales, Arizona. That same church later held another three generations of family history: Randall’s parents were married there in 1968, and Randall served as an altar boy at both of his maternal grandparents’ funerals there. The exact parish name remains to be attached before publication as a sourced institutional reference.

During Chico’s Families Belong Together rally on June 30, 2018, Randall drew on that history in public remarks about immigration, refuge, family and belonging. His 2007 public biography had already described him as second-generation Mexican-American on his mother’s side. Later public challenges to his ethnicity prompted his estranged mother to write a Chico Enterprise-Record letter confirming the maternal Mexican-American ancestry; the exact clipping and date remain pending attachment.

Paternal genealogy: Family genealogy identifies Randall as a direct paternal descendant of Deacon Gregory Stone of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The historical Gregory Stone genealogy is independently documented; the complete modern generation-by-generation bridge to Randall remains pending attachment to the public source archive.

Family

Married to Krista Stone, K6KEG. They are raising two bilingual sons whose combined calendar resembles a small municipal recreation department: AquaJets swimming, biking, roller skating, skateboarding, running, soccer, Eastside Little League and other baseball, Virtues, Ballet Folklórico, beginning snow skiing and GMRS, with Rhys also in Scouts, merit-badge work, drama and small-boat sailing. Family is not a decorative closing paragraph here; it is where nearly every professional theory about time, risk, transportation, education and community gets field-tested.