Dennis Richards is the President of Our Neighborhood Voices—Education Corporation, the non-profit sister organization to the ONV initiative. ONV-Education Corp.’s primary mission is to educate and raise public awareness about the consequences of Sacramento’s top down planning and zoning mandates. 

Richards has been involved in land use and historic preservation issues for thirty years. He was deeply involved in community planning and rezoning from 2005-2009, during which time he first witnessed and recognized the benefits of community-based planning and zoning. Dennis was appointed to the San Francisco Planning Commission and served from 2014 to 2020. He saw firsthand how Sacramento was eroding community preference and community involvement.

He called out the pattern of Sacramento’s control over local planning and zoning and fearlessly helped successfully lead the opposition to those bills. Later in his tenure as a Planning Commissioner he was a whistleblower of the corruption in San Francisco city government.

Along with the late Redondo Beach mayor Bill Brand, he was deeply involved in starting the Our Neighborhood Voices constitutional ballot initiative in 2019. He has been involved with the initiative for the past six years. 

Prior to his tenure as a Planning Commissioner, he had a 30 year career in the technology sector. He was a Vice President of Finance at Salesforce.com.