The Marina City Council is a divided dais that typically splits into a faction led by Mayor Bruce Delgado and another spearheaded by veteran councilman Dave McCall.

Now McCall is challenging Delgado for the mayor’s seat, and the three candidates vying for two open City Council seats are neatly split along the same lines.

“There are two competing visions and Marina, by its vote, is going to go down one of these roads,” McCall says. “And the opposing side is not going to like whatever side it goes down.”

During Delgado’s first two-year term, his camp has pushed to transform Marina into a university town and address the city’s muti-million-dollar shortfall by cutting spending.

That’s chafed with McCall’s priority to bolster the city’s police department. While both sides say they want to attract business, Team Delgado is interested in “smart growth” that includes green principles and affordable housing. McCall and his allies, who have been more welcoming to big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, say the city has blown opportunities to develop.

Two Davids – Burnett and Brown – are lining up behind Delgado in the council race. Both are public service veterans, including on the city’s Planning Commission. The three men are all endorsing one another and have formed a progressive alliance. They agree on a more fiscally conservative budget, along with light rail construction and annexing CSU Monterey Bay’s East Campus into the city.

Delgado says the slate’s election would mean more progressive action. “When it comes to things that are environmentally and economically smart, we won’t get resistance at every turn,” he says.

On the other side, a third former planning commissioner – council candidate Nancy Amadeo – both supports and is supported by McCall. Amadeo was appointed to the City Council for eight months in 2008.

“I don’t want to see more cuts,” she says, in reference to the more than $500,000 in budget reductions the council recently pushed through. Instead, she says, the city should focus on aggressively bringing in development. “We have lots of empty buildings and lots of land. We just need to attract businesses.”

Councilman Ken Gray, the council’s swing voter, is not seeking re-election. Should both McCall and Amadeo triumph in November, they would likely form a majority with councilman Jim Ford, who has two years left in his term.

But if Delgado and the Davids win, their team – with the likely support of sitting councilman Frank O’Connell – would be poised to control council votes.

Read the candidates’ responses to the Weekly’s questions at www.mcweekly.com/marina2010.