Last night’s Council meeting was pretty interesting. First, we had a presentation by a representative of the San Francisco (Santa Clara?) 49ers about the new stadium. There was a lot of information, and while I (and others) clearly wanted to ask questions and get into the fine details, that wasn’t the right time or place for it.
Following that, there was a presentation from Staff about the City’s procurement process – how the City goes about buying goods and services. Unfortunately, we can’t just send someone down to Office Depot when we run out of paperclips – there are processes to ensure that City money is being spent for the public good. I will point out, however, that it was specifically mentioned that the cheaper the item, the simpler the process is.
We then had a number of residents and other supporters speak on behalf of the Stadium proposal, including former Mayor Jack Walker on behalf of the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce and former Mayor Pat Castillo. Also, Pat Walz presented the Sunnyvale Cool Cities’ positions on this year’s study issues.
Then we got into the agenda. Werner Gans pulled one item to commend the City for getting federal stimulus money for energy-efficient LED street lights. We had to tweak the city’s ordinance on massage parlors, to conform to a new state requirement that state certification be equivalent to local certification. A speaker mentioned that Sunnyvale requires its massage facilities to use same-sex rooms – no couples massages. That was news to me.
We then considered this year’s legislative advocacy positions. I tweaked one of them to address a concern I heard from the League of California Cities about the state potentially raiding us again. But otherwise, it was non-contentious. The issue of Council policy on dropped issue was a little more contentious, as there was disagreement about what best practice was. In the end, Council voted, in effect, to remove the “two ‘defer’s equals ‘drop’” provision and to require dropped issues to wait a year before potentially returning, and then only by Council sponsorship.
Council then selected myself and Vice Mayor Moylan to represent Council on the General Plan Consolidation Committee, with Councilmember Whittum as alternate.
Finally, we adjourned to the Onizuka Redevelopment Agency to decide what the next steps would be. I’m reluctant to (possibly mis-)characterize the discussion, but we voted to move forward with a study of the feasibility of an auto center at Onizuka. It was stated in the discussion that we’re somewhat locked into this right now, and doing the study to possibly determine infeasibility needs to be part of the process right now.
And beside some back-and-forth on other issues, the City Manager mentioned that PublicCEO has recognized “Sunnyvale Works!” as its Public Works Project of the Year. More on this to follow.