Silicon Valley Clean Energy 5 Year Anniversary – and How Cupertino Almost Didn’t Join

SVCE CEO Girish Balachandran talks about SVCE’s 5-year anniversary.

On Saturday, we celebrated the 5-year anniversary of the start of Silicon Valley Clean Energy’s operations. It was a great event, and it was terrific to see so many people who were involved in the formation and ongoing efforts to bring clean energy to our cities – people like Rod Sinks from Cupertino, John McAlister from Mountain View, Rob Rennie from Los Gatos, Liz Gibbons from Cupertino, and Howard Miller from Saratoga. At the event, I shared with SVCE’s CEO, Girish Balachandran, how Cupertino almost didn’t participate. He enjoyed the story, and since he hadn’t heard it before, he asked me to tell it to the whole audience, which I did. So I’ll tell it here, as it’s one of my more amusing experiences on Council.

SVCE started as a study conducted by the City of Sunnyvale as part of its Climate Action Plan. In developing our plan, our Sustainability Commission made sure to add “formation of a CCE”, and staff quickly discovered that a working CCE would result in greater GHG reduction than all other proposed actions in the CAP – combined. So our staff initiated a feasibility study for forming a CCE. When staff in Mountain View and Cupertino learned of our efforts, they asked to split the cost for us if the study could be expanded to include them, which Sunnyvale quickly agreed to. And unsurprisingly, the feasibility study’s findings were overwhelmingly positive.

After the study was concluded, the three cities formed a committee to plan out next steps and get it off the ground. That committee consisted of the cities’ mayors – myself, John McAlister, and Rod Sinks, plus Melody Tovar from Sunnyvale’s Environmental Services as staff lead, and additional staff from the three cities. We spent months meeting in a closet in Sunnyvale’s Finance Department, planning out the technical steps needed to get started, and considering the best political approach to gaining the support of other cities in the county. The first major hurdle was to get our three cities to contribute seed funding – a couple million dollars to hire initial SVCE staff and rent office space. We agreed to initially do a 3-way split, since that seed money would be paid back within three years if SVCE took off. In discussing it, we were of the opinion that Sunnyvale and Mountain View would easily approve it, but that it might have a hard time getting three votes on Cupertino’s City Council.

Sure enough, Sunnyvale and MV approved the funding pretty easily (I think Sunnyvale even approved it on consent). And Cupertino held its vote. Two days after that vote, I saw Rod Sinks at our monthly Cities Association meeting. Afterwards, Rod told me that he’d tried, but he’d been unable to get three votes for the seed money. He explained that one of his colleagues was absent, another was opposed, and a third decided to abstain for his own reasons. I told him I was sorry to hear Cupertino wouldn’t participate, but we’d get it started, and maybe Cupertino would join later. Then I paused, and thought it through. The conversation that followed went something like this:

Me: Wait a minute. So the vote was 2 yes, 1 no, and 1 abstention?
Rod: Yeah, sorry.
Me: That’s a successful vote!
Rod: No, 4 votes needs a 3-vote majority.
Me: Yes, but three votes + an abstention only needs a 2-vote majority!
Rod: Are you sure?
Me: Pretty sure. Abstentions count towards quorum, but not towards majority. Your City Clerk got it wrong!

So Rod goes back to his City Clerk. And next thing I know, Rod forwards me an email from his City Clerk, stating that the announced vote results in the previous meeting were incorrect, she was correcting the records of the meeting, and staff was moving forward with the issue.

And that’s the story of how Cupertino almost didn’t participate in SVCE.

My November 2020 Sunnyvale Election Endorsements

This is a momentous election in many ways, and it’s fair to say a lot is riding on its outcome. But often lost in the noise from the national and statewide elections are the local elections that are also taking place. These elections will have a far more profound impact on the lives of residents than anything that happens at a higher level. Yet, they get less attention. That’s wrong. Residents need to care about what’s happening in their local governments, and make sure they’re casting their votes wisely.

For Sunnyvale, here is who I am supporting.

Mayor of Sunnyvale

The race is between three candidates – current Mayor Larry Klein, current Vice Mayor Nancy Smith, and current Councilmember Michael Goldman. Both Smith and Goldman are impacted by the new districted elections. Goldman cannot run for re-election in his district for two years. Smith could have chosen to run for her district, but she chose to run for Mayor instead. [EDIT: Klein and Smith both had the option of running for re-election. However, unlike Klein, districting placed Smith in the same district as another incumbent councilmember, Melton, meaning Smith had to choose between running against another incumbent or running for Mayor.]

I’ve served with all three of these candidates, and my choice is clear. I’ll be voting for Larry Klein for Mayor.

Klein had been a terrific Mayor, becoming not just the leader Sunnyvale needs, but also a leader on regional issues. That’s critical to Sunnyvale, which, despite being the second largest city in Santa Clara County, sits in the shadow of San Jose. It is difficult for the other cities to get traction on regional issues against this behemoth. But Klein has done so as the President of the Cities Association of Santa Clara County. Back in April, when COVID was hitting its stride, Klein led the effort to have all 15 cities explain their needs and expectations to the County Health Department for COVID testing. The 15 cities unanimously drafted a position on their expectations, which influenced how the County Health Department reacted to COVID. I was a CASCC President myself, and I know just how effective a President can be in Sunnyvale’s hands. Larry’s done a great job – and he has a lot of endorsements from other CASCC members to show for his work.

Klein has led the city well through one of its most tumultuous times, including a horrible hate crime that shocked the city, the ongoing COVID pandemic, BLM and racial injustice protests, and nationwide concerns about law enforcement practices. Through it all, Sunnyvale has been a place where residents stand up to speak their minds peacefully and productively. Setting that tone comes from the top, and Klein was there, through all of it.

Klein has also guided the City through this very difficult transition from numbered seats to council districts. There were great opportunities for that to go sideways (just look at the train wreck in Santa Clara). But Klein struck the perfect tone, doing what he needed to do from the dais, while largely staying out of the political fray. And the results speak for themselves – the transition was overwhelmingly accepted by voters, and it has been smooth.

As for the smaller issues, Klein knows how to mayor well. He runs a good meeting. The council discord from years past is absent. The city gets done what it needs to get done, as drama-free as possible. That’s what we need most from a Mayor. Sunnyvale doesn’t have a strong Mayor system. The Mayor has exactly as much power as the Council decides to allow him or her to have. More than anything, the Mayor serves as the voice of the Council, championing its initiatives after the Council decides on a course of action. Larry has done incredibly well in that role, and he’ll continue to do so.

I’ve served with Nancy Smith, and in some ways, my politics align more closely with hers than with Larry’s. I’m closer to Larry on fiscal and administrative issues, closer to Nancy on progressive and social issues (she succeeded me on the Silicon Valley Clean Energy Board). But my impression from serving with Nancy is not all positive. On several occasions, I found her to be unprepared for specific discussions, confused by the details of certain issues, and even confused just by parliamentary procedure. That hasn’t gotten markedly better over time. She’s had some success with initiatives off the dais, but less so on the dais, and that’s a problem for someone seeking to be Mayor. I’m struck by the fact that not a single person who has served with her on Council has chosen to endorse her, to date. That’s a huge red flag, and it confirms my own concerns and experiences. I just don’t believe Smith will mayor as well as Klein already has. Had Smith chosen to run for election in her district, I would have happily and enthusiastically supported her as the best candidate in that race. But Klein is better prepared to serve as Mayor than Smith.

Michael Goldman should be an immediate non-starter for anyone who views the race seriously. A constant dissenting vote on 6-1 council votes, he has no significant accomplishments to speak of. Rather, he’s been a source of discord, backing the disastrous and needless 2016 Measure M, and opposing Sunnyvale’s redistricting efforts in 2018.

He’s still attempting to litigate the parks issue, years later – it’s, bizarrely, a centerpiece of his campaign – despite no actual threats to Sunnyvale’s open spaces. In fact a dedicated 20-year city plan to expand green spaces has already resulted in three new parks, consistently increasing park space, and close to $200 million in additional capital funding for park spaces at no taxpayer expense. Yet, Goldman never once acknowledges any of this in his continued fear-mongering that “they’re coming for your parks!”. He’s still invoking canards from almost a decade ago about land being leased or parks being sold, none of which is even remotely relevant or true today. But hey, if it scares voters, it must be good for Goldman. Unfortunately, too few residents educate themselves well enough to learn that it’s all nonsense.

Goldman is factually-challenged, far too often. He recently sent out a campaign email castigating the city for what he views as a too-expensive City Hall project – but Goldman inflated the actual projected costs by over $100 million. If you complain about a project’s cost without actually knowing what those costs are – especially after casting votes on it – you have no credibility.

My favorite instance of Goldman being factually challenged is this blog post of his, in which he declares Sunnyvale’s Food Cycle program to be among the worst options for reducing GHG emissions. He uses as the basis of this claim a website that shows GHG emissions for various solid waste disposal methods. Unfortunately, he never noticed that the methods discussed on the website use radically different tonnages of food, and his graphs and numbers don’t account for that. In actuality, when measured by GHG per ton of food waste – the correct scientific metric – Sunnyvale’s Food Cycle methodology ranks #2 in GHG reduction. That’s a pretty stupid error, when making policy decisions (and voting on them), and had he consulted with staff, he’d never have claimed this. I know this because I did consult with staff.

These kinds of factual errors aren’t obvious when he speaks, because there’s usually no opportunity for those who know the facts to correct him. As a consequence, people who don’t know better often mistake Goldman’s errors for intelligence, rather than actual ignorance. It’s even more egregious that factual errors such as this form the backbone of much of his advocacy.

Goldman also simply lacks the qualities of a good Mayor. He’s frequently made bizarre and thoughtless comments from the dais, well-documented. He avoids voting on controversial votes that cast him in a bad light – he abstains, so he can claim “I didn’t vote against this”. That’s a fatal character flaw for me. Win or lose, we should expect our elected officials to take a stand. I always did. But way too often, Goldman doesn’t. A Mayor needs backbone on tough issues, and he lacks one. Smith is another councilmember who sometimes casts abstentions for non-recusal reasons, which just isn’t good – but not nearly as egregiously and deliberately as Goldman.

And again, it doesn’t speak highly of a candidate when not a single person who’s served with him has endorsed him.

But all this aside, there’s a more fatal problem with Goldman’s candidacy. When moving to districts, we recognized the risk of electing a Mayor who is out of step with the Council. This creates a Council that spends all of its time overriding actions of the Mayor, while adding a significant amount of discord on the dais. Goldman has no hope of leading the Council anywhere it doesn’t want to go, which is too often the case with his initiatives. Sunnyvale doesn’t need that.

Councilmember, District 2

District 2 will introduce a new Councilmember, regardless of the outcome. The District 2 race features Alysa Cisneros, Hina Siddiqui, and Josh Grossman.

I’m supporting Alysa Cisneros. Cisneros is a Sunnyvale Library Board Trustee with extensive public policy experience from her work for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. She represents not one but several demographics that we hoped would be attracted to public office after the transition to districted elections. And, of course, she comes from the Sunnyvale Board of Library Trustees, the true source of power in Sunnyvale politics

It says a lot that six of the seven sitting councilmembers have endorsed Cisneros. She has a viewpoint and a voice that is desperately needed on Council now and the skillset to make that voice effective. Council has been “a bunch of white guys” for far too long, and Cisneros is exactly what Sunnyvale needs, now more than ever. In fact, I daresay that when the proponents of the district switch envisioned the results, they had someone exactly like Cisneros in mind. She will serve Sunnyvale well.

Hina Siddiqui strikes me as someone who could make a good councilmember some day, but she lacks the policy experience to deliver on it. Her website discusses the importance of STEM – but the City Council has no jurisdiction over STEM issues. That’s the school boards’ jurisdictions. She says some good things, particularly about housing, but she seems unlikely to be effective in advocating for them, at least without some greater experience in city government. With some time on a Commission, she’d probably make a good candidate in a few years.

Josh Grossman is a former Housing and Human Services Commissioner and Council gadfly for the past several years. He opposed the districting ballot measure, and his advocacy has largely consisted of attacks on councilmembers and opposition to whatever Council is attempting to do at a given moment (with the exception of the occasional pandering on issues that are going to get a 7-0 vote anyway). His primary claim to political experience comes from serving on a school board in far northern California – one governing a school of about 45 students – from the decade or so when he wasn’t a Sunnyvale resident.

Grossman was a HHS Commissioner, but he wasn’t reappointed to another term, something that normally happens as a matter of course. It says a lot about your ability to contribute when Council won’t even let you keep a volunteer position that you’ve already been holding.

My concerns with Grossman are similar to my concerns about Goldman for Mayor – even if he does manage to properly understand an issue, he simply won’t accomplish anything as the constant lone dissenter, and his colleagues won’t ever follow his lead. And simply put, in a city as diverse as Sunnyvale, the last thing Sunnyvale needs right now is one more old white guy on Council. The “old white guy worldview” is already adequately represented on Council by Districts 1, 2, 3, and 5, thank you very much.

Councilmember, District 6

Sunnyvale’s 6th District race features Omar Din, Leia Mehlman, and Charlotte Thornton. This is my district, and it’s the one I’ve been agonizing over the most. I’ll be voting for Omar Din.

Omar Din is a former Parks and Recreation Commissioner, with a lot of experience in politics, having worked for Assemblymember Evan Low and Congressmember Mike Honda. Din is getting all of the endorsements, including 3 current Sunnyvale councilmembers. He is a strong advocate for housing policy, and he’s likely dealing with the worst difficulties of housing in Sunnyvale, personally. His concerns about policing policy come from a good place, but some of his proposals show his inexperience. He really needs to sit down with the Chief and understand the practical realities of some of his ideas. And the value he places on the Police Scorecard metrics is simply misplaced.

Nevertheless, he’s a bright guy with the right intentions, an ability to learn and adapt quickly, and a policy background that will serve him, and Sunnyvale, well.

Leia Mehlman is a Bicycle and Pedestrian Commissioner who works with the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition on cycling issues. I interviewed her for her commission seat, and I remember her being one of the more impressive candidates we interviewed. She has a lot of very general positions on issues such as climate change and city transit. However, she doesn’t get into any specifics, and she doesn’t give me the impression that she knows the administrative and policy details that go into Council decisions. I think she’s got potential, but she really needs to demonstrate a solid grasp of some policies other than cycling before she’d get my support. And I just haven’t seen it. Note that it was a fairly close call between Mehlman and Din – I actually wanted to end up supporting Mehlman. But I believe Din has a better grasp of the overall policies Council must deal with than Mehlman.

Charlotte Thornton should be a non-starter. A Palo Alto resident who only moved to Sunnyvale in the past few months, her twitter feed promotes QAnon and InfoWars talking points. Someone who frequently dives into those rabbit holes lacks the judgment to be a good City Councilmember in Sunnyvale. Hard pass.

01/08/2019 Council Preview – Changing of the Guard

This will be the last Council preview that I post, for obvious reasons.

This meeting is bisected, somewhat, and there are no closed or study sessions this evening.  We start the evening with a special order of the day, certifying the November 6th election results for Council seats 1, 2, and 3.  Per Sunnyvale’s tradition, we do this in January to accommodate the Registrar’s certification time, which extends into December (not even including any possible recounts).

We then have the recognition of re-elected and outgoing (me) councilmembers, which mostly means speeches.  This is followed by the ceremonial oaths of office for  the newly elected and re-elected councilmembers, which represents the official changing of the guard.

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12/18/2018 Council Preview – Year End Financials, RHNA Sub-region, and Solid Waste Franchisee

Very interesting agenda tonight.  We start the evening with two closed sessions, for the City Manager’s and City Attorney’s performance review.  One of them is the annual review (I believe the City Managers), the other is the semi-annual review.  This is followed by two study sessions to prepare the Council for forming the new government in January – one to give councilmembers an opportunity to express an interest in serving as Mayor or Vice Mayor, one to review the current intergovernmental relations assignments and to express interest in changes to those assignments.  Both of these will be formally voted on at our January 8th meeting, after the old Council is dismissed and the new Council is sworn in.

The consent calendar is, unsurprisingly, very large, due to trying to get all of the year-end housekeeping done before we go on break.  We have a review of last fiscal year’s development fee revenue, how it was spent, and what to do with the remaining balance.  We received some $52 million in development fees last FY, mostly for housing mitigation/impact, sense of place, park dedication, and transportation impact.  The resolution of these is pretty straightforward – they go into their respective funds, since we cannot spend them on anything but their intended purpose.

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12/11/2018 Council Special Meeting Preview – CVRA Plan

This is a pretty simple night. Originally, we were going to just have a special meeting to address a closed session item, but staff added an open session to this, so here we go.

We start the evening with a closed session to discuss an aspect of the proposed sale of the Unilever property.  Then we go to open session.  There’s a lone item on the consent calendar, to increase the amount of a contract for temporary fire and building inspection services.

The lone item of business is to approve the community engagement and outreach plan for pursuing by-district elections, and approve a contract to implement it.