Starting September 1st (Wednesday), the Sunnyvale Public Library will offer a new “Text a Librarian” messaging service. You can text “asksun” to 66746 for instructions, then text your questions to a Sunnyvale librarian during normal hours of operation.
(As always, message and data rates may apply…)
Last night, I attended the retirement dinner for Nancy Tivol, who has served as the Executive Director of Sunnyvale Community Services for the past twenty years. Beyond Nancy’s retirement, which is noteworthy in itself, an interesting detail was revealed. As part of the federal stimulus package, SCS recently received $500,000 from the feds, through the City of Sunnyvale’s Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) program, with instructions from HUD to “spend the money as quickly as possible”. This is money that the feds targeted at mortgage and rent assistance and other emergency financial services necessary in a serious recession like this one, but it was handed out with the additional goal of trying to stimulate spending. So towards that end, it was important that the money not get tied up in bureaucracy or stuck in limbo while agencies decide how best to spend it.
Anyway, the mission of SCS is to provide emergency assistance to combat homelessness and hunger among low-income residents, and SCS is well-prepared to make the most of any resources they’re given. They’ve long since solved the problem of how to get assistance to people in need very quickly, and their real problem is how to get enough money to fulfill their needs (which is why I’m a regular contributor of theirs). Thankfully, Sunnyvale is also well-prepared to turn the money around quickly, so we didn’t introduce any delays either. And as a result, HUD told SCS that it was the fastest of any organization in the country to distribute its stimulus money. This caused HUD to call up the City of Sunnyvale and ask “hey, how’d you guys do that?”. The City told HUD “you need to talk to Nancy” – and not surprisingly, she called them up herself before they could call her.
Nancy’s retirement is a real loss to the city, and to the county. But she’s built an impressive organization with a lot of good people doing the work, and the Board has already selected her replacement. So I’m confident that SCS will continue to do its job well after she leaves.
Another long one, and we’ve hopefully gotten a lot of the work out of the way.
Before the meeting, we had a closed session regarding ongoing negotiations with the Sunnyvale Management Association (direction was given, no action taken), followed by a study session on improving the efficiency of Council meetings. The study session didn’t result in any concrete suggestions, as everyone seemed to have their own ideas on what was wrong and how to fix it. However, there was general agreement that whatever the situation now, it’s much better than it was years ago, when meetings often ran past midnight. Then we went with the Council meeting.
First up was recognition of July as National Parks and Rec Month. We had the usual public announcements, including one for this year’s State of the City, on July 4th in Washington Park. Next came the consent calendar.
But this time, we had four items pulled from the calendar by members of the public. One speaker pulled the issues regarding modifications to the agreements with the City Manager and the City Attorney. It wasn’t obvious from the RTCs that the modifications really reflected aspects of the original agreements with both, which they both were. After a little discussion, both passed 7-0. Two speakers pulled the contract amendment for the environmental study of the proposed Morse Avenue Park, but they wanted to speak in favor of the issue or to compliment Mark Rogge, the DPW staff member who gave a presentation on the issue to the Morse Park Neighborhood Association to explain the situation and the possible courses of action. So that one also passed 7-0.
The final item pulled was the request for additional funding for outside counsel for the Mary Avenue lawsuit, and the speaker questioned why the city was proposing spending an additional $100k for continuation of legal challenges regarding this, instead of spending that money on other city services. Since this involves ongoing litigation, none of the seven of us can say anything substantive on the issue. But to be honest, I was visibly annoyed that the speaker made her points – since she is one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs. So in short, one of the plaintiffs came to tell us, the defendants, that we shouldn’t be spending money to defend against her own lawsuit. “Inappropriate” was the mildest description that came to mind at that moment, which is what I said. And the additional funds were approved 6-1.
Then it was on to the general business.
First item for discussion was consideration of declaring Raynor Activity Center available for long term leases. This was really a procedural issue. Council previously directed staff to investigate finding long-term tenants for the property, which would result in revenue-neutral maintenance of it. But one of the challenges is that the buildings are at the end of their lifespans, some of them no longer habitable and only suitable for equipment storage. So whoever commits to a long-term lease will also need to commit to providing the upkeep for the facilities, which will not be insignificant. The first legal step in choosing a long-term tenant is to declare the property surplus, after which we can entertain proposals for prospective tenants – who may very well be the current tenants. But the current tenants are obviously nervous about the process, and they wanted to make their case that they should be allowed to maintain occupation of the property. In the end, we voted 7-0 to declare the property surplus and to move forward with the process, maintaining the current month-to-month arrangements with the current tenants, and being open to commitments longer than month-to-month, if the current tenants are amenable and if the longer agreements don’t hinder the City’s ability to conclude the process in a timely fashion. In short, remain calm, all is well…
Item 3 was consideration of an extension to the existing emergency moratorium against medical marijuana facilities in Sunnyvale. The existing moratorium is only good for 45 days, after which we can extend it once by 10 months 15 days, after which we can extend it an additional 1 year. Staff asked us to approve the full 10 months 15 days, although their plan for finishing the study issue has it returning for a vote in December. But Staff wanted the full time, in the event something unexpected should happen. There were many proponents who came to speak on behalf of an expedited process, with the comments ranging from “you should just make the decision in the 45-day period” to “we support the extension as long as staff can meet the proposed timeline. When it went for Council discussion, things got a bit contentious, and it was complicated by the fact that it legally requires a 4/5 vote to pass an extension (which means 6 out of 7 councilmembers had to approve it). With one councilmember fairly set upon not granting a significant extension, that gave every remaining councilmember an effective veto on any proposal. And indeed, members exercised that veto. The first motion was to approve staff’s request for 10 months 15 days, but it failed on a 5-2 vote. The second motion was to approve an extension until January 31st, which failed on a 3-4 vote. The third (made by me) was to approve an extension for 10 months, 14 days (the motion couldn’t match a previously-failed motion), and it again failed 5-2. The final motion was to grant an extension through March 31st 2011, and it finally passed on a 6-1 vote. That was a little contentious.
At this point, Councilmember Swegles had to leave, because he’s been recovering from some medical difficulties, and he ran out of gas. It was actually a pretty touching thing – he had some comments, and then he got a standing ovation.
Item 4 was adoption of the FY 2010/2011 budget, fee schedule, and appropriations limit. There was no public hearing on this, since the public hearing for this was held 2 weeks ago. There was surprisingly little discussion – some concern about the public safety changes, some concern about a couple of the fee changes, and concern over money for training Planning Commissioners (particularly since we have three new ones this year and at least one new one next year). Then we passed the budget 6-0. I took the opportunity to repeat some of the comments I made here – how staff did a really good job of devising a budget that met our criteria, that the pain is minimized to a great extent (particularly compared to other cities), but that the tenuousness of the budget was somewhat hidden by how well staff spread out the pain. We’ve got a budget that keeps us in the black, but which has us reducing our reserves over six or seven years to a low point of one month’s worth of money in the budget stabilization fund. And that means we have no margin of error – over six or seven years. And all of us need to keep that in mind and act accordingly.
Item 5 involved the awarding of a non-exclusive taxicab franchise, which went through with no comments.
After some closing comments, we adjourned to the Redevelopment Agency, where we passed the consent calendar and proposed RDA budget on 6-0 votes.
That’s about it We’re off for three weeks, other than State of the City.
Last night, we had a study session on the state of the civic center buildings. The City commissioned a report on the state of all city buildings and options for replacement or rehabilitation of them, and the study session focused only on the civic center campus. The report recommended five different options, and staff recommended a sixth. I can’t describe all of the options in detail, but I’ll outline the problem and the general approaches that are being recommended.
The normal course of business for companies, homeowner associations, cities, and other entities with large capital assets is to regularly put aside money to replace those capital assets. So if something has a 20-year lifespan, then every year, you put aside 1/20th of its replacement cost. That way, when it’s time to replace it, you’ve got the money to do that.
The problem is that Sunnyvale has failed to do that – for the past 10-15 years. We have no money to replace our civic buildings.
But it gets worse.
Ten or fifteen years ago when this whole problem started, we made a conscious decision that if the buildings were coming up on the end of their lifespans, it didn’t make a lot of sense to pour money into maintaining them at the same level as before, not if we were just possibly going to tear them down. So we reduced our long-term maintenance. But again, that money that we didn’t spend on maintenance? We didn’t save it for capital replacement either.
So the net result is that we’ve got a bunch of buildings that need to be replaced, worse now because of insufficient maintenance in recent years, with no money to replace them, and no good funding options either. So either we need to start pouring money into maintenance, we need to go to the voters to get money for replacement, or we need a third option, like paying for it by selling assets.
The report said the civic center buildings were in various states. The Public Safety building was the only one rated “very good”, because it’s the newest building we’ve got. The “rabbit hutches” (Sunnyvale Office Center, at Charles and Olive) were recommended for demolition as soon as they can be replaced. The library is a good building, but it’s insufficient as a library. And so on. Additionally, we’ve got the problem now where we are intermingling our support and administrative staff, which creates problems for people seeking service, as well as for staff itself. That’s really obvious if you’ve ever needed something from the City Clerk’s office, but it’s obvious in Planning and in other areas as well.
So the recommended courses of action were along the lines of
That’s a general outline of what was proposed. The specifics vary. One recommendation that came out of the report quite strongly was to leave the civic center functions in that area, and not to relocate them elsewhere.
Anyway, we discussed a number of options, such as moving some or all of the functionality to Onizuka, relocating to the Town Center, rearranging buildings in the civic center area (to take more advantage of El Camino or Mathilda, for instance), selling civic center property to fund purchase and construction elsewhere, funding options, and so on. There was no action taken at the meeting, but direction for further study was given, and the general recommendations from Council were
I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff, but that’s the big picture.
You probably heard that San Jose has finally passed its budget. I wanted to call out one aspect of their budget – their significant library cuts. Here’s what their budget includes:
The Santa Clara City Library is also doing reductions. They will be reducing hours, closing earlier in the evenings, with no evening hours on Wednesday or Thursday.
All of this is going to hit us, because 1) our residents use other libraries very heavily, most notably the Santa Clara, Cupertino, and San Jose’s MLK libraries, and 2) residents of other cities will come to our library more often, since their own libraries will be closed.
Sunnyvale is actually something of a deadbeat in the county library community, because we depend so heavily on other library systems. My numbers are couple of years old, but Sunnyvale residents get about 40% of their library materials (over 1 million items each year) by visiting other libraries and checking out their materials. In comparison, non-residents account for only around 14% of the circulation at the Sunnyvale library (around 300,000 items per year). Think about what that means – we borrow three times as many items from other cities as we lend to residents of other cities. The main reason for this is that every other library system in the county is better than ours. We have the smallest per capita library collection, by far, the least amount of per capita library space, by far, and the fewest number of available public computers per capita of any of the library systems in the county. And residents of other cities know this, so they prefer using their own libraries to ours. Unfortunately, that’s true of our residents as well (40%!).
And despite that, we’re the busiest library system in the state, in terms of hourly circulation per outlet. We circulate 722 items in our one outlet per hour, and the second busiest in the state is actually the Santa Clara County system, which circulates an average of 522 items per outlet per hour. So we’re not just the busiest – we’re far and away the busiest.
Anyway, back to the cuts and what they mean to us. The answer is simple – more demands on our library with fewer resources available to meet the demands. Some of this is unavoidable. In tough budget times, libraries and parks always get hit first, because public safety and public works are the critical services. Nobody gets injured and no property gets damaged if library funding is reduced, and civic leaders recognize this. But some of this is the inevitable result of Sunnyvale’s library being 50 years old without replacement. Almost all of our problems go back to a lack of space – collection size, number of computers, etc. And until we have the will and resources to fix the space problem, library services will suffer, and we’ll continue to be unable to fully meet our own residents’ library needs.
Another very long night.
First, Councilmember Swegles was absent last night – he stayed home to recover from surgery he recently underwent. He’s doing fine, and he’s expected to return for the meeting on 6/29. Get well soon, Ron.
We started off by swearing in of the Boardmembers and Commissioners, which is always fun. We had a couple who were re-elected to their commissions, and a couple of brand new ones. Then it was on to business.
The consent calendar passed without discussion. First up was the annual public hearing on the proposed budget, and a number of speakers wanted to express their opinions on various topics. One speaker expressed concerns about employee pensions. A number of people expressed concerns about the proposed reduction in tree maintenance. I didn’t fully realize how devoted to trees Sunnyvale residents are until I walked precincts before the election, and it was in evidence again tonight. For the most part, however, the speakers all said that they recognized the difficult situation we’re in and hoped we would restore tree maintenance funding as soon as is reasonable to do so. That’s certainly my goal, and I’m grateful for the reasonable opinions they expressed. A number of educators came to speak on behalf of the Neighborhood Resource Officer (NRO) program at the various Sunnyvale schools. Somehow, the message was out there that staff is proposing to cut that program, which is not the case. I believe we’re proposing to civilianize one or more of the positions for the lowest levels of education, but keep uniformed officers in the middle schools and high schools. Mike Andrade, president of the Sunnyvale Public Safety Officers Association, expressed concerns about the continuing drawing down of public safety resources. Bob Obrey, Chair of the Arts Commission, provided their commission’s unanimous recommendation to approve the budget.
I’ll highlight one set of speakers. Ray Su, chair of the Board of Library Trustees, and Narendra Pathak, recently re-appointed to the Board, came to support the proposed budget and speak about the library’s funding and library services. Here are some stats that they provided:
After the hearing was done, we did hold some votes on some issues. We voted 5-1 to have staff bring back information on creating landscape and lighting assessment districts in Sunnyvale, to raise revenue for those services (which is an action Council can take without a ballot vote). We voted 6-0 to do the same with possibly establishing public safety impact fees and traffic impact fees.
We then got into the proposed budget supplements, and in the end, we voted 5-1 to approve staff’s recommendation on all budget supplements without changes. But before getting there, an attempt to do away with neighborhood grants and move the money into citywide event funding failed on a 2-4 vote. A motion to attach conditions to the proposed Junior Achievement grant failed to get a second. The proposed budget includes elimination of detailed Council minutes in favor of “action minutes” (much more abbreviated). An attempt to preserve detailed Council minutes failed on a 2-4 vote, which was a little more contentious. This isn’t a cut-and-dried issue, because there are real benefits to having text-based detailed minutes. They’re searchable, they’re cheap and easy to maintain, and they’re convenient. But few cities in the County provide them because of the cost and manpower required to create them. In the end, Council decided that the manpower requirements couldn’t be justified in this climate.
Item 3 was the public hearing on the city’s fee schedule. Our discussion was mostly focused on two specific topics. One was staff’s recommendation that we waive fees for PG&E to take down trees when it needs to (PG&E routinely removes and replaces around 35 trees per year, in order to protect power lines and other equipment). Another was a proposed fee to be attached to large events or hazard situations whenever public safety is required to be deployed for extended periods of time. This isn’t a fee that would be charged if, for instance, someone’s house catches fire and Public Safety shows up. It’s if, for instance, there’s a downed power line that requires streets to be blocked off (charged to PG&E), or if some large civic event requires excessive and/or unexpected Public Safety response. In terms of the public hearing itself, a spokesperson from PG&E asked us to waive the fee and answered questions we had. Another speaker, a bicycle proponent, encouraged the city to better advertise and enforce bicycle registrations and helmet use.
We considered whether or not to waive fees for PG&E’s tree removal applications (we currently waive them). There was talk about imposing the fee, and I suspect some of it came from reactions to Proposition 16. But the end, a member of the public pointed out that if we impose the fee, the cost will just be passed on to customers, so taxpayers would pay for it one way or the other. One of my theories of how to approach Council meetings is the belief that on any topic, at any time, no matter what I may believe or how I may be leaning, some member of the public may put forth a “killer argument” – that one idea or one sentence that makes me think “of course that’s the case, I have to vote this way”. And this was the first time since being elected that I’ve encountered one. So thanks, Werner (I think it was you who said this). We then chose to continue to waive the fee.
Finally, on a 6-0 vote, we approved instituting a $33 fee for residents who have Sunnyvale Public Safety deal with their fix-it tickets. At one time, we did this for free, and a change was recently made to charge $33 only for non-residents. Council ended up voting 6-0 to impose the fee on residents as well, in part because we’re recovering costs incurred for the work the city has to do, in part because it doesn’t make sense to subsidize people who need our services because they broke the law.
Item 4 was consideration of the water, waste water, and solid waste fees. Staff is proposing increases in these fees by 7.5% for water and solid waste, and 4.5% for wastewater. Unsurprisingly, a number of people spoke against the increases, primarily citing the economic situation and the burden on seniors that the increases would pose. In the end, Council voted 6-0 to approve the increases, primarily because the increases are being driven almost exclusively by costs imposed on us from the outside. One of the two water districts that serves us is imposing a hefty increase in water costs on us. Diesel costs are driving up the cost of solid waste pickups. So the only alternative for us is to subsidize everyone’s bills – and therefore cut other city services (parks, library, public safety, whatever). We weren’t willing to subsidize residents, in the end. Additionally, Councilmembers Lee and Spitaleri co-sponsored a study issue to potentially subsidize or otherwise lower rates for seniors, disabled, and other fixed income customers.
Item 5 was the most contentious one, as we considered putting a directly-elected mayor initiative on the ballot. There was immediate pushback on the item, because Councilmember Swegles has strong feelings about the issue, and he wasn’t able to be present. So an attempt was made to move the issue to the July 20th meeting. There was resistance to this, out of a concern that the ballot deadline is only a couple of weeks after that, and if an attempt is made to put a measure on the November 2010 ballot at that meeting, it gives us no room to maneuver and no room for public input. In light of that, and in light of staff’s report that a November 2010 ballot measure would cost the city $167k, while a November 2011 ballot measure would cost only $42k, an amendment was made to forego consideration of placing this issue on the November 2010 ballot, unless one or more other measures are placed on that ballot. The amendment passed 5-1, then the overall motion to delay the issue until July 20th passed 4-2.
Item 6 was a second reading of an ordinance that had a dissenter, and it passed 5-1 without comment. And that was it.
We had some intergovernmental relations reports, and then we closed the meeting in memory of Vince Cala, who passed away on May 30th.
This will be an interesting meeting. My sense is that the length of the meeting will be determined by the number of people who show up to speak to issues – and we have three issues likely to generate some public input.
We start with a closed session to deal with labor negotiations involving the City Manager and City Attorney. Then we have a study issue that will probably be of interest to many Sunnyvale residents – a staff presentation of their analysis of the high speed rail alternatives that have been drafted by the HSR Authority. Next, we swear in the newly-appointed board and commission members, and then it’s on to the general business.
Another very large consent calendar, consisting of final resolution of several items that were previously voted on by Council. a couple of budget modifications, acquisition of funds for library services from various sources, and contractual stuff. Then comes the public hearings.
Item 2 is the annual hearing on the budget. This is the public’s opportunity to voice their opinions on changes being proposed this year, mostly involving cuts. Public Works and Public Safety bear the bulk of the proposed cuts, but no department is left untouched. That’s the reality of dealing with the worst economic crisis in four generations, unfortunately. Item #3 is the annual review of the city’s fines and fees, part and parcel of the budget process.
Item 4 is consideration of rates for water, wastewater, and garbage. This will certainly generate some interest. But Council is going to be somewhat limited in its options, since the majority of the rate increases are actual cost increases being imposed on the city, such as those coming from the two water districts that serve Sunnyvale. Still, not all of the costs are coming from outside, and Council has some options.
Item 5 is a continuation of last meeting’s discussion about a directly-elected mayor ballot measure. At this point, we need to look into specifics, such as what the ballot measure will say, when the measure would go on the ballot, and so on. A significant talking point will likely be Staff’s statement that a measure on the November 2010 ballot will cost the city an estimated $167,000, while the same measure coinciding with regular Council elections will cost $42,000 (the reason being that it requires the registrar to print a Sunnyvale-only ballot in 2010, while one was already planned and budgeted for for the Council election in 2011).
The final item is the second reading of last meeting’s changes to city codes to align them with the Precise Plan for El Camino. This is here and not on the consent calendar since one councilmember dissented on the original vote.
And that’s about it. Lots of opportunity for people to speak up about the direction that the city will be taking in the near future.
Staff has put out the proposed operating budget for 2010/2011. I’ve made my first pass over it, and I’ve had my briefing from Staff, but I’ve still got a lot of studying to do. Here’s what the budget process will be.
First up is Thursday’s all-day budget workshop, which will be televised. Staff will go over the budget department-by-department, and Council will have the opportunity to ask questions and comment. I believe there won’t be any opportunity for public input at that time.
Next will be the public hearing on the budget, scheduled for the June 15th Council meeting. We’ll also be taking input at that time on the proposed fees and fines schedule – the comprehensive list of everything that the City charges for its services. That’s when the public will weigh in on their areas of concern, lobby to preserve services, and maybe even suggest alternatives that haven’t been considered.
Finally, we’ll have our actual vote on the budget during the June 29th Council meeting. Again, there will be the opportunity for public input before the vote. But to really make a difference, you should speak up earlier in the process, specifically at the public hearing on the 15th. One of the rules of government advocacy is the sooner you speak, the less inertia opposes you.
This is a very tough budget year, with no easy decisions. At times like this, Sunnyvale benefits from its 20-year budgeting process, and as a result, Staff isn’t proposing the massive layoffs or furloughs that other cities are pursuing. But there are nevertheless some painful cuts being proposed, to some services I hold dear, and there are no longer any sacred cows. Now is the time when we have to decide as a city which services we really value and depend upon, and which ones we have to do without. This is a good time to get involved, speak up, and let us know what matters to you.
Every other week, the City Manager sends out a city-wide update to Council, which contains a department-by-department list of highlights since the last update. It includes reports on the more significant public safety incidents, new and changed services, economic developments within the city, and so on. I’ve only been getting these reports for four months (obviously), but they’ve been great, in terms of keeping me up-to-date on what’s happening across the city.
Starting today, Gary’s bi-weekly reports are now available online to the general public. Best way to get to them in the future may be to go to the City Manager’s page and look for the link under the City Update section.
This is a seriously cool development. When I first saw these, I dropped Gary a note saying “these are great, we should post these online”. Gary’s (obvious) response was “I know, I think so too, but there’s no point in working on it until the website redesign is finished”. Well, the redesign went live on Tuesday, and his first report showed up today. How’s that for service?
A very long meeting, although the time wasn’t really spent on the issues of wide city importance. We started out with two special recognitions, the first being for the Santa Clara University women’s basketball team for their contribution to the Sunnyvale basketball shootout event hosted by our DPS. The second was to recognize National Volunteer Week, which is particularly important to Sunnyvale, since we rely so heavily on volunteers, in our Senior Center, in Public Safety, in our Library, and elsewhere.
Next, we had a presentation by staff of the all-new City of Sunnyvale web site, which was really nice, even more so now that I’ve had time to get my hands on it. PLEASE NOTE that some sections of the web site may not be working yet, because portions of it could not be fixed until after the site went live. So staff may be working through the bugs for the next few weeks. I’ve already posted my thoughts on the new web site, so I won’t repeat them now. Then it was on to real business.
The consent calendar passed without comment, except that Staff pulled 1J for further work and future consideration. There were three announcement, then one public comment about continued bad practice at the Walgreens in the southern portion of the city.
First item of general business was an appeal of a Planning Commission decision regarding a remodel design review for a house on Grackle. The owner wants to add a second story to his house. It’s an interesting situation, because the owner is the first one-bedroom house on the boundary between an older, single-story neighborhood and a newer, 2-story development. So there were issues of size, encroachment on the newer neighborhood, and so on. The primary issue was the owner’s appeal of two conditions that the PC attached to its approval, plus an appeal by the next-door neighbor, whose kitchen window would be shaded four hours of the day during the winter months if the second story were to be built. There were no speakers beyond the owner and his neighbor.
This was a tough one, and there were different opinions expressed. In the end, Council voted 5-2 (with me seconding Vice Mayor Moylan’s motion) to grant the applicant’s appeal, provided the design reduced the number of hours of additional shading by 25%, per the neighbor’s request, and to deny the appeal if the owner could not change the design to reduce the shading as we indicated. My concern on this was simple – the owner was proposing a really big expansion. The guidelines say that you can do pretty much whatever you want with your house, provided it doesn’t exceed a 45% “floor area ratio” (the amount of floor space relative to the property’s square footage). The owner was asking for 54%, when most of the houses in the area don’t exceed 50%. When I inspected the neighborhood, it looked to me like none of the other 2-story houses shaded neighbors’ windows, and it looked to me like that was a deliberate design feature of the new houses. So I was sympathetic to the neighbor, I thought the owner was being inflexible (he put us in an “all or nothing” situation, which I said), and I thought the proposed design was just way too big. On principle, I support two-story expansions when they are appropriate for the neighborhood and don’t impact neighbors unreasonably, and this one just crossed my “unreasonable” threshold.
There’s an important lesson here, which I’ve seen applicants ignore over and over again. When you appeal something like this to the City Council, everything is on the table, and we can revisit and modify any aspect of the proposal. I’ve seen people get bitten by this in the past. There was one commercial developer who appealed one small aspect of a PC decision last year. And when it came before Council, it was clear from their initial questions that Council didn’t like a lot of the aspects of the project and was likely to change a lot of things. So when the developer got up, he immediately said “we’re willing to abide by the PC’s decision and end it here”, but it was too late. Once the public hearing has begun, it has to conclude normally.
Item 3 involved turning Braly Park into a flood detention area. In short, Braly Park is next to a flood channel. When Sunnyvale floods, the water has to go somewhere. So the proposal is to lower the park and turn it into a flood detention area in those “once every 30 years” floods that may happen. About 3 feet would be scooped out of all of Braly Park, surrounded by a ring of slope. The grass and fields would be dug up and replaced. And a connection between the park and the flood channel would be built, so that water could be diverted into the park when flooding is in danger of occuring. The down side is that the flood water would damage the park and have to be repaired, but the up-side is that several hundred homes and businesses would not be flooded, which is significantly more important. It also saves us additional flood prevention work in other parts of the city (like construction of retention walls). The proposal would not cost the city or school any money. It was all up side, so it passed on a 7-0 vote.
Item 4 was consideration of a water-efficient landscaping ordinance. The state has required stricter water efficient landscaping ordinances, and they have passed one that is intended to achieve 20% savings, which takes effect in all cities, unless a city passes one that achieves the same result or better. We’re already operating under the state’s ordinance. The Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency has drafted a model ordinance that its member cities can consider in taking action beyond the state requirements, and the proposal that Staff put forward started with that model ordinance. We discussed some of the potential impacts of the new ordinance, specifically regarding local gardens (which we were concerned might not be exempted from this ordinance – they are). In the end, we accepted staff’s recommendation on a 7-0 vote, with one change. Staff recommended differentiating between multi-family and single-family requirements – 2500 square feet or more for single-family and 1000 square feet or more for multi-family. Council supported the original BAWSCA recommendation of 1000 square feet for both, on a 7-0 vote.
Item 5 dealt with using grant money to create a Lawrence Station Work Plan. There was a little discussion, specifically about the relevance of such a plan given the challenges that CalTrain faces. But after a little discussion, we passed this 7-0.
Item 6 was the fun one. We had an extended discussion about the Council policy regarding annual selection of the Vice Mayor and biannual selection of the Mayor. Some of my colleagues felt that some difficulties that came up this year needed to be addressed. We started with a list of “consent” changes – changes that were just typos and clean-up, and we passed all but one of them unanimously (the one regarding prohibiting abstention votes was removed). Then we got into the more challenging ones.
The existing rules say that 1) only one nomination per councilmember, and 2) we use ranked-choice voting if there are more than two nominees. After a lot of debate, we changed the rules, so that 1) there is still only one nomination per councilmember, 2) we eliminated ranked-choice voting, and 3) we will have a study session between the November election and the first January council meeting, in which candidates for Mayor or Vice Mayor can put themselves forward and make their case, in a public setting. If we have three or more candidates, we will have straight up-or-down votes to break ties until we can have a straight up-or-down vote on the top two candidates.
I came into this with some strong inclinations. First off, while ranked-choice (or instant run-off) voting is terrific for general elections or when you have a lot of candidates to choose from, it doesn’t work well with a small number of voters and a small number of candidates (in our case, 7 voters, 3 candidates). There’s a lot of opportunity for game-playing, plus a good chance of an end result that many members of the public simply won’t understand. Neither of those serve the public good, so I wanted to get rid of the ranked-choice option. Second, there was interest expressed in allowing a councilmember to nominate multiple candidates. I also thought that didn’t serve the public good – we should choose who we support for mayor, then support that candidate, plain and simple.
I was much iffier on the notion of a study session, and I said as much. On the one hand, more discussion is good. On the other, it’s easy for Council to use study session to say things that are technically “in public”, but not really – there aren’t any cameras in a study session, there aren’t detailed minutes, and it’s only attended by people who make a conscious effort to learn about them and show up early. As much as possible, I want Council to conduct its business from the dais. So I wasn’t thrilled with the study session approach, because I was concerned that it is sort of a “wink wink” nod to public involvement. My concern is probably overblown, though, and Council clearly disagreed with me, because I lost that one, I think on a 5-2 vote. And honestly, I’m fine losing that one, because I really was on the fence on that issue.
In general, all of the focus was on trying to make sure that whatever process we follow, it’s all above-board and done in public, avoiding even the appearance of impropriety. We just disagreed in some places about how to best do that.
That’s mostly it. Nothing earthshaking, unless you live on Grackle… But a good, if long, meeting.