The next Sunnyvale West Neighborhood Association meeting will be Monday, June 21st at 7:00 at the Washington Park building. They’ve invited a dynamic and captivating speaker to discuss Sunnyvale news and talk about the experience of being a newly-elected Sunnyvale councilmember.
Of course, that speaker is me, so my choice of adjectives may lack objectivity…
Hope to see lots of you there. And leave the pitchforks at home (pretty please). But feel free to bring cake. I prefer chocolate.
Two weeks ago, I joined my colleagues in attending the annual National League of Cities conference in Washington, DC. There were three goals of this trip:
I arrived Friday night. Saturday was devoted to training classes, and I attended two half-day classes. The first was titled Communication Strategies: Building Support for Community Initiatives, and it focused on tools and strategies for communicating with voters about important local issues. One of the themes that pervaded the recent election was that the City needs to do better in communicating with and engaging residents in important issues, so I thought this was an important class to take. The second was Managing Competing Interests in Challenging Economic Times, and it focused on the challenge of dealing with conflicting priorities (such as “level of service” versus “fiscal conservatism”). Again, due to the economic times were in, I thought this was a particularly timely class to take.
Sunday was devoted to committee meetings, and I went and got myself appointed to not one but two. The first was Information Technology and Communications (ITC), which, given where we live and given what I do for a living, struck me as particularly interesting. The morning started with a joint presentation with ITC and the Public Safety committee (which Councilmember Spitaleri serves on) by Rear Admiral James Barnett Jr., from the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. The Feds are working on a nationwide unified emergency response system, which will install 40,000 new, hardened communication towers over the next 10 years at a cost of $10 billion. Then, we adjourned to our committee meeting. The bulk of the discussion was the Feds new high-speed broadband initiative, which was announced two weeks ago. Some bullet points:
My sense, coming out of this committee, is that California in general and our county and Sunnyvale in particular are well ahead of the curve on most technological stuff. For instance, Rear Admiral Barnett went through a theoretical public safety response to a combined police/fire incident, from initial notice to full resolution, listing all sorts of smart ways problems along the way could be addressed by future law enforcement. And Sunnyvale is already doing more than half of the ideas mentioned (things like “all fire rigs have access to the layouts of all commercial buildings in the city”). This sense turned out to be a prevailing theme for the trip.
In the afternoon, I took part in the Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources (EENR) committee. Again, it started with a joint meeting between us and the public transit committee (which Vice Mayor Moylan serves on), with the guest speaker being Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. He talked a bit about federal funding of high-speed rail, but his focus was on distracted driving (phones and texting while driving). His point was that it’s a serious problem, as bad now as drunk driving was 20 years ago. And while many states and local jurisdictions have laws prohibited distracted driving, local jurisdictions tend to slack off on enforcement, deeming other public safety problems as being higher priority.
The actual EENR committee meeting was a bit disappointing, because again, California in general and Sunnyvale in particular are way ahead of the rest of the nation.
Monday, I attended two workshops.. The first was titled Cities and Climate Change: the Outlook After Copenhagen. It talked about the NLC’s representatives’ experiences at the Copenhagen summit. Apparently, while the US Government didn’t garner a lot of respect for their presence, due to its historical unwillingness to participate in climate change agreements, the local jurisdictions received a very warm welcome for their willingness to get engaged. Some other bullet points from that session:
It should be noted that one speaker who could only be charitably described as a “man-made climate change skeptic” made some particularly harsh comments about the entire discussion. And after some back-and-forth from various other attendees, a speaker made a rather thoughtful and well-articulated rebuttal (or, “total shredding”) of every point the original speaker made. That rebuttal was made by our own Vice Mayor Moylan.
Later in the afternoon, I attended the High Speed Rail Focus Group. This included presentations by Ron Hinds, Director of the US Department of Transportation Office of Policy, and Art Guzzetti, VP of Policy for the American Public Transit Association. A couple of interesting bullet points from that presentation:
We spent Tuesday meeting with legislators. I went to three of these – a meeting with David Agnew, White House Deputy Director if Intergovernmental Affairs for Mayors/Councils. The focus of this was really Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG). Sunnyvale used EECBG money to swap out many of our sodium streetlights with new LED bulbs, and it’s a terrific program. But mostly, we just emphasized “don’t send money to cities through the states, they’ll just take some of it – send it directly to us instead”.
Next up was a meeting with a staffer from Senator Boxer’s office. We primarily discussed EECBG, Onizuka, and Hangar One.
Finally, we met with Congresswoman Eshoo in her office. This was a great meeting. We talked money, EECBG, Onizuka, and Hangar One. I was seriously impressed by how engaged she is in the Hangar One issue. And I’ll say it here and now – if we manage to get the Hangar cleaned up and preserved, it will have happened because of her direct involvement in the issue. She went so far as to call a meeting with the heads of NASA and the Navy in her office, to make sure progress is heading in the right direction. She clearly knows the issue inside and out. She also understands Onizuka inside and out, and we talked about a possible win-win approach to deal with the VA’s interest in that property (probably can’t happen, but she’s going to look into it).
I was also impressed with the level of fiscal conservatism she expressed in our discussions. This was my first time meeting with her in person, so I just didn’t know what to expect, but that one aspect really stood out to me.
All in all a good experience, and I got a lot out of it. Hopefully, the trip will pay off for Sunnyvale in the long run.
As is stated in this official city press release, Councilmember Lee will return to his previous position at the February 23rd meeting (sitting next to me!).
I’m working on an entry that will list off my study/budget issue rankings (with reasons) and what the final outcome was. It’ll take a bit more time, maybe going up tonight. I’ve been beset by my real job and other deadlines, so I’m a bit frazzled. But I wanted to mention a couple of things.
First, there’s an interesting initiative called the 3/50 Project (not to be confused with the 350 climate change goal). Tammy Salans referenced it at Council the night of my swearing-in, but I was distracted by a bumblebee and didn’t follow up on it. The Project’s message is simple – spend $50 at three local independent businesses. It’s the best way to support those businesses and the best way to support our local economy. And if I might suggest – do it on Murphy Avenue. Those merchants are hurting. So go to dinner. Do a little shopping. Browse some books at Leigh’s.
Second, in case you missed it, there was a big article on Otto Lee’s return. Good piece, and it’s great to see him back. He’s still on active duty, despite being home, and he should return to Council by the end of the month, I think.
Sunnyvale has an annual process where possible policy changes are proposed, and the City Council ranks the issues and decides which ones will be pursued by City Staff over the next year. This includes a public hearing on study issues (being held tonday, January 5th), ongoing input from the public via email, mail, phone, and “just bumping into Council members at the supermarket” (which has already happened to me once). Council then ranks the study issues at an all-day session on the last friday of January. Those which are “above the line” are examined by Staff and brought before Council individually when the studies are done. The rest are deferred until next year or dropped from further consideration.
During this process, Council gets a lot of input from the public, mostly people saying “this one is really important” or “this one isn’t worth pursuing”. But in the end, Council must rank the issues, pitting the “most important” issues against each other. This is done because Staff has a limited amount of time to research study issues, and the total number of hours required for issues determines which items end up “above the line”.
And ranking issues is harder when all Council hears is “this is important” or “this is not”.
Last year, as a member of Sunnyvale Cool Cities, I put together an online survey of study issues, so that we as a group could submit a group consensus. So this year, I thought it would be useful to make such a survey available city-wide. While I would have preferred to do this “officially”, through city staff, I was elected a little too late to make that happen. And to be honest, Staff has better things to do with their time than accede to my whims. So I’m doing this unofficially, on my own, although I’ll publish the results and make them available to Staff and Council.
You can participate in my survey by going here and filling out the online form.
I hope you’ll spend the time to participate!