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…)
You may notice all city flags being flown at half-staff on Sunday. In its history, Sunnyvale has lost five officers in the line of duty, and we recognize their sacrifices individually every year. Sunday commemorates the loss of PSO Charles Fraker, who died in a flashover during an apartment fire on August 1, 1976. He was 25 years old with a wife and two children.
Sunnyvale has a memorial to all five fallen officers just outside the entrance to the Public Safety building, as well as a display in the building lobby. If you’ve never seen them, I encourage you to stop by and visit them.
There will be a meeting of the City Council Subcommittee on Board and Commission Bylaws Amendments this Monday, July 26th at 7:00 p.m. in the Library Program Room A. The agenda is published, but I don’t see it online yet. We will be meeting to examine two changes to Council policy and to form recommendations for the full Council. The first regards the qualification requirements for members of the Arts Commission. The second is to draft the mandate for the still-to-be-formed Sustainability Commission. This is a public meeting, so all are welcome to attend and comment.
Don Weden, retired Santa Clara County planner, is giving his presentation, “Cities for all Ages” this Thursday in Council chambers at 6:30 p.m. I heard him speak on this topic last year, and it was one of the best discussions of sustainability, urban planning, and changing demographics that I’ve attended (so I’m attending again). If you care about the direction Sunnyvale is (or should be) heading in, I strongly encourage you to attend.
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.
Very long evening. We finished about 12:30. And after all was said and done, we did indeed vote to endorse Prop. 15.
Some other stuff happened as well…
Seriously, it was a good evening, with frank discussion and a lot of stuff finally put out on the table after months of closed session meetings and a legal prohibition on public comment. It’s a big relief to be able to talk about a lot of it, starting with the Nokia news yesterday. So this entry is probably going to be pretty long.
We started with a special order of the day to recognize National Public Works Week. And we passed the consent calendar with no items pulled (although I had to abstain on the previous RDA minutes, which were for a meeting that took place before I was sworn in). Then it was on to discussion of the Downtown agreement.
We had a presentation from the City Attorney about the history of the project, the legal standing, the way we arrived at the proposed agreement, and the details of the agreement. We then had some pointed and not-so-pointed questions. Some of them (including mine) were not so much to inform ourselves, as to inform the public about subtle points that may not have been clear. Remember that we’ve been discussing this in closed session for weeks, leading up to this, so in most cases, the seven of us understand the high-level details inside and out. But it’s a complicated enough topic that most of the questions were genuine.
Let me start by providing an Cliff’s Notes overview and a description of the players in this. The previous development team was a joint venture between Sand Hill (the “developer” – the bulldozer people) and RREEF (the “financer” – the guys providing the money). The venture was named DSMU – Downtown Sunnyvale Mixed Use. They started the project, with hard deadlines and penalties, and they were actually a year ahead of schedule, before the economic disaster hit. At that point, RREEF didn’t have the money to keep paying Sand Hill to do work, so they said “OK, we’re done” and walked away, leaving a $108 million loan from Wachovia unpaid. As a minority member of DSMU, Sand Hill had little say. So Wachovia started a “friendly (uncontested) foreclosure”, and the court appointed Jerry Hunt and another gentleman whose name escapes me to be the Receiver – in charge of protecting the value of the asset. A company called Wilson Meany was chosen to provide industry advice to the Receiver. Since going into foreclosure, the Receiver has authorized some $30 million of additional improvements to the project, paid for by Wachovia, mostly to finish facades and seal up the project. They didn’t have to do this – they could have slapped a giant plastic bag over the thing and left it at that. But they chose to keep working on the project.
The Receiver wants to take the project out of foreclosure, so that Wachovia can sell the project and recoup some of its lost investment in the loan that is in default. But no development team will buy the project until an updated agreement with the City is in place – they would be blindly accepting unknown terms that the City may try to impose, and that’s just not going to happen. So the Receiver wanted a signed agreement before taking the project out of foreclosure. The City, on the other hand, wants to know who will be doing the work and when they will finish it. Competing interests. That’s what got us to the tentative agreement last night.
First. we had a presentation from Jerry Hunt, the court-appointed Receiver of the project. He talked about the status of the project (much of what I just said), what they wanted, and what pressures they were operating under. The elephant in the room is Nokia. They want to make the new Downtown their consolidated home, moving people from multiple cities in Northern California (Mountain View, Redwood City, and others) all into the Sunnyvale Downtown. The challenge is that they want to do this by December of this year, and while they have signed a lease, they won’t start the moving process, and the Receiver won’t authorize the final work on Nokia’s office building, until there’s a signed development agreement in place. And without something in place very quickly, they’re prepared to walk away – possibly to Moffett Towers, possibly to a different city altogether.
So Council was left with three choices:
That was the framework of last night’s discussion. While we could have accepted a modified agreement (and there was an attempt to do exactly that), the Receiver was under no obligation to agree to it, and the end result would probably have been the same as rejecting the deal and returning to negotiations.
There were two additional points worth noting. First off, we were not selecting a developer. While we have a veto in the ultimate choice, the bank will get to select who makes the most attractive offer, and it will put that developer forward for our approval. It’s their loan and their property. Second, the modified agreement included virtually no changes to the actual layout and physical appearance of the proposed Downtown. There are some minor changes. “Block 6″, which was going to be a multi-story parking lot, will initially be a ground-level parking lot, and its final disposition is still TBD. And the movie theater, which was initially going to be a second-story facility, is now a first-story facility. Those were the only really noteworthy physical changes to the project.
It’s also worth noting the process for this. Litigation and contractual negotiations are legally required to be done in closed session, simply because the City cannot hurt its own interests by discussing negotiating strategy in public – where the other side can listen in. So we’ve spent months going back and forth with the Receiver over deal points and contractual issues. It only came to the public hearing once we resolved all sticking points. So to an extent, this was nothing more than a public ratification of what we’d already agreed to – although we weren’t bound by anything yet. But the seven of us could have freely backed out of the deal, if that’s what we decided was best for the City.
Personally, I came into this listening for three things. 1) Have circumstances changed since we started this process, in such a way that the deal needs to be changed? 2) Did our negotiators strike a tentative deal that fell within the parameters we defined? And 3) did any member of the public point out any aspect, any detail, or any consideration that I hadn’t considered well enough and that warranted further consideration? Most of the aspects of the deal points had been discussed to death, and regardless of what concerns I may have expressed in the closed session, this is the direction that Council had chosen in closed session.
Anyway, more discussion. There was really only two types of feedback we received. One was from a number of Murphy merchants who felt blindsided by the lack of warning and opportunity for discussion. Some said they’d only had two days notice. I really regretted this, but it was somewhat the nature of the process. We couldn’t make them a part of the closed sessions. And Nokia’s schedule gave us a choice between seizing the Nokia opportunity or losing it and giving the Downtown merchants more involvement in the process. Given that Nokia will be providing the merchants with some 800 captive customers daily, I thought we were accommodating the Downtown merchants best by moving swiftly in this case. Additionally, since the amended agreement includes no real physical changes to the project, this is really just approving a project that they should already be familiar with. And we’re going to be working hard to walk the merchants through the amended agreement and make sure they understand all of it, going forward now. Under the circumstances, that’s the best we could hope for.
The second group was labor, who showed up to inform us that the construction industry is suffering 30-40% unemployment right now, and to tell us that it was important to them that we move forward on this quickly, to get people back to work. I knew things were particularly bad for that industry, but even so, the 30-40% number was a shock. My reaction to this was still somewhat mixed. I agreed with their sentiment that we need to move forward. Not only are they out of work, but existing merchants are in jeopardy of going under, the City isn’t receiving expected sales tax revenue, and City services are being cut. So there are many reasons to get the Downtown up and running as quickly as possible.
But the goal isn’t “finish the Downtown quickly” – it’s “get the Downtown up and successful as quickly as possible”. A completed but empty Downtown certainly helps the construction industry, but it doesn’t help the existing merchants, and it doesn’t help the City. So there’s a balance that we’re aiming for.
There was a third speaker element present – Peter Pau and representatives from Sand Hill, the former developer. They still want to finish the job they started, and it’s clear they feel strongly about this. They were worried that the City or the Receiver would craft an agreement that puts them at a disadvantage in some way. They believe their greatest asset is their ability to start and finish the job quickly. That’s probably appealing to the City, but it may be a non-factor for the Receiver, whose goal is to get the best possible offer for the project. I and others asked some pointed questions of the Receiver about this – what happens when the best offer is from a developer who is going to sit on the project for quite a while, as compared to the second-best offer? And I still don’t think we got good answers to this. It’s one area where the City’s interest and the Receiver’s interest are not aligned.
The public comment period closed after about two hours, and we then had more questions. Here were the real issues that we faced:
There was an attempt to change the agreement to increase the importance of selecting a developer who can finish quickly – to make “timeliness” an even more important criteria than it already was. But that vote failed 2-5, largely because most of us felt that this was a breach of negotiating faith, plus a likely non-starter for the Receiver.
Then we had the final vote. And on a 6-1 vote, we agreed to the modified agreement.
As a result, the Receiver will start work on Nokia’s office space (which is already about 80% completed) quite literally today. I believe they said they expect to do about $6 million in additional work beyond the “interim improvements”, starting immediately. So downtown construction has already started. To be fair, since the bank has already done $30 million in work since beginning foreclosure, work really has been ongoing since this mess all started.
Let me try to describe how all of the pieces come together on this. We want the buildings finished and occupied by retail tenants ASAP. But retailers won’t sign leases in this market, certainly not “pre-leases” (leases for buildings that haven’t been finished). So we have incentivized this by placing a $5 million penalty for failing to meet a completion date, plus requiring quarterly progress reports. Any developer who comes in gets TIF (tax incentive money) for meeting certain milestones. We’ve required the new movie theater to be top priority, being finished by next year. And we’ve now brought in Nokia and its 800 workers, all of whom will need places nearby to eat, and all of whom would certainly shop right next to their offices more often than not. I believe we’ve created the strongest possible incentives for a developer to finish quickly, and the strongest possible incentives for a retailer to want to do business in the Downtown, given the economic conditions we’re in. And along the way, we’ve still got the exact same physical layout that we’ve already approved.
I feel very positive about this agreement. And I’m ecstatic that Nokia has chosen to move into the Downtown. I came out of this more optimistic about the Downtown than I’ve been in the past ten years.
Let me take a moment to say here that we have a really great team with our City Manager and City Attorney, and they did a very impressive job of bringing together three parties with different and sometimes competing goals. They put in very long hours over the past several months to make this happen, and I suspect more than anything, they’re responsible for Nokia being a player at all (which is a huge win and which I believe is a key element for the project being successful). It’s too early to start celebrating – we’re early in the process still. But we owe them a lot for the job they did on this.
We did have some other business…
At this point, Councilmember Swegles had to leave, because he wasn’t feeling well. Get better soon, Ron.
For item 2, we voted 4-2 to create a 5-person Sustainability Commission, meeting every other month, to advise council on best sustainability policy. Eligibility will be open to registered Sunnyvale voters, to holders of Sunnyvale business licenses, or to designated representatives from Sunnyvale companies with more than 200 employees, with at least one of the five seats occupied by a business representative. And Council will review the commission in two years to determine if the number of commissioners, the frequency of meetings, or other factors should be modified. There was some debate about whether we need a commission (policy advice) or a committee (operational advice). I’ve always believed that we need policy advice, because 1) the City’s operations only affect about 5% of the City’s resources and carbon footprint, 2) Staff does a pretty good job at finding best practices – once they’ve been given the direction, and 3) what is really missing is policy advocacy. Policy has to come from Council or commissions, and lacking a commission, policy has so far occurred only when someone’s managed to put a bug in a councilmember’s ear. By creating a commission, we institutionalize sustainability policy advocacy, which I think is the most important goal.
Item 3 was to conduct a required protest hearing to reauthorize the Sunnyvale Downtown Business Improvement District (BID). It sailed through with few comments or questions on a 6-0 vote.
Item 4 was to study changing the general plan to rezone property on De Guigne from industrial to industrial-to-residential with some unknown density. There was a fair bit of discussion about Sunnyvale’s housing needs, the appropriateness of the density (and housing) in this location, and other planning concerns. In the end, we approved the study, on a 5-1 vote (I think).
Item 5 was related, to rezone property on Duane from high-density to medium density. Not as much discussion, because 4 and 5 were linked, and most of the discussion happened earlier. This one was approved on a 6-0 vote.
At this point, it was after 11:00, and we rearranged the agenda, postponing 6 until the next meeting, and taking 9 next (because we had speaker cards for it).
Item 9 was to consider the City’s position on June ballot measures, with staff recommending the city support Prop 13 (seismic retrofit issues) and oppose Prop 16 (PG&E’s attempt to create a power monopoly by forcing jurisdictions to get 2/3 approval before doing their own power). The rest were deemed to not be city business. We did vote to support 13 and oppose 16, with virtually no discussion. They’re slam-dunks, and in particular, 16 is just evil. Worse for me personally, PG&E is trying to sell 16 by telling voters “you can’t trust elected officials to do their jobs right!”, which is just personally offensive – as if instead, we should trust a company that can’t even bill their customers properly.
But the real discussion was whether or not to endorse Prop. 15, which is a two-election trial of public financing of the Secretary of State race. Council was divided, in part whether it was a good idea and in part whether it’s City business. The vote ended up being 3-2 with 1 abstention, which created a 15-minute discussion about whether or not the vote had passed. The “3″ said “an abstention means ‘not even a body present for voting’, therefore there was majority approval”, and the “2″ said “an abstention still counts towards the voting body, therefore there wasn’t a majority approval”. After some research, the City Attorney confirmed that abstaining members do not count towards the voting body – it’s as if they left the dais and weren’t present. Therefore, the vote passed.
That was a tough one for me. I’ve personally endorsed 15. I think it’s a good experiment, it’s only for one statewide race for two elections, and it’s designed to be revenue-neutral. The question for me was whether 15 is city business. In the end, I decided that as a city, we’re increasingly hurt by the Sacramento gridlock that creates really bad budget decisions. And that gridlock is largely because special interest tends to foster safe, partisan seats (on both side) and discourage moderates who are willing to compromise. And Sunnyvale is better served (and, more important, harmed less) by a more effective Sacramento. So I supported it, and I suspect I was the swing vote, since the other two were firmly committed to it.
Item 7 involved approving a consolidated plan and action plan for CDBG and related expenditures, which passed 6-0 with little or no discussion.
Item 8 was to appoint someone to a Santa Clara County Cities’ Association spot, and we voted 6-0 to authorize Mayor Mel to make the appointment, which she promptly did (Otto).
That’s mostly it. Very long meeting with some interesting points. Really good news on the Downtown, I believe.
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.
Here’s a copy of the announcement, modified a bit by me:
Sunnyvale Community Award Nominations
Each year, the City of Sunnyvale honors exceptional members of the Sunnyvale Community. The City has opened nominations for this year’s awards, which will be presented at the mayor’s State of the City celebration, Sunday, July 4 at Washington Park. This year’s prestigious awards include:
Distinguished Resident of the Year
Outstanding High School Senior of the Year
Outstanding Community Volunteer of the Year
Outstanding Businessperson of the Year
Outstanding Educator of the Year
Outstanding Environmental Achievement
Outstanding Contribution to the ArtsNomination forms are available for download at StateoftheCity.inSunnyvale.com. Following the nomination period, which closes Friday, May 7, at 5 p.m., a committee chosen by Sunnyvale Mayor Melinda Hamilton will select the award recipients.
A committee chosen by Sunnyvale Mayor Melinda Hamilton will select the award recipients. A permanent display for the annual community award winners has been installed outside the doors leading into Council Chambers. In addition, the permanent Distinguished Citizen of the Year award plaque has been relocated from the One-Stop lobby to the community awards display cabinet.
Forwarding an opportunity for folks to get involved:
Media Contact: Christine Dunn, 650.508.6238
Caltrain Seeks Community Volunteers for Advisory Committee
The Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board is seeking applicants for its Citizen Advisory Committee to represent San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The CAC is comprised of nine volunteer members, who serve in an advisory capacity to the board of directors, providing input on the needs of current and potential rail customers.
Applicants must be residents of one of the three counties, and applications are due by 5 p.m., Monday, May 10. The CAC meets the third Wednesday of each month at 6 p.m. in San Carlos, just one block from the San Carlos Caltrain Station. All meetings are open to the public.
Caltrain operates 90 trains each weekday between San Francisco and San Jose, with commute-hour service to Gilroy, and hourly weekend service between San Francisco and San Jose. Last year, Caltrain carried nearly 12 million riders, and currently it carries an average weekday ridership of more than 40,000.
Interested persons can obtain an application at www.caltrain.com or by calling 650.508.6223.
Decisions are made by those who show up…
I received my Census form, filled it out, and promptly sent it in, like a good boy. And then I was surprised to receive a second Census form late last week. A blog post cleared it up. Apparently, the Feds sent out 40 million duplicate forms to regions of the country that had the lowest response rates in the 2000 Census, in an effort to improve the response rates in those areas. Sounds like we’re one of those regions.
And just a reminder – if you haven’t filled out your Census form, please take the time to do so. Not only does it save our federal government money, but it means more funding for schools and local services, so it really matters.