Jim's Council Blog

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.

Wow. This meeting was so uneventful I almost forgot to post a summary. Sorry about that.

We started with our closed session regarding pending litigation, where, as usual, direction was given but no action was taken. Then we had a presentation from the Public Safety Officers Association (PSOA) to the Muscular Dystrophy Association of the proceeds from its annual “Pass the Boot” fundraiser. They stake out various Sunnyvale intersections during one day, then go from car to car with a firefighter’s boot, asking for donations to MDA. This year, they raised $31,395 for MDA. Nice job, guys.

After that, we had a presentation from the Leadership Sunnyvale Class of 2010. Every Leadership Sunnyvale class is required to do some sort of presentation or event as part of their commencement, and this year’s class created a presentation on their view of what Sunnyvale might be like 50 years from now. My favorite part was the “Rosenblum Public Library”…

Next, the consent calendar passed without comment, and there were no public announcements. During public comments, one speaker made rather pointed remarks about our previous action regarding the directly-elected mayor issue. Then it was on to the general business.

Item 2 looked at rezoning certain parcels on Mathilda between Maude and Central from industrial and service (M-S) to industrial and service/places of assembly (M-S/POA). The issue here was created when Council (before me!) rezoned a single parcel in that area to be M-S/POA in order to accommodate Trinity Church. Once that was done, it made the surrounding parcels much less viable as industrial spaces, due to concerns such as sensitive receptor issues. So the proposal was to rezone some of the adjacent properties to M-S/POA. But the City has on its plate a broad examination of all of the zoning in the Peery Park area, something that’s been delayed due to budget concerns. So there was a clear split between one faction saying “this should be examined as part of the big picture” and another faction saying “yeah, but it’s probably going to end up this way, and the study is delayed, let’s just pull the trigger”. Staff obviously saw both points of view, and the Planning Commission split 4-3 in favor of waiting for the Peery Park study. I’m very much in the “let’s plan this out” mindset, so I opposed the motion to rezone four parcels to M-S/POA, and I wasn’t alone. But the immediate rezoning passed 4-3.

I’m not particularly heartbroken to have lost – it was something of a coin flip for me, since I’m pretty sure those parcels would have ended up M-S/POA in the long run anyway. But it wasn’t good process, which always disappoints me.

Item 3 looked at rezoning a parcel on De Guigne from industrial (IND) to industrial-to-residential (ITRMED), at the request of the current owner, Spansion, who is probably looking to unload the property to a home developer. But prior to the meeting, Spansion asked to delay this until August 10th, so that the appropriate Spansion spokespeople could be there, and we agreed, on a 7-0 vote.

Item 4 involved placing three delinquent utility bills on the responsible parties’ tax rolls, which went through with virtually no pause on a 7-0 vote. Item 5 likewise involved placing delinquencies for those outside of the city limits who nevertheless use Sunnyvale’s utility services, on their tax rolls, and it went through on a 7-0 vote as well. And that was pretty much it.

We were in and out in about an hour and 10 minutes.

Just a note in closing. It may seem like I’m obsessed by time in all of these previews and summaries, but this has nothing to do with trying to get this done quickly. I’m a night owl by upbringing, and other than being uncomfortable with the burden on staff, I’m fine running into the late hours if that’s what’s needed to do the job right. But what I’ve found over the past many years of attending multiple cities’ council meetings is that with a well-run council meeting, time spent is a good gauge of the public interest in topics, the relative importance of topics to the city, or both. So for me, a long meeting indicates “something matters” and a short meeting indicates “housekeeping items”, and that’s what I’m trying to convey. That’s all.

Forwarding a news bulletin from the City:

Mathilda Avenue Lane Closures

On Friday, July 30, and Saturday, July 31, lanes of northbound Mathilda Avenue, north of McKinley Avenue and south of Washington Avenue will be temporarily closed for a large crane to perform work at the Town Center site. Beginning Friday, July 30, at 9:30 a.m., as many as three northbound lanes will be closed. Work is scheduled to be completed and lanes reopened by 2 p.m. Saturday.

This looks like a short and largely wonkish one.

We start with yet another closed session involving existing litigation. Then we go to open session, where the first item is a presentation from the Public Safety Officers Association to the Muscular Dystrophy Association – their proceeds from their annual “pass the boot” fundraiser.

Then we have a presentation from the 2010 Leadership Sunnyvale class. Every class is required to put together a presentation as part of their commencement, and this year’s class looked at their vision of Sunnyvale 50 years from now. I saw it at the commencement, and it’s a neat presentation, so I’m looking forward to seeing it again.

Then we have the consent calendar, which is almost all contract approval items, except for a second reading of an ordinance.

The first item of general business is a study regarding potential rezoning of certain areas in the Peery Park area to be Places of Assembly. This is largely a wonkish planning item, but it’s apparently one with some dissention, as the Planning Commission split on it.

Next up is a request to look into rezoning Spansion property from Industry (IND) to Industrial-to-Residential Medium Density (ITRMED), so the industrial property can be converted to residential. I don’t yet have a sense of this one, although we recently approved doing this to three other parcels in the immediate vicinity with some discussion and little dissent. It’ll all depend on the specifics of this particular one, I’m sure. It’d be nice to hear from some residents in the area to see what they think about this, one way or the other.

Item 4 is a required public hearing before possibly collecting on three specific delinquent utility bills through the tax roll. I believe this is an annual event, and the only comment I’ll make is that my property isn’t one of the three up for discussion.

Item 5 is a public hearing regarding wastewater charges for properties beyond the city limits, again an annual event.

And that’s it. A pretty straightforward, relatively non-controversial agenda, looks like. Of course, I’m usually wrong when I say that, so we’ll see on Tuesday night.

I’ve been following the Merc’s coverage of the problems in Sacramento and the way lobbyists have gained what many believe is too much influence in the way legislation is crafted.  It’s interesting, it’s disturbing, and it’s thought-provoking.

Most of that discussion really isn’t applicable to the city council level of government.  We’re not crafting ordinances like crazy, and we virtually never do so because of some interest group’s needs.  That’s just not a problem for us.  But a lot of the discussion has focused on the need for transparency, and it touched on the idea of elected officials publishing their calendars of meetings with individuals or groups.  That level of transparency is intriguing.  So I spent some time thinking about what it would mean if I kept and published a calendar of every meeting I have with stakeholders.  And for me, it raised three questions:

1. On a practical level, could I do it, by myself and without a staff, given the demands this job already places on me?
2. Would it cause stakeholders (specifically individual residents) to avoid meeting with me?
3. Would my constituents even care?

I don’t know if I even want to go down this path.  I’m not sure I meet with stakeholders enough (given that this is a part-time job) to make it worth pursuing. And as it is, when it does happen, we disclose such meetings before a vote anyway.  But I’d like to know what you folks think, particularly on points 2 and 3.

On another topic, I’ve been in this job for six months now, and I’m feeling fairly comfortable with the job’s requirements and the way I want to do the job.  We’ve gotten the budget squared away, and the downtown is progressing without the need for Council’s interference. So my next goal is to improve my own personal community outreach and to figure out exactly how best to stay in touch with all aspects of the community.  To that end, I’d like to identify and visit as many Sunnyvale groups (of any sort) that I can, to say hi, to learn about the groups, and just to find out what people think about the happenings in Sunnyvale.  No agenda, nothing to sell, let’s just get to know each other and share thoughts.  I’m going to approach a number of groups that I know of one-by-one, of course.  But if you belong to a group, club, HOA, or organization that has membership meetings, and if you think your members would be interested in having me show up, showing me what you do, and just chatting about Sunnyvale, drop me a line, and let’s set something up.

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.

Well.

That was interesting.

I’m still a bit grumpy from a long night, a contentious debate, and not much sleep recently, so I apologize in advance if that comes through in my post.

We started with a closed session regarding potential litigation, and all I can say is what was officially said – “direction was given but no action was taken”. More on this at a later date (maybe, maybe not). Councilmember Swegles attended both the closed session and subsequent Council meeting via teleconference (he’s in Michigan, still recuperating, but he’s starting to sound really good, and a lot better than he was at our last meeting).

Then we had a presentation on the 2-1-1 system and efforts to broaden its scope. 2-1-1 provides non-emergency information to callers, in an attempt to lessen the number of non-emergency calls that 9-1-1 gets, as well as to try and centralize available information as a public resource. There is a bill in Congress, HR211, sponsored by our own Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, that would expand the scope of 2-1-1 service, and the presentation made the convincing case that this is a necessary and good thing.

Then we had the general business. One item was pulled from the consent calendar – discussion of the City’s purchase of Director Lewis’ home. He will be retiring in February, he has a home loan through the city, he’s required to make good on the loan within 6 months of leaving, and his home is and will be under water. So he wants to simply have the city foreclose on it. Given the financial options available to us, doing so is actually the most fiscally sound approach, and we voted 7-0 to do so. The rest of the consent calendar passed without concerns, although Councilmember Whittum had to abstain on one item that involved property within 500′ of his home.

The first item of general business was yet another discussion of putting a directly-elected mayor initiative on the ballot. And the resulting discussion occupied the vast majority of the meeting. Nothing new was presented, although again there were multiple speakers opposing the notion and not a single speaker advocating for it. We then had three rounds of voting. In the first round, a motion was made to put forth a directly-elected mayor with 2 four-year terms and no timeout between time on Council and as Mayor. That was defeated 3-4, in part by people who don’t want to pursue this, in part by people uncomfortable with the notion of it being an end-run around term limits with the possibility of 16 years of continuous service.

So then a second motion was made to again have a two-term, 4-year term directly elected mayor, with some timeouts in between mayor and council service to prevent the argument of “end run around term limits” from applying. This again was defeated 3-4, again in part by people who don’t like the issue at all, and in part by people who didn’t like the specifics of the proposal. This one was even more difficult, because up until the last minute, there was a lot of tinkering with the specifics of the term limits and the timeout between service and so on, and I think it failed in no small part because the eventual proposal wasn’t really clear to everyone.

At this point, we seemed sort of deadlocked, with three members really wanting to pass something, three members really wanting to oppose this, and one member willing to support under certain circumstances. I didn’t see four votes to kill it, and it seemed like it was going to be impossible to get four members to agree on specifics to go forward. And it was increasingly clear to me that having seven of us up there trying to craft specifics of a charter amendment on the dais was either not going to work or was going to result in something bad. So I moved to place an item on an upcoming agenda to create a Charter Review Committee to look at this again and come back with specific proposals. And that passed after a little discussion 7-0.

This was extremely frustrating to me. Through three meetings, there was no support for this expressed by any member of the public – not a single person came to a meeting to say “this is a good thing”. This has been soundly and repeatedly rejected by the voters. This has been soundly and repeatedly rejected by Charter Review committees – as recently as three years ago. There is no reason to believe that voters want this and no evidence that putting this on the ballot is anything but a complete waste of time. In fact, there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.  And yet, we were still trying to advance the issue,   for no good reason (in my opinion) that was expressed by my colleagues. And the best I could do to resolve the situation was to kick it down the road even further. In this instance, we failed to govern well, and we’re not even done yet. I’m disappointed in the result, and I’m disappointed that I didn’t do a better job of trying to persuade my colleagues. But it is what it is.

Item 3 was consideration of an interim council appointment process. This was triggered from the experiences with appointing a replacement for Otto Lee when he was called up to active duty. I have to confess that I completely flipped on this issue over the past month, and I said as much last night. During Otto’s appointment, the statement was made repeatedly that Council could only appoint a replacement in the case of a reservist being called up. That’s never going to happen again, so I thought it was a complete waste of time to build a process around a non-event. So I opposed this study issue at every turn.  But in the past month, I took the time to more carefully look over the Charter, and it turns out that this is not the only time that Council may appoint an interim replacement. If a councilmember is involuntarily removed (death or removal from office) within six months of his term ending, the Charter requires Council to appoint a replacement within 60 days. And while another reservist being called up is extremely unlikely, there is a good chance that the involuntary removal case may happen in my lifetime. As soon as I realized that, I agreed that this needed to be fixed, so I tried to craft something that met everyone’s concerns, to make up for my past opposition. The biggest concern, expressed by members of the public repeatedly since Otto’s departure, was the need for an open and transparent process, so that’s what I focused on.

My colleagues let me take the lead on this one, and I proposed that we adopt an appointment process as close as possible to the appointment process for board and commission members, but with some specific differences. First, the Council interview process for interim councilmember candidates will include an opportunity for members of the public to ask questions of individual candidates, something that doesn’t happen with B&C appointees. Second, in the event that we have more than five applicants for a vacancy (something that’s extremely likely – I’d expect to have ten or twenty applicants for a Council vacancy), Council won’t use the normal voting process, but will instead use instant run-off voting, simply because resolving ties between ten or twenty votes is a nightmare, and it’s trivial with IRV. The direction was then for staff to return with a draft questionnaire for Council candidates, so that we’ve prepared that up front. Additionally, the situation will not be referred to as a “vacant seat” (which has a specific meaning in the charter) but rather as an interim appointment (I think that’s the term we used). And this passed with a little bit of discussion, 7-0.

One of the other considerations when this happens is the need to resolve the appointment quickly.  In the reserve case, there is no time limit, but in the involuntary removal case, we only have 60 days.  So as much as possible, we need to be able to pull the trigger on an appointment process as soon as it’s obvious one is needed.  I think we accomplished that.

I have to point out one thing here, which I pointed out before the vote.  In a way, the entire exercise was still pointless.  From a legal standpoint, for any Council policy, Council is free to change the policy, or simply disregard it, whenever it feels it is appropriate to do so.  So even though we created a policy, there’s nothing that prevents some council 20 years from now from completely ignoring it when the issue comes up.  But openness and transparency is best served when there is a policy in place, and, more important, when Council follows existing policy.  So even if some subsequent Council ignores what we did, we did the right thing in acknowledging that a problem exists and creating a policy to solve the problem.  So I’m happy with the result.

Item 4 was consideration of a monopine installation on Lockheed property.  This came to Council because the request was to exceed the 100′ limit by 12′ – something that’s OK to do, but which requires Council approval. There were some concerns expressed about health safety (not from RF, but from lead in the monopine materials) and about the testing of the emissions, and after they were answered, Council approved it on a 7-0 vote.

Item 5 involved approving a contract for an asset manager for our retiree medical trust.  That sailed through with almost no discussion on a 7-0 vote.

Item 6 involved approving the placement of outstanding administrative citations on the property tax rolls.  The need for this is fairly uncommon.  Most of the time, when the city issues citations, the recipients pay them, either immediately or after some discussion.  But occasionally we get someone who is just determined to ignore the citations.  And the alternative is to use a collection agency.  This is better for the city, so it passed on a 7-0 vote.

That’s mostly it.  We closed the meeting in memory of Nadine Malone, who was very involved in Sunnyvale’s history and who did a lot to help get the Heritage Park Museum up and running.  She passed away a couple of weeks ago.

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.

Map here.

The Merc just posted an article on Sunnyvale’s new Horizon Committee, talking about how it may influence statewide standards. Interesting read, and it’s nice to see that committee getting some of the attention that it deserves, given the importance of its mandate.

Note that it talks about Don Weden’s presentation (which is this Thursday) in the past tense, because it was clearly written for this week’s Sunnyvale Sun, which goes to print on Friday.

And I thought I’d blogged about Don’s presentation, but apparently I neglected to. Sigh.

Back from our long break. This might be a relatively short one, albeit interesting in a couple of places.

First, we have a closed session to discuss one case of potential litigation. We then have a presentation on the Santa Clara County 211 service, and then it’s on to the calendar.

The consent calendar looks fairly pro forma, mostly housekeeping. One item may attract some attention. Former Parks Director Dave Lewis is retiring, and he has a home loan through the city (as do several others), which he is required to make good on within six months of his departure. But at the point of his retirement, his home will still be under water. Dave is asking the city to take the property over, and Staff is recommending that we do this. It’s on the consent calendar because the takeover option is the one that minimizes the fiscal impact to the City, as Staff explains in detail.

Then we have the general business. Item 2 is continuation of the discussion of the directly-elected mayor issue (part 2 of the RTC here). My guess is that this will occupy the bulk of the night’s discussion.

Item 3 is discussion of creating a process for when Council needs to appoint an interim councilmember. This has been on the list of study issues for a while, becoming an issue after Council needed to appoint a replacement for Otto Lee during his reserve duty, and it’s finally coming forward for consideration. This will probably also involve some discussion.

Item 4 is a planning commission item, considerating installation of a monopine at Lockheed, always a fun discussion.

Item 5 is consideration of an agreement for a management contract for the employees’ medical trust, and I need to do a lot more reading before I can make any intelligent comments on this issue.

Item 6 is consideration of changes to improve on the City’s ability to collect on unpaid fines. Currently, we use a collection agency after a certain point, and staff is making the case that there may be a more effective way to collect on long-term problematic cases.

And that’s it. Some items of potential lengthy discussion and a fair bit of housekeeping