Jim's Sunnyvale Blog | Former Sunnyvale Mayor Jim Griffith

08/12/2014 Council Preview – Temporary Homeless Shelter

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Jim Griffith

Long night ahead. We start the evening with a closed session regarding ongoing labor negotiations with the Sunnyvale Managers Association (SMA). This is followed by a study session on council protocol and efficiency. I’m not exactly sure where this study session is going to head, because different councilmembers have different expectations about what is to be accomplished. We’ll see.

The consent calendar is typical – a library grant, contracts for the sewer system and for toxicity testing, the quarterly investment report, giving BAWSCA authority to negotiate our SFPUC water rates, and appointments to NOVA.

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07/29/2014 Council Preview – Homestead/Canary Appeal

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Jim Griffith

Looks to be a relatively short general meeting. We start the evening with a closed session regarding ongoing labor negotiations with the Sunnyvale Managers Association and SEIU 521. Then we get to business.

The general meeting starts with a special order of the day recognizing National Safe Digging Day. There is a nationwide emphasis on what’s called “call before you dig” services. This is a free service offered by utility companies to mark the presence of underground utilities before doing any sort of digging work. This prevents gas breaks and accidentally severing underground fiberoptic cable, both of which are extremely expensive and sometimes dangerous to deal with after a break has happened. Locally, I believe you can call 811 and the utilities will mark the relevant utilities within 24 hours of the phone call.

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07/15/2014 Council Preview

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Jim Griffith

Another diverse night.

We start the evening with a closed session regarding ongoing labor negotiations with two bargaining units, the Sunnyvale Managers Association (SMA) and SEIU 521 (largely the part-time employees). This is followed by a second closed session regarding the Google Fiber efforts.

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Sunnyvale’s History On Display At City Hall

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Jim Griffith

Our wonderful staff members have assembled a terrific photo history display of early Sunnyvale in the Council Conference Room in City Hall. If you’re in the neighborhood and bump into a councilmember, I’d encourage you to ask them to show it to you. For those of you who eschew visits to City Hall, I took some quick photos.

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Sunnyvale Ranked Among Top Recession-Recovered Cities In Nation

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Jim Griffith

And now a “good news” list. NerdWallet has assembled a list of the 510 largest cities in the US to determine which cities are the most improved since the recession in 2009, up until the 2012 stats that they used. Sunnyvale ranks #19 overall and #1 in California. The next CA city on the list was Pleasanton (where I grew up) at #37.

The factors that influenced our placement were a 21.33% drop in Sunnyvale’s unemployment over that period, a 15.99% increase in median household income, and a 4.24% increase in median home value. It would be interesting to see how we fare using current-day stats, since all three of those statistics have increased significantly since 2012 (particularly the median home value statistic).