I will be holding my next Sunnyvale Town Hall Meeting on Saturday June 14th at the Fair Oaks Park building from 3-5 p.m. We’ll start by discussing the proposed budget and potential changes to city services, and then we’ll go on to whatever topics people want to discuss. As usual, light refreshments will be served. I hope to see you there!
Last night, we held a study session on the infamous “Balanced Growth Profile” (BGP), which has been widely misunderstood, and which is frequently used to say things about Sunnyvale that simply aren’t true. This study session was triggered when the Planning Commission mistook the BGP as actual city policy and wanted to use it in evaluating projects, something that was never intended when it was created. It was useful to have staff run through what the BGP does and doesn’t mean. I can’t hope to duplicate the entire study session here, but I’ll call out some of the highlights.
Gonna be a long one. We start the evening with a study session to go over the Balanced Growth Profile, a community conditions indicator that is widely misunderstood. So that should be interesting.
The consent calendar is huge this week – 1A through 1Q. We’ve got a new five-year agreement with the Friends of the Sunnyvale Public Library. There are a bunch of contracts, including planning for the refurbishing of the Community Center, two involving the Water Pollution Control Plant, rehabilitation of one of our storm pump stations, rehabilitation of one of our big water tanks, and purchasing additional paving materials. There are grants related to Common Core materials for the library, handling of household hazardous waste, and NOVA funding. We’re approving the HOME loan for the Armory housing project. We’re appointing new NOVA boardmembers. And there’s the second reading of our stadium parking ordinance.
Sunnyvale 8th grader Swapnil Garg from Cupertino Middle School won the 2014 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS National Competition in Florida today, outperforming 224 students from across the nation. Swapnil was also one of four members of the First Place Team, which included students from The Harker School in San Jose, Fisher Middle School in Los Gatos, and my own Harvest Park Middle School in Pleasanton. Swapnil won a $20,000 scholarship for individual first place, a $2,000 scholarship for team first place, and a trip to U.S. Space Camp in Alabama.
Most impressive, Swapnil won the individual competition without ever using pencil and paper. Congratulations, Swapnil!
There’s a fair bit of stuff leading up to the general business tonight. We start the evening with a closed session regarding public safety procedures for Council. This is followed by a joint study session with the BPAC regarding city standards for sidewalks.
The Lakewood Elementary School Color Guard will lead us in the Pledge, which carries into our special order, the annual public safety awards. This is always fun. We recognize DPS staff who have rendered extraordinary service in the past year, as well as civilians who have participated in public safety incidents.
The consent calendar only has one extra item, since we just met last week – relinquishment of parking easements and addition of a new easement regarding the new day care facility on Pastoria, which we approved last week.
Item 2 involves an update to the city’s green building standards. I’m getting the sense that this one may get put off, because of concerns about whether or not the city did sufficient outreach before bringing this forward. We’ll see what staff says.
Item 4 is our quarterly consideration of general plan amendment study requests, and we only have one. We previously started a GPA study for an 800-unit apartment complex on the Spansion site on DeGuine, but the applicant withdrew his request before it could be finished, and the project went away. A new developer is pursuing a different project of 521 owner-occupied units, and the developer is requesting a GPA study. This has been a difficult site, because of issues with soil contamination and challenges fulfilling the city’s expectation for open space. The city very much wants more park space in this area, and we’ve asked for land for a park in the past, but the contamination creates issues. So the developer is asking the city to take fees in lieu of park space. And staff is taking no position, leaving the question to Council.
Item 5 involves approving our annual Housing and Urban Development plan, to maintain our eligibility for CDBG funds.
And item 6 has us looking at new city ordinances to deal with the stadium parking issues that we expect will come to Sunnyvale.
That’s about it.
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