For those of you who missed it, Sunnyvale got a brief mention in a recent article from The Onion…
FollowOver the next week, Caltrain will be laying down fiberoptic cable along its tracks as part of its modernization efforts. Sunnyvale residents near the tracks may experience some late-night disturbances. The specific times are Saturday November 2nd from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and Tuesday November 5th through Thursday November 7th from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. You can read the full press release here. The work primarily involves trenching and boring efforts, depending on the location.
This is part of an effort to implement the Communications Based Overlay Signal System (CBOSS) Positive Train Control (PTC) Project. This is a train safety system that will become more necessary if Caltrain is to share tracks with both freight traffic (already using the tracks) and high-speed rail. The plan is to install a fiberoptic network alongside the track which has sufficient bandwidth to not only handle CBOSS PTC network traffic, but also provide additional capacity for future Caltrain needs and possibly even capacity for commercial resale, as a revenue source for Caltrain.
Wednesday night, I was honored to be awarded Environmentalist of the Year by the California League of Conservation Voters. The award was specifically given for my work on advancing single-use bag policies and banning expanded polystyrene food containers (capped off by Tuesday’s Council vote to enact the ban in Sunnyvale on Earth Day, 2014).
Big agenda, lots going on.
No study or closed sessions, so we get right into it. We start by recognizing Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The consent calendar is big – a couple of issues regarding the city’s investments, a couple of grant approvals, contracts involving library acquisitions, water meters, public safety equipment, and a design contract for the WPCP, second reading of the Peery Park ordinance, and a resolution involving ongoing maintenance of the old Sunnyvale Landfill. Then we get into it.
Yesterday, the Sixth District Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 in favor of Wells Fargo in an appeal filed by Peter Pau regarding the Town Center receivership. Pau had claimed that the bank’s actions to appoint a receiver and perform a receiver sale were not proper. When the trial judge ruled against Pau, he appealed, and his appeal has now been tossed out.
This is only a minor victory towards the legal resolution of the Town Center, and it hopefully ends one of the independent legal threads that Pau has spun off in his efforts to block progress (although this ruling can also be appealed to the State Supreme Court). Two other appeals continue. [Note that I previously said that oral arguments on the main one were recently heard – the oral arguments in question actually involved this appeal. I apologize for the error – Jim]
This is definitely a “two steps forward, one step back” situation, unfortunately.