Jim's Sunnyvale Blog | Former Sunnyvale Mayor Jim Griffith

7/16/2013 Council Preview

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Jim Griffith

Possibly a short night, as a result of staff splitting one long meeting into two meetings, at the urging of a couple of people.

We start the evening by going straight to the general session. Note that Councilmember Whittum is teleconferencing once again, meaning all of the votes will be voice votes ordered by random draw. I haven’t talked about this in a while, so I’ll explain. We cannot do electronic votes by teleconference, they have to be voice votes. The advantage to an electronic vote is that the votes are secret and simultaneous, which prevents councilmembers from playing games by seeing how other people vote and responding accordingly. That possibility exists with a voice vote, so to minimize it and make it more fair, the voice votes are requested in random order.

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LinkedIn (Not Apple) Taking Old Post Office Space

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Jim Griffith

The Silicon Valley Business Journal is reporting that (surprise!) LinkedIn, and not Apple, is taking the new five-story office building at Mary and Maude, the former site of the Sunnyvale main post office. This building is very close to the new campus that LinkedIn is already building at Maude and Mathilda, so the location works well for LinkedIn.

Water Pollution Control Plant Tour August 3rd

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Jim Griffith

If you’re looking for a fun way to spend a Saturday, the City of Sunnyvale will be holding a tour of the Water Pollution Control Plant on Saturday, August 3rd from 9-11 A.M. It’s a great experience, and I highly recommend it. There are a limited number of spaces, and you can RSVP by calling (408) 730-7717 or emailing wpcp@sunnyvale.ca.gov.

Silicon Valley’s Permanent Patent Office Dead – For Now

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Jim Griffith

The Silicon Valley Business Journal is reporting that the General Services Administration has cancelled the process for procuring a lease for a permanent patent satellite office in Silicon Valley.

This is an unfortunate side effect of the federal sequester process, and it’s one that’s totally unnecessary in the case of the USPTO. The sequester locks the various federal departments into budgets that were defined years ago, and it doesn’t permit those departments from deviating from those budgets. I’ve mentioned this before, and many departments are struggling to survive due to some really stupid effects of this. For instance, NASA is having problems because their budget is locked into one that existed when the space shuttles were still operating. So its budget has a huge pot of money for shuttle operations that no longer exist – money that NASA can’t touch, leaving it with insufficient money budgeted for its R&D efforts and no ability to rearrange their spending priorities under sequester rules.

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7/9/2013 Council Preview – Park Naming and Prometheus Project

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Jim Griffith

This is shaping up to be a pretty simple meeting.

We start the evening with a study session in Chambers to discuss the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Apple Campus 2. There should be a lot of interest in that item.

Then comes the regular session. No special orders or presentations, but there’s a decent consent calendar – purchase of a street sweeper and the asphalt for road repair for the next year, a tweak to council policy regarding gift limits, and the second reading of our changes to the sign ordinances.

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