Here’s something that has slipped under the radar. The City is now providing audio recordings of all board and commission meetings. This started with the April Parks and Recreation Commission meeting, and all other commissions are being included as their meetings occur (with the exception of the Personnel Board, which has closed session requirements for many of hits hearings).
FollowThe Mercury News is reporting that major companies such as Google, Apple, and Intel have already pledged over $30 million to defray the regional costs for a potential Superbowl 50 in Santa Clara. These pledges would be used to deal with the practical impacts of hosting such an event, such as public safety, public works, traffic mitigation, public transit, and so on – money that cities and counties would otherwise have to absorb.
This is a huge accomplishment, since the bid committee set an initial goal of $25 million in fundraising, and the initial pledges topped that by over $5 million. And this isn’t money for pie-in-the-sky things – it’s money to pay for overtime for public safety officers, extra street cleaning, trash and landfill impacts, and other very real costs associated with so many people visiting the area. These very real costs will hit home for cities like Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, since we will bear the brunt of the impact of those service demands, so this commitment is a very big deal for us.
The NFL owners will decide on the location for SB50 on May 21st.
The City has issued a press release regarding the City Manager’s proposed FY 2013/14 budget. I’ll copy it here:
SUNNYVALE BUDGET DEFINES SOUND FISCAL POLICY COMMITMENT
Structural balance, optimal service levels, and sustainable financial future achieved with five key commitments
The Oakland Tribune and the San Jose Business Journal are both reporting that Twitter is establishing a presence in Sunnyvale for the first time, at the Sunnyvale Business Park located at California and Mathilda. This is an ideal location for a company like Twitter, because close proximity to Caltrain is hugely attractive to the company and its employees. You may recall that we approved construction of an additional new building on that site a few months ago. it’s unclear whether Twitter will be occupying that space or other space already available in the park.
NBC Bay Area has a piece on the new 3-D printer that the Sunnyvale Public Library has obtained, paid for by a federal grant. We’re the first library in the Bay Area to have one of these. Check out the video to see the doohicky in action. Very impressive, and I need to get myself a tour of it, post-haste.
The printer is kept in the library’s administrative area. Staff will review designs before submitting them, and staff controls access to the resulting product. So there are no worries about patrons using it to create inappropriate items.