Interesting night. We start the evening with a closed session regarding the ongoing negotiations with the Sunnyvale Employees Association (SEA). We then have a couple of board and commission interviews, and it’s on to the general meeting. First up is the swearing in of our newest Personnel Board member.
FollowA very long night for some of us, but an interesting one. We started with a closed session regarding the downtown. Again, sorry I can’t say much.
We then went to an extended joint study session with the Board of Library Trustees to discuss the future of the library and the civic center. In brief, here are the issues. The Sunnyvale library is seriously inadequate to serve residents’ needs, and we would need to double the existing library space (through a bigger main, one or more branches, or both) just to match the service levels that the other cities in the county currently support. Some of our library’s service levels are even beneath the statewide average. The civic center is likewise in need of repair or replacement. The “rabbit hutches” (next to the library) are obsolete and increasingly unsafe, to the point where it’s been recommended that we just bulldoze them. City Hall is inadequate to support our staffing needs. For instance, we have a very small legal staff, yet they’re situated in different portions of the building. HR and Community Services are located in the rabbit hutches instead of with the rest of staff. Communications and the City Clerk are off in buildings that were originally intended to be temporary but have effectively become permanent.
A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that Silicon Valley is the hottest job market in the country right now.
Many of us didn’t need the report to know that’s true. Tech companies are hiring like mad, and they’re expanding their operations to match. Anecdotal evidence says that Sunnyvale is at the center of the region’s job growth – its vacant office space has plummeted from near 30% to single digits in just the past year and a half, with office development applications setting a record pace so far this year. Cities like Mountain View, Cupertino, and Palo Alto don’t have much available space, making Sunnyvale the focus of corporate expansions, and we’ve seen Google, Apple, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, NetApp, Juniper, and Amazon all grabbing available Sunnyvale office space and even building new space.
The city has issued a traffic advisory that CalTrans will be resurfacing southbound El Camino Real from Lawrence to 85 from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. on weekday nights starting in late August and lasting some 90 days. CalTrans expects to address the northbound lanes in the summer of 2013.
The press release for this has not gone up on the city website, but I’m sure it will be there shortly.
The company which operates the restaurants at both Sunnyvale golf courses has suddenly ceased operations, and both restaurants closed down today. As of right now, there are no food services at either golf course. The city is actively working to identify a new operator and restore food services at both golf courses.