This Tuesday Night August 26 at 7pm the City of Santa Clara will be meeting and discussing the proposed building of 60 condo units at the former Wheels and Deals site.  Once again local residents are asking other residents to get the word out to have people come to the city council meeting and share their disappointment in how the city is planning our city. 

No-one can dispute the fact that Santa Clara is a mix of styles.  In fact I would hasten to say there seems to be no consistency or thought in creating uniformity.  You drive down El Camino in Sunnyvale and there is definate thought and similarity in the building styles even the older and the newer ones.  You get to Santa Clara and it’s wow baby what happened here.  Maybe it’s because in Sunnyvale they cover their building frontage on El Camino with wonderful trees, who knows.  Or maybe it’s because Sunnyvale doesn’t have a bunch of El Cheapo Motels, or Contempory Book stores!  I love the fact that the city advocates us shopping in our city – I think I would no more want to die and go to heaven before I stepped into one of these establishments to increase SC’s tax base.  Who comes to these stores?  Perhaps we need to really find out and do some surveys.  

In Santa Clara it’s all awash and here again with the proposed building of 60 units on the former Wheels and Deals site no thought … or consessions on the cities part.  Yeh let’s just let developers shadow backyards of the neighbors – after all the city already have their dollars – and let’s do one better let’s force them to never be able to move after all who is going to want to buy a house that has a back yard in full shade 365 days of the year?  To learn more about what their residents are saying read their blog.

They even recommend residents writing to the city managers and council people with your concerns about how the planning of Santa Clara is going – after all it may not be your back yard at the moment that is affected but who is to say it won’t in time, given the lack of consideration for local residents.  Or are you going to have the NIMBY attitude (not in my back yard) – I hope not, we all have to learn to share, that’s a mothers favorite catch cry – so help support these people and when it comes your turn for assistance regarding the ways of planning I’m sure they will be there for you too!  So if you can’t join residents on Tuesday night – why don’t you send the Mayor a letter - or one of the other council people.  It’s an election year they might respond!  I know of one city council person who has door knocked in our area.  She came around yesterday – good for Jamie McLeod showing residents that she wants to know what is on the residents mind.  I’ll let you know if any other council people drop by as we have plenty of registered voters in our neck of the woods.

 

©Letters From Silicon Valley 2008