Wheels and Deals still spinning

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

Taking on a City council

There is a group of residents in Santa Clara that have actually consolidated themselves enough and stirred up enough debate and interest that last election they had an issue that concerned them go on he Ballot.  This group gathered enough signatures to ensure residents could be well informed.

Of course once you join the ranks of politicians you need to be aware that there are ways to write a ballot or referendum and there are ways not to write one.  Unfortunately for this group that was the case plus the challenge always is who has more money.  When a developer can out run you in advertising and can out do you in finances your really hoping that your appeal is landing on the right doorstep.  I guess in this case voters didn’t quite see the issue like many who were against it.  For the record I was against the Barec improvements as per the developer and this is before I got involved with going to council meetings and learning about what is really happening in our city.  Having said that I see now that the Save Barec organization has taken legal action against the city for the inaccurate EIR (environmental impact report) that the city accepted to be true and allowed that study to influence the new zoning on Barec and gave the developer the go ahead to build.

I wonder how this action will then affect other projects on the Santa Clara City Council Books – such as the Marina Playa, Fairfield Residential and the proposed Santa Clara Square.  Certainly the Marina Playa EIR should be reviewed again and action should be considered because if you look at that EIR and the subsequent CIty Council Meeting where that was accepted there is a major FLAW in the traffic report.  That report was out dated and inaccurate and what’s more according to residents around that neighborhood many accidents are or were not reported in that study.  Who is lying?  The residents that live there or the people who did the study who don’t live in the city?  I can see the scales tipping here.

I hope for the sake of residents of Santa Clara that this Barec court case shakes the city managers and councilors into some sort of acceptance that “something is not right”.  I hope the Barec action is the start of residents holding our elected officials and their staff accountable for their actions.  For too long it occurs to me that the city is bowing to developers and bank balances that look bigger than mine.  Yet my bank balance allows me to reside in Santa Clara - it doesn’t give me the privilege to own property in lets say Los Gatos, Morgan Hill or Gilroy.  Oh well I guess I better get back to the grind where I belong … isn’t that right just a working class resident.  No privileges here, no family members, no long time ties to the city, no who do I know connections …. just middle class schmucks who have an opinion.

 

©Letters From Silicon Valley 2008

Santa Clara General Plan – EIR

I note with delight that the City of Santa Clara is going to hold more discussion about the Santa Clara General plan.  Yahhooo – does it mean that the city is going to listen to it’s residents?

On August 4th the General Plan will in part look at EIR – says the link. 

What’s an EIR – Environmental Impact Report – so it’s a report that in part is just a report that is out there and gets ‘tagged’ to all new developments by developers.  In an EIR you will read about traffic issues, how a new building will affect the surrounding businesses, buildings, schools etc.  But some of the reports within the EIR are already outdated.  Imagine on one of the more recent approved city projects the Marina Playa project the EIR discussed traffic issues around that complex from the year 2000 – that’s 8 years old information.

Wow 8 year old information!  How can we honestly say that we can be guided by such outdated and old information?  Yet the city does this on a regular basis.  And when residents inform the city and reporters that the information is old or that they have witnessed the information in the reports not to be true it all falls on deaf ears.

If this meeting the Santa Clara General Plan is setting up allows us as regular citizens that live in the city - then I recommend you be there or be square.  Find out how your thoughts, actions and commitment to your city can make a difference.

There will also be a survey posted at the end of all these general discussions.  Will we see the negative comments along with the positive comments?  I ask this as there are some general plan documents already floating around that only give the ‘brighter’ ‘happier’ ‘positive’ comments about Santa Clara and their Staff.

Speaking of Staff and the general plan – do you think perhaps staff should live in the city?  Wouldn’t that be beneficial to the residents.  Employees who live and work in the city would perhaps understand the residents issues.  And isn’t that the intent of the Planning Commissioners idea to increase housing in the city – have people work and live in the city.  Which brings up a Question – do the City Planners, Managers and senior appointments live and work in the city?  Just curious.  And if they do that’s GREAT – perhaps we could ask that the developers come and live in our city for a year as well. 

If city planners do not live in the city fulltime – perhaps residents could make this a request and requirement of future paid employees that their taxes support.

 

©Letters From Silicon Valley 2008

Developers who donate

It’s well know that many of the major developers work their magic by getting their developments accepted at planning and city council by donating to the council.  Donations are varied as I see it.

You have the donation to the cities capital fund for projects like, parks and recreation, sewers, roads.  You know something that the city feels needs to be addressed – that’s probably why Santa Clara and Dominic Caserata can say we don’t have a pothole in Santa Clara.  The city gets the developers to contribute towards the ‘pothole’ fund.  It’s worth noting that Fairfield Residential has not contributed to the ‘pothole’ fund as yet but I’m sure they will find the appropriate ‘pothole’ – personally if I was them I would make a contribution to the largest ‘pothole’ the ‘International Swim Center’ I’m sure Mrs Mahan would love that being built in her time perhaps they could even call it the Mahan Swim Center?  Though in my humble opinion it should be the Mark Spitz Swim Center given he really ‘begun’ his career in that very swim center.  And Mark is a one of my favorite swimmers – along with a bunch of great Aussie Atheletes, Gould, Thorpe, Fraser, Rose, Perkins and the wonderful gentle giant Klim!  But Mark had the guts to state what he wanted and win the gold everytime.  He also is someone you can look up to – he managed to win all those medals during a very difficult and trying game.  To understand these games read this at wikipedia. 

A second way Developers donate to cities is to make part of their plans is to build affordable housing in the development.  So for instance in the million dollar plus development on Prunridge and Lawrence that boasts Cupertino schools. Also known as the Enclave there are four units in there that are not as large or expensive that have been made available through a system to those that could not afford to normally buy into an area like that.  Great concept – something that the Dutch have done for years – nothing new.  But what does annoy me is that the developers have this hoity toity attitude that they are doing us all a favor – what a lie.  The council deems it part of the agreement to build and the average joe blow knows that the developer factors in the cost of everyone of those units into the bottom price of the other units so the middle class Joe blow pays for this puppy.  Give me a break I wasn’t born yesterday.   One way the developers look better to the council is that instead of giving the minimum per cent in affordable housing they give more so instead of say 10% they give 15% – how sweet is that?  Sweet to whom? 

The third way they give money is to pay for different city councilmen/women’s political campaigns – legal donations to campaigns.  Ask Mr Caserta he knows how that works – and then ask him how he voted on each and everyone of those developments of the developers that supported him.  I’m sure as we go into an election this year we might see developers supporting other city council candidates.  Oh and developers are tricky – to deflect the controversy over this they get company individuals to donate.  Heck that’s totally legal right – so if you have a big family – say you are one of 100 family members – each member gives the minimum dollar amount which let’s say is $100 you now have 100×100 – you do the math!  Then when you look at the list of who contributed and you see $100 from every Wong or Smith – you know why.  What’s worse is that that same city council member now does not excuse themself from the vote on that development.  That’s just WRONG and STINKS in my book.  I wonder if I were to get 1000 voters to campaign against high rise development and each of them to ‘pay’ oops I mean donate towards a council persons campaign could I now ’sway’ their vote?  hmmm food for thought – no that just smells of good old fashioned bribery.  Doesn’t it to you?

Meanwhile I came across this article in one of the Australian Newspapers on line – the Developers are now saying that they feel the controversy of supporting political campaigns.  The public is creating a back lash against the developer and they are feeling the heat and the developers are not going to fund political campaigns.  About time – I think developers should be held accountable for their actions and that citizens should start to question their involvement in city politics.  Good for the Aussie developers for taking the lead – I predict the same will start to happen here.  Developers should rightly keep their money and their nose our of politics and do what they said they would do develop.  As it’s been said to me many times – the developer comes, makes a mess in a city and then leaves.  Leaving the havoc and the mess to those that now live in the city to clean up.  A lot of this mess is because they think they are doing great things but never really look at the bigger picture.  Here is the article.

 

PS Fairfield Residential if you are looking to ‘donate’ to Santa Clara City Council ‘pothole’ fund I recommend $400,000 because that’s how short the city was in rebuilding the Swim Center and as a result the project got shelved another year! And we all know by next year that $400K will be $600K!

 

©Letters From Silicon Valley 2008