December 26, 2017
Around midnight on December 12, 2017 the Mountain View City Council unanimously adopted the Residential Update to the North Bayshore Precise Plan. This visionary document is a key milestone in the transformation of one of the world’s most successful suburban office parks into a mixed-use, car-light, demographically diverse, multi-story collection of neighborhoods. In partnership with employers such as Google, developers such as Sobrato, and two school districts, Mountain View is setting a standard to which we hope other job-rich Silicon Valley cities will aspire.
Adoption of the plan culminates a three-year process of studies, workshops, and hearings that began with the 2014 election. It will take more hard work, public and private investment, and difficult decisions to turn this plan into a vibrant, sustainable community. The plan calls for the construction of 9,850 homes with a goal of 20% to be provided at below-market rent or price. We are insisting that residential developers work with our school districts to provide for new schools to serve the new student population.
Mountain View is leading the region in addressing the dual crisis of housing supply and affordability. We are moving forward with multiple market-rate and below- market housing projects. Following the enactment of state enabling legislation, we voted to require a minimum of 15% affordable units in new market-rate apartment projects, and we agreed to a program where developers can use that money to front-load funding for off-site, 100% affordable developments.
The East Whisman Precise Plan moves forward. While I was initially skeptical that occupied commercial properties would be replaced with housing any time in the near future, housing developers are already lining up sites upon which to build. The Council also decided to start a process to permit housing development on Terra Bella Avenue, what I call the South Bayshore Area. Commercial property owners, market-rate housing developers, and housing non-profits had identified that area as a prime location for new, medium-density housing.
Mountain View is funding programs for the homeless, and we are supporting the new cold-weather shelter for women and families at Trinity Methodist Church, appropriately located at the corner of Hope and Mercy Streets downtown. I was proud of my Old Mountain View neighborhood for the support expressed by nearby residents. However, we are still struggling to find off-street locations for our hundreds of vehicle- dwellers to park. I am currently asking that the California Department of Motor Vehicles open up its underutilized parking lot at the corner of Showers and Latham to such vehicles. This is an area where vehicle dwellers have been parked on the street for some time.
Mountain View is slowly but steadily implementing Measure V, the Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act, adopted by voters in November 2016. In an exciting new development, attorneys have advised the Rental Housing Committee that Measure V applies to mobile-home space rentals. What’s more, because of state law, rents can be controlled for mobile-home buyers. This will protect of equity of mobile-home owners who wish to sell their manufactured homes in place.
Rental Housing Committee meetings have been unnecessarily contentious. I believe our Council could have done a better job of appointing members committed to making Measure V work.
The City continues to work with the Los Altos School District to create a school/park complex in the San Antonio area. The district educates a large share of our elementary and middle-school students. To enable this, we are permitting the transfer of development rights from the school site to other properties in the area and across town. Unfortunately, this may lead to the construction of 600,000 square feet of offices. For me that’s a bitter pill, but well worth it. I expect our Council to urge the District to make the new school available to children from the North of El Camino neighborhood, but the complicated relationship between the Los Altos District and the Bullis Charter School may make that difficult.
This year we successfully renewed labor contracts with all of our bargaining units without any work stoppages. The Council felt that employees deserved (and in many cases, because of the high price of housing, needed) a raise, but we were unwilling to promise such raises in far-future years because of the increasing threat of an economic downturn. We used some of our budget surplus to pay down obligations such as the increased reserve requirement for long-term pension benefits.
Recognizing the high cost of living here, we held to our $15 per hour by January 1, 2018 minimum wage for all employees within Mountain View. This minimum does not apply to City Council members, all of whom put in long hours for around $1,000 per month.
The year saw many infrastructure improvements, from new solar installations on city property to improved bike lanes and crossings. When flooding washed out the Stevens Creek Trail between Yuba Drive and El Camino Real, our Public Works Department negotiated to create a trail bypass on adjacent private property. After a further washout, the City worked to get the Santa Clara Valley Water District to shore up the banks. We voted to retain weekly garbage pickup even as our weekly food-scraps collection went city-wide. Mountain View supports and takes part in regional discussions through which we hope to reduce aircraft noise from planes landing at both San Jose and San Francisco airports. We are successfully implementing Silicon Valley Clean Energy, which is bringing more affordable renewable electricity to the area.
The City stood firm against federal actions that would hurt our community. We adopted policies to not take part in deportations or any federal ethnic or religious registry. We continued to support counties litigating against federal anti-sanctuary policies. We wrote our Congressional delegation in opposition to key elements of tax “reform” legislation.
Over the last month, a growing number of Mountain View residents have called for a pause in downtown development. Some have argued that office growth downtown is undermining the viability of our regionally popular restaurants. I would prefer more housing, instead of offices, be built downtown. We are working on an affordable housing project on Lot 12, along Bryant St. between California and Mercy. But instead of starting a lengthy, resource-consuming process to totally re-write our visionary Downtown Plan, I support targeted actions such as fine-tuning the zoning to protect the 300 block of Castro Street and providing free transit passes to service/restaurant workers to free up more parking spaces without devoting more land to parking.
Finally, I believe that the Trump Administration and the Republican Congress are pursuing retrograde policies, from immigration limits to changes in tax laws, from the rollback in environmental and climate-change regulations to attacks on the Internet, from the opening up of public lands to resource exploitation to a bellicose foreign policy. The President himself is the embodiment of racism, religious intolerance, misogyny and transphobia. Where appropriate, the City of Mountain View is standing up on behalf of our residents.
I am proud that Mountain View has become a center of resistance. There have been several demonstration in our Civic Center Plaza this year where hundreds of people expressed their determination to fight back. Many people are assisting campaigns in contested districts and states to elect more progressive Representatives and Senators. Even where the city is not involved, I will continue to take part in and even organize such activities.
Though my city service is non-partisan, I will continue to help build the Bayshore Progressive Democratic Club, formed by Bernie Sanders supporters and other progressives, to broaden the appeal of the Democratic Party, and I will continue as a state Democratic delegate in support of progressive policies and candidates, and to break the grip that big money has on politics both in California and across the country.
We govern Mountain View with a steady hand and imaginative ideas, bringing together people from diverse backgrounds and with a wide range of economic interests. As I’ve explained many times: We treasure diversity and do our best to eliminate fossil fuels, and we are driving the global economy. There’s a clear lesson there.