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Palo Alto: Is the price right?

by Pam Sturner

Palo Alto residents should have a clearer idea by early summer what city facilities they might be voting to improve in November.

The bond measure, if it happens, may include the art center, several city libraries and a community center.

It is likely that neither a new police building nor storm drains will be on the list.

The City Council is expected to review a survey in May showing which aging facilities residents consider priorities for upgrades.

A final list won't be made until the council takes a vote, which is tentatively scheduled for mid-July.

However, a slate of five projects has so far commanded the most attention: the Main, Children's and Mitchell Park libraries, the Palo Alto Art Center and the Mitchell Park Community Center.

By city staff's estimates, the entire package would cost about $110 million. Such a measure could add between $70 and $80 per $100,000 of assessed property value to homeowners' tax bills, said Joe Saccio, the city's deputy director of administrative services.

Two other big-ticket items will likely have to wait until 2003.

Harrison said a measure for storm-drain improvements could go to voters next spring, but only after a blue-ribbon task force sorts through different project options.

The task force, which the city is in the process of forming, will look at a range of questions, such as whether to include a sunset provision and an oversight committee, as well as what projects to tackle.

While specifics of price and scope have yet to be worked out, Harrison said the package would be larger than the one presented to voters in 2000.

"If the voters approve the improvements, whatever they are, it would keep us busy for a while," she said.

She added that the new storm drain measure would be decided through a property owners' election, rather than by all the voters in Palo Alto.

Harrison also thinks the vote on storm drains might coincide with another initiative to fund renovations to the police building, which the city estimates at $35 million. The funding mechanism, which would go before voters in 2003, would probably consist of a new business license tax and an increase the transit occupancy tax.

The outcome of the November bond could be significant to the police building initiative, Harrison said. Since the cost of the community facilities renovations would fall to residents, approval could help answer merchants' fears that businesses shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden for the infrastructure.

"Since (transit occupancy and business license taxes) are two taxes that hit the business community ...we could go to them and say, 'Residents are paying for these facilities too,'" if the bond passes, Harrison said.

Carolyn Tucher, the president of the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation board, finds the city's work on the November bond encouraging. She is asking for $5 million toward renovating the art center, to be included in the $110 million bond. The foundation plans to raise another $5 million through private donations.

"We've tried to do our part by cutting our plans back so they won't require a lot of money," Tucher said.

She added that her proposal has received a "very open and generous" reception from Libraries Plus, the citizens' bond campaign committee established by former mayors Gary Fazzino and Lanie Wheeler.

If the November initiative passes, it will be the first general obligation bond floated in Palo Alto in about 20 years, Saccio said.

E-mail Pam Sturner at psturner@paweekly.com