March 10, 2004

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Palo Alto Online

Mayor hits hot-button issue

by Bill D'Agostino

Despite his measured tones and analytical arguments, Palo Alto Mayor Bern Beecham hit upon a hot-button issue during the annual State of the City speech Monday night.

Put simply, Beecham suggested that the city needs to cut spending to its city-provided services to ensure it has enough money to adequately maintain and repair its ailing infrastructure.

Often sounding more like a studious professor that an impassioned politician, Beecham primarily used his 17-minute speech to outline the most serious challenges he sees facing the city -- namely, maintaining the health of the city's budget, untangling the "Palo Alto process," and keeping council discussions respectful.

The mayor rarely gestured while delivering his address in the City Council chambers, instead keeping his hands behind a podium. Still, the packed crowd gave the second-term council member a standing ovation at the conclusion of his speech.

"I think it's what the community wanted to hear," former Mayor Gail Woolley said.

Former Mayor Larry Klein, who initiated Palo Alto's "State of the City" speech when he was mayor in 1989, called Beecham's proposal "courageous."

Bids to slice away city programs often cause controversy in Palo Alto since many of them -- including libraries, art classes and museums -- have groups ready to rally if their favored item is on the chopping block.

But Beecham said that the $73 million the city has currently budgeted for capital upgrades over the next decade is "insufficient to maintain the parks, streets and facilities that comprise our city's half billion dollars in material assets."

To remedy that, Beecham proposed spending at least $10 million every year on such improvements, although he went on to say that even that wouldn't be enough to pay for some long-desired projects, such as upgrading the aging police station or enhancing the inadequate storm drain system.

Saying an economic recovery could be five to seven years away, Beecham outlined the upcoming hardships facing Palo Alto's budget, from possible state raids to competition facing the city's 2,000 retail stores. Sales tax from such businesses comprise the largest share of the city's revenue.

The mayor pointed out that he has formed a committee to develop ways the city could help support its struggling shops.

Another pro-business initiative that began last year, under the full council's guidance, is a push to clean up Palo Alto's decision-making process for granting permits to real estate projects.

That much-maligned process has become "so tangled that even charting each of our processes is impossible," Beecham said. The result is a procedure "that brings prolonged delay, economic hardship, and mounting tension" to residents, developers and retailers.

"We fight our battles too long and too fiercely. Our ill-defined, unbounded planning process fosters a community divide and does not necessarily result in a better outcome," he said.

One clear example of that process, not mentioned during the speech, was a 60-unit condominium complex at 800 High St., near downtown. Last year, the housing project was the center of a divisive election, after it received council approval. On Thursday, Beecham is scheduled to appear at the project's groundbreaking.

Fixing the planning process was the center of a scathing city audit last year. The mayor used his speech to encourage the council to stay the course, and accept the changes recommended in the audit.

In addition, to deflate community tensions, council members should get more involved in similar debates before they reach the decision-making point, Beecham said.

"Often, by the time an issue finally comes to this council, groups have taken fixed positions. By that time, we can merely make the decision -- it is too late to lead the community together to a solution."

The mayor also referred to another hot-button city issue: Council relations. "The most important step" in improving the city's government, Beecham said, is for council members to "accept differences of opinion and style."

After years of incivility, council discourse has, in fact, been mostly polite in 2004. A recent closed-door meeting, Beecham said, "was marked by the most respectful and considered discussion by the council that I can recall."

However, last week's meeting was an exception, when a few council members appeared to be losing patience with each other during lengthy discussions on otherwise routine matters.

After one stressful exchange, Beecham -- who, as mayor, controls the flow of the council's conversation -- stopped the discourse and said, "We need to keep a little bit of humor about what we do."

During this week's speech, Beecham actually called last week's tense meeting a "breakthrough" because, he said, officials were "talking with each other as we discussed what we should do." The full text of Mayor Bern Beecham's speech can be read at www.paloaltoonline.com.

Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com

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