Tom DuBois, a Midtown resident who jumped into Palo Alto’s land-use politics during last year’s heated battle over a housing development on Maybell Avenue, announced Monday that he will seek a seat on the City Council in November.
A technology executive who currently works in the video-game industry, DuBois became engaged in civic issues as part of a citizens referendum in opposition to Measure D. The referendum succeeded in shooting down an approved housing development on Maybell, which included 60 apartments for low-income seniors and 12 single-family homes. The referendum also gave birth to a new residents’ group, Palo Alto for Sensible Zoning, which includes DuBois and leading Measure D opponents Cheryl Lilienstein and Joe Hirsch.
DuBois became the second non-incumbent to announce his candidacy in the past week. Claude Ezran, a former chairman of the city’s Human Relations Commission, announced last week that he plans to run for the council. The nine-member council will see five seats up for grabs in November. This includes two open seats, with Councilman Larry Klein termed out this year and Councilwoman Gail Price announcing that she will not be seeking a second term. Councilman Greg Scharff will run for a second term, while Mayor Nancy Shepherd and Councilwoman Karen Holman have yet to declare their plans.
While Ezran, as the founder of World Music Day and frequent advocate for human-rights issues, brings a cosmopolitan touch to the council race, DuBois’ focus has been exclusively local. He doesn’t live in the Barron Park neighborhood, which led opposition to Measure D, but he wrote on his campaign website that he worked on behalf of the referendum “because of the way that the city had approved high-density development in a residential neighborhood with 12-15 homes being packed in.”
He emphasized in an interview with the Weekly on Monday that his opposition wasn’t to affordable housing but to the city’s decision to approve denser development in a residential neighborhood.
Since then, DuBois has been an advocate for city policies that maintain existing zoning and limit office construction. He currently serves on the community panel that is helping the city draft a new Housing Element. He has also made numerous appearances at meetings of the Planning and Transportation Commission and the Architectural Review Board to advocate for policies that protect residential neighborhoods from the impacts of commercial developments.
Last year, he appealed a proposal by Grocery Outlet to get sign exemptions — allowing for a larger sign — for its Alma Village location, arguing that other business owners would follow suit and seek exemptions. Though his appeal faltered, his prophesy has proven somewhat accurate, with Tesla Motors, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and the new “Lytton Gateway” building downtown all subsequently seeking exemptions.
On his campaign website, DuBois said he became “very concerned about what I saw happening to Palo Alto several years ago.”
“I noticed lots of construction; often large projects which didn’t fit the surrounding neighborhoods. Traffic had become noticeably worse,” DuBois wrote. “Beloved retailers were closing their doors. It was clear to me that overdevelopment was having long-term adverse effects on our quality of life especially with respect to the roads, parks and schools.”
In announcing his candidacy, he argued that Palo Alto is now “at a crossroads” and said his campaign “represents an opportunity to add an advocate for residents’ concerns to the city council.”
“How we grow is a choice,” DuBois said in the statement. “I believe in evolution not wholesale redevelopment.”
He said he plans to focus on “sensible development, transparent government and balanced growth that considers cumulative impacts to traffic, parks, schools and other infrastructure.”
A native of Warren, Ohio, DuBois lived in Washington, D.C., and Southern California before settling in Palo Alto in 1995. An engineer by training, he worked for numerous technology companies and led various startups. He currently works at Humble Bundle, a video-game company that allows customers to set their own prices and raises money for charity. He lives in Midtown with his wife, Erina, and two children, who are attending Palo Alto schools.
In announcing his campaign, DuBois said he is “excited to have the chance to serve the people of Palo Alto.”
“I look at it as public service,” DuBois told the Weekly. “I’m interested in being involved in the future of Palo Alto.”
He sounds like a candidate I want on the council! Someone with sense who does not want to see Palo Alto sold to developers!
I can’t wait to see his detailed, candidate platform.
All: Watch out for the same old hacks claiming to be anti-developer now as that is clearly the community sentiment. I tiger doesn’t change his stripes! Vote for those with a clear track-record of smart, sensible zoning and development. Vote for those who hold Palo Alto’s Comprehensive Plan as the definitive law governing Palo Alto’s land use and zoning.
I’m really glad to see Tom in the race. Now we need a slate of Residentialists we can vote in together!
Thank you for entering the race and welcome to the fray. We need some good candidates and real issues need to be debated.
I hope you have a thick skin.
Heartbreaking to think that this guy could take Gail’s seat. From serious city planning to NIMBY in an eyeblink.
How do I contact him to help his running for city council?
Tom, you have my vote and my support, as well as my gratitude for running.
4 more residentialists needed! The developers will surely be throwing a lot of cash Nancy Sheppard and Greg Scharff’s way, which measure D has shown can be easily overcome with some grassroots outreach.
I’m smiling!! Now three more like this. Maybe we can turn this town back where the residents want it, not the developers.
I’m smiling!! Now three more like this. Maybe we can turn this town back where the residents want it, not the developers.
Just the man we need in Menlo Park!
I wonder what Peter Carpenter will have to say?
> Vote for those who hold Palo Alto’s Comprehensive Plan as the
> definitive law governing Palo Alto’s land use and zoning.
Be careful for what you wish. The Comprehensive Plan is generally created by a small number of people, not read by very many, and has in the past reflected the political agendas of those creating it more than actually considering the long-term needs of the City. Moreover, it is not put on the ballot for the approval of the electorate.
People who bow down to the Comprehensive Plan like it was so
me sort of sacred document are not likely to have much idea how the Plan will affect Palo Alto, or their own neighborhoods.
While having a plan seems like a good thing, locking up any city’s future for a decade or more, without the public having much of a say in the matter, doesn’t really seem like that intelligent thing to do.
@ Joe,
The trouble is that as a charter city, we lose the protections other cities have — for example, Measure D would never had been necessary as the City would have known the residents could overturn their ordinance in court as a “spot zone”, and get their legal fees to boot.
We do have some recourse to challenge the Comp Plan if at the end, it’s a bad one, and we should be watching that process like hawks, and then challenge it if the council has boobytrapped it for developers (as they are likely to attempt to do). We desperately need people on the Council who will work for residents’ interests, especially now.
> The trouble is that as a charter city, we lose the protections
> other cities have
Not sure that I follow. Care to explain this in some detail? (Include who “we” is).
I so hope that the three others will have the same vision as Tom DuBois. He has my vote already.
And @Thanks Weekly!, if Gail Price wasn’t going to work towards the desires of the residents of Palo Alto, then it will be ok if Tom DuBois takes her seat.
I do not know Tom DuBois but this write-up is encouraging. I hope others who agree with his approach to growth and development will run b/c it will take a united stand to overcome the voting blocs that currently exist on Council.
Makes me feel much better just to know this!
@ Joe,
>The trouble is that as a charter city, we lose the protections
> other cities have
>Not sure that I follow. Care to explain this in some detail? (Include who “we” >is)
So, forgive any division of powers blunders, but as far as I understand it, cities have rules/codes that are the law at that level of government (city level). Some cities like ours in our state have charters, so certain state laws don’t apply to us because our charter governs those things. We residents of California cities get the right to have our own charter. Cities that don’t have charters get their codes from the state – which include zoning rules. Those rules make it illegal to “spot zone”, so in my example, residents would not have had to go to referendum to oppose an illegal spot zone at Maybell, they could simply have taken their complaint to court and gotten the ordinance thrown own. For this kind of overdevelopment pressure we are facing, we would actually be in better shape if we weren’t a charter city.
Most big cities are charter cities, though, for good reasons. We do need the flexibility. But the past year showed us just how weak our resident protections are in regards to zoning, for example — after residents referended over Maybell, the City Attorney got to write the ballot question and analysis and never even offered a comparison of costs, she just basically illegally shilled for the Council’s perspective. If we didn’t have a charter, we wouldn’t have much recourse, but since we do, we can do what some other cities like SF have done and change the election code, which is in our charter, so that we have an impartial ballot committee process rather than letting the City attorney stack the election they he or she did for High Street, and for Measure D. That will improve the ability of citizen of PA (we) in the future to stop violations of the zoning code.
Another way some charter cities do it is to have their vision in the Comp Plan enforceable. We don’t. I think we should, but we should also make it possible to challenge the Comp Plan as need be.
It would be a great win for the residents of PA if Dubois was elected and Shepherd was voted off the council. We are fortunate that Price will no longer be around to pay off the unions and developers.
A welcome addition to the candidates for PA City Council! We desperately need new voices and he sounds intelligent. The other thing we need is a high caliber CPA-type as I am unimpressed by the complicated and excessive expenditures of city hall.
@resident ..
Thanks for taking the time to try to explain your notion of what a California Charter City is. I don’t think that most of your narrative is correct, however. For instance, zoning codes do not come from Sacramento:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=gov&group=65001-66000&file=65850-65863.13
GOVERNMENT CODE
SECTION 65850-65863.13
65850. The legislative body of any county or city may, pursuant to
this chapter, adopt ordinances that do any of the following:
(a) Regulate the use of buildings, structures, and land as between
industry, business, residences, open space, including agriculture,
recreation, enjoyment of scenic beauty, use of natural resources, and
other purposes.
(b) Regulate signs and billboards.
(c) Regulate all of the following:
(1) The location, height, bulk, number of stories, and size of
buildings and structures.
(2) The size and use of lots, yards, courts, and other open
spaces.
(3) The percentage of a lot which may be occupied by a building or
structure.
(4) The intensity of land use.
(d) Establish requirements for offstreet parking and loading.
(e) Establish and maintain building setback lines.
(f) Create civic districts around civic centers, public parks,
public buildings, or public grounds, and establish regulations for
those civic districts.
—-
It would appear that General Law Cities can make their own zoning codes, for this begining section of Government code.
The complexity of the issues of Charter cities is far beyond the limited scope of a Weekly blog. Suggest that you looking into municipal charters a little more deeply, as you might be surprised at what you find.
Over the years there have been many city council candidates who ran as “residentialists”, proclaiming themselves to be staunch environmentalists and supporters of sustainable and slow growth. Once they were elected, they seemed to have never met a development they didn’t like, or a developer they didn’t like for that matter. I know nothing about Mr. DuBois, but hopefully, if elected, he would become the first residentialist candidate who actually stuck to his values and promises.
@Joe,
Ah, okay. But I’m not wrong about what’s relevant to my original post — The state law is the framework and charter cities don’t have to follow the framework the same way other cities do.
Here’s from the state of California’s own explanation about land use:
http://ceres.ca.gov/planning/planning_guide/plan_index.html
“State law is the foundation for local planning in California. The California Government Code (Sections 65000 et seq.) contains many of the laws pertaining to the regulation of land uses by local governments including: the general plan requirement, specific plans, subdivisions, and zoning.
However, the State is seldom involved in local land use and development decisions; these have been delegated to the city councils and boards of supervisors of the individual cities and counties. Local decisionmakers adopt their own sets of land use policies and regulations based upon the state laws.”
And
“In all counties, general law cities, and the city of Los Angeles, zoning must comply with the general plan. This rule does not apply to charter cities.
The purpose of zoning is to implement the policies of the general plan.”
And
“The council or board is not obligated to approve requests for rezoning and, except in charter cities, must deny such requests when the proposed zone conflicts with the general plan.”
Lots of rules flowing from state mandates, EXCEPT IN CHARTER CITIES. We can, of our own accord, make following the general plan mandatory, as many other charter cities do.
Thank you for stepping up Tom. Thank you for your vision of limiting office development. Since ABAG ties housing requirements to the number of jobs in the city, every new office building will increase the number of housing units we have to build to satisfy ABAG. It is an upward spiral with no end in sight.
Thanks for running, I’m looking forward to some sanity on the city council, and some representation for the folks who live here, not just the developers.
I am with u Tom, We still need more of u to step up
Hopefully Mr.DuBois will bring new optimism and reason to a council sorely lacking credibility. Residents can only hope Mr. DuBois can move the current council to replace the current city manager with a educated, competent, and progressive manager who is able, willing, and motivated to move our city forward.
Today on the business channel CNBC, they ran a segment on the upward spiral
of commerical office rents in Palo Alto and Silicon Valley in general. Rents have increased 70% in PA over the last 4 years they said in what is the strongest market anywhere. So in this market, in PA our Council and staff have supported bonuses, design exceptions, breaking height limits, upzoning through PC’s, and parking exemptions to our local developers to subsidize them, ruining our adjacent neighborhoods, our streetscapes, creating traffic gridlock, and exacerbating the jobs/housing imbalance which strengthens ABAG’s position creating pressure for more development. This giveaway to local developers in Palo Alto is the other half of this story which CNBC missed. It too is a business story- and much more.
Yes, Resident.
Even if we can’t stop development, we should better manage it.
Given the extremely strong market for development in Palo Alto, one would think we could ask for the moon from developers and get it.
If so, new developments should begin paying to undo the damage done by under-compensated development over the last 15 years.
There is a large cost to the city (not to the city government, but to the city itself) for increased density. Shouldn’t the developers who benefit so much from it pay that cost?
I know Tom personally, and I believe he’s the real deal. I am pleased to endorse him for election to the Palo Alto City Council.
Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement. This was not a decision I made lightly; I am looking forward to the campaign and hearing all the issues that residents care about.
Google hasn’t quite found my website yet, but if you are interested in learning more and/or supporting me, please visit http://www.votedubois.com
Tom
@Resident has kindly offered us his view of what a Charter is. The following is a fairly concise of the powers, and limitations, of California Charter Cities:
http://www.lahabraheights.net/PowersOfCity.html
The reason that is is important during an election year is that candidates, and the electorate, should be aware of the difference between general law cities, and charter cities, since the law making process becomes a little more complicated, as poorly crafted laws might result in litigation, or voter-initiated overturning of council agendas.
Tom, since your site is already using the Google web APIs, just go to this link: https://www.google.com/webmaster and register your site. They will give you a tag to paste into your home page. Once it gets verified, you can asked to get indexed immediately.
Anyway, thanks for running. Hope others join you both in your campaign or maybe even running themselves.
@ Joe,
My link and quotes were from the State of California. Although I appreciate your attempts to further clarify, can you please clarify the source of your information and why their description is more accurate than that of the State of California?
The Comprehensive Plan, Page 3 of the first section (paraphrasing but pretty accurate):
The City supports business but when the interests of business and residents collide, the City supports resident interests.
Raised eyebrows!
@Joe, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
Thank you for challenging “resident, a resident of Green Acres’s” narrative about how being a charter city has worked to our disadvantage because we’ve proved incapable of responsibly using the same flexibility that she states in her post above is necessary for big cities.
“Most big cities are charter cities, though, for good reasons. We do need the flexibility.”–resident, a resident of Green Acres
Lots of her argumentation centers around the Measure D campaign, which was a complicated affair whose resolution is still uncertain since we haven’t seen what’s going to built on the Maybell property. Frankly, I don’t think more than a handful of people outside the immediate area care much about what happens there. But for those of us who live nearby, that’s the basis for deciding whether rejection of affordable housing for low income seniors was the right outcome.
Candidates for city council should be careful about basing their campaign too closely on the “Against Measure D” narrative of what the lessons are from that sad affair. We just don’t know yet.
What a welcome piece of news. Glad to have a land use advocate on the ballot.
@JerryUnderdal,
It’s always entertaining to see how you (mis)interpret what people think, and who you think is speaking. I am afraid you have completely lost me here, I can’t even follow your argument or who you even think you are addressing or disagreeing with.
I would say nothing about what you said is accurate (at least, opf what is intelligible) except the concluding statement, with which I agree, not sure which foil or straw man you think i am.
@Jerry zunderdal,
Measure D only happened in the first place because City Council and PAHC didnt think they had to care what the neighborhood wanted when making their plans, because they didnt think the neighbors could do anything (that is verbatim from a source on that side). Larry Klein said he had never seen so much stonewalling from an applicant (about PAHC). The side thatclaimed to care about affordable housing didnt seem to care enough to put that above their professional ambitions. Had they actually worked with the neighborhood instead of creating strawmen NIMBIES, the could have gotten much of the energy behind them instead of against them. Seems you still havent learned the most important lessons from Measure D and are still digging in. That’s where it became sad, IMO.
Also that you somehow think the CCcares about affordable housing given how shamefully they have behaved over BV, especially in light of the extents they were willing to go to at Maybell. If you hadnt been so keen on slamming your neighbors, there was a huge opportunity missed there to direct that energy to a positive like saving BV as part of not overzoning the neighborhoodd at Maybell.
By the way, my statement about flexibility was essentially admitting that something Liz Kniss said to me about that, and Gail Price, was probably true. Not sure how you read snything else into it, I was quoting the state of California’s citizens guide to planning.
By the way, there appears to be more than one poster on this thread as “resident”
@Resident, a resident of Green Acres
Look at the heading. My comment was directed to “Joe” and addressed an exchange he had with someone who posted prolifically on this thread as “Resident, a resident of Green Acres.” If that is not you then I truly do have worries about identity integrity in the Town Square.
@Resident, a resident of Green Acres
“Seems you still haven’t learned the most important lessons from Measure D and are still digging in.”
One very important lesson from Measure D was don’t give a free pass to bad arguments just because they are repeated so often that it seems they must be true.
Examples: The Maybell proposal did not even mention bicycle and pedestrian traffic concerns. (It did.) Another: Many occupants of the project would have no prior connection to Palo Alto because federal rules prohibit an outright exclusion of non-residents. (Priority would be for current residents or people who worked or had worked in Palo Alto.) Another: It won’t even be housing people who are low income since they are required to earn from 30 to 60 percent of average household income. (No, very low income would run from Zero to a maximum of 30 percent. Low income would be from 30 percent to a maximum of 60 percent. Rents would differ. Higher rents on the 30-60 group would subsidize the 0-30 percent group.)
Details didn’t matter though, once the framing had been done by opponents. Much of that framing was done online, here in Town Square, by anonymous posters. It’s one thing to have that done for a local neighborhood land use squabble, quite another to have it become a strategy for gaining control of city government. I hope it doesn’t happen, but if it does I hope people will pay attention and challenge claims that don’t seem quite right.
Back to the topic of this thread: I welcome Tom Dubois’s entry into the field. But I get nervous about calls for a PASZ slate of candidates. The knowledgeable neighborhood activists whose names come to mind have not expressed an interest in running. Who’s on the bench?
@Jerry underdal,
Does this mean you will finally come to terms with the lies you told yourself and the public? Starting with the one up you just told by omission. Mentioning something hardly counts. Neighbors said there never was any safety analysis including the bikes and pedestrians, as did the traffic analysis by one of the most respected engineers in the state. Whether the safety analysis included bikes and future development is what counts, not whether they were “mentioned”.
Have you ever made an attempt to establish what other projects in other communities lost their funding because Maybell was asking for so much and our city staff objectively provided false third party verifications? Because the funding people don’t even revisit things once they find out someone broke the rules. How many other projects lost out? Maybell was asking for so much, it could have been more than one. And almost certainly more housing in less wealthy communities.
Weekly, you keep letting Jerry Underdal further the smear that the neighbors didn’t care about affordable housing because they didnt want a rezoning for a structure larger than that monstrous hotel going up across from Arbor Real into the neighborhood, but you won’t let me tell him like it is: if PAHC and people like him hadn’t insisted on all or nothing, they would be building now. If they couldn’t build without having such a massive structure, or without upzoning the residential side for the market developer, they should have let the neighbors form a working group because they WANTED to be part if the solution. Instead people like Jerry Zunderdal would rather needle and alienate, and thus are themselves responsible, because the neighbors were not going to allow the heart of the neighborhood to be upzoned like that, and that was made clear to the developers early on. They just didn’t think the neighbors could do anything about it.
If you want to continue to demonize your neighbors, then you are responsible for more damage to the cause you claim to support than you realize. The energy that went into opposing Measure D could have been channeled into supporting BV at that moment in time, because most people would have been even happier to redeem the situation to the benefit of their neighbors. But you couldn’t beat them with the NIMBY stick then, could you? Your need to be friggin self righteous and meansprited cost that housing. That exact plan was never going to happen, but Measure D was a last resort only and there were many olive branches extended throughout that your side rejected. As you keep it up now, you only continue to alienate people and make your ugly pronouncements a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Weekly, please do not delete this, you keep leaving underdal’s ugly charges and not letting anyone hold up the mirror. He needs to come to terms with his own responsibility in this or he will only keep reopening the divides and not letting them heal.