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Palo Alto Mayor Adrian Fine, a staunch housing advocate who has frequently clashed with his City Council’s colleagues on issues pertaining to growth, will not seek another council term.
Fine, a former member of the Planning and Transportation Commission whose mayoral term coincided with one of the most turbulent years in Palo Alto’s recent history, told the Weekly on Thursday that he will not seek reelection. His decision not to run means that the Aug. 7 deadline for filing candidacy papers will be extended for another week.
Barring any late entries into the race, Fine’s decision means that voters will choose between nine candidates vying for four seats. Incumbent council members Lydia Kou and Greg Tanaka are both seeking new four-year terms, while Councilwoman Liz Kniss is terming out this year. Joining Kou and Tanaka on the ballot will be former Mayor Pat Burt, planning commissioners Cari Templeton and Ed Lauing, attorney Rebecca Eisenberg, teacher Greer Stone, Human Relations Commissioner Steven Lee and activist Raven Malone.
Fine said his decision not to seek a new term was based on both personal and political factors. The main reason has to do with family. He and his wife, Jane, are expecting their first child in October, he said.
“That’s so much more of a priority and life event than any campaign or election,” Fine told this news organization.
At the same time, Fine said that he has concerns about the direction in which Palo Alto is going. The city, he said, has become more “inward focused” and less concerned about diversity and inclusiveness. He said he doesn’t see a future for growing a young family in Palo Alto and he does not believe the community is prepared to take serious action on equity, inclusion and affordability.
“I really feel Palo Alto has lost a lot of its mojo and it’s increasingly becoming a wealthy retirement town,” Fine said. “That’s not the Palo Alto that raised me.”
Elected in 2016, Fine has been the council’s leading proponent of dramatically expanding the city’s housing supply. He was the lead author of a colleague’s memo that led to the creation of the city’s Housing Work Plan, a broad framework for revising zoning policies to ease the process for residential construction.
In contrast to Kou and other colleagues on the more slow-growth “residentialist” wing, who favor focusing exclusively on below-market-rate housing, Fine has supported building housing for all income levels, including market-rate housing. He is the only council member who supported Senate Bill 50, a contentious proposal by state Sen. Scott Wiener to loosen density and height restrictions near transit and in jobs-rich areas.
Fine also opposed efforts by Vice Mayor Tom DuBois and Kou to institute rent stabilization in Palo Alto, a proposal that failed to advance.
His positions have occasionally drawn intense opposition from his political opponents. Last year, some of his council colleagues bristled as his decision to submit a letter in favor of Senate Bill 50 without specifying that he is speaking for himself, and not for the entire city (Fine later clarified that he was writing as an individual). During his “State of the City” speech in March, he made a case for ramping up residential construction, which he says is critical to also addressing the city’s traffic problems.
“We’ve effectively externalized our housing demand to other communities, and the result is traffic,” Fine said.
Fine also encountered pushback from some of his colleagues last month, when he submitted a letter to various transit agencies and the boards of supervisors of San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, in support of a one-eighth of a cent sales tax for Caltrain operations. His letter prompted DuBois to send his own letter to the various agencies arguing that Fine did not have the authority to speak on behalf of the entire council, which up to that point had not discussed the ballot measure.
Despite this spat, the council voted unanimously on Aug. 3 to approve a letter urging the placement of the measure on the ballot.
After getting unanimously elected as mayor by his colleagues in January, Fine found himself presiding over the council at one of the most challenging times in Palo Alto’s recent history. With the COVID-19 pandemic prompting an economic shutdown in March and all meetings switching to a virtual format, Fine has led the council in adopting a business-assistance program and passing a budget with more than $40 million in cuts. In response to growing demands across the nation to address police brutality and racial inequity, Fine appointed numerous committees to delve deeper into these topics and issue recommendations for policy changes.
Fine, who works as director of marketing and communications at Autonomic, a company that makes software for connected vehicles, said he will continue to focus on the city’s response to COVID-19 and on issues pertaining to social injustice for the remainder of the year before his term ends.
“I’m 100% focused on keeping Palo Alto safe during COVID, responding to the economic recession in the community and making durable long-term changes in regard to systemic racism in local government. That’s what I’m focused on for the rest of the year,” Fine said. “Beyond this year, I’m open to serving Palo Alto in any way it needs me.”
Thank you for your service! Congratulations on becoming a father, the most important job in life.
Thank you Adrian for your service these past four years. Not an easy task being on the Palo Alto City Council especially during this COVID-19 pandemic crisis. You added a lot to the Council especially being a renter. Hope you continue to live here with your new family member and housing becomes affordable for young families like yours. Best wishes, stay safe and be well. Ken
Adrian, it is testament of your character that you chose to prioritize spending time with your newborn baby. Your decision also speaks to the values with which you were raised – and are teaching by example your own child. In many parts of this country and world, men don’t feel empowered to make this choice. Here, in Palo Alto, I’m the first commenter to mention it.
Your child is fortunate to have a father who prioritizes them. Curtis and I wish you and Jane B’sha’ah Tovah on your upcoming arrival.
That said, I hope you do not give up on Palo Alto as a great place to raise a family, as well as an inclusive community that values racial justice. A couple of us already in the race for City Council chose to run with precisely those goals.
Although you and I disagreed on certain tactics, I never doubted that you sought to increase the availability of affordable housing in Palo Alto. I was looking forward to the opportunity to serve with you on City Council, in part to help you understand how a firm stop on approval of any commercial development – especially office space – is needed in order to best achieve that goal.
I also was hoping to work with you to institute a business tax on Palo Alto’s largest employers and commercial developers, so they pay their fair share for the community services that helped them grow and become successful. I also would point out that, only if these businesses are taxed that the numerous tax incentives for housing development offered by the state and federal government could incentivize developers. And, I imagine you would have joined me in reaching out to the large number of non-profit and even for-profit organizations that recently have gained traction given our state’s historic housing crisis – a crisis, as you know, that is historic for our country as well.
Together we also could have worked towards providing our community with the family-oriented community services that we can afford once we make tech giants pay their fair share. As you probably heard, San Francisco is designing a new tax on top of the existing taxes on its biggest tech conglomerates – many of whom have presences here too – such as Google, Amazon.com, and Facebook. SF’s new tax, which could raise as much as $2 billion a year without driving any of these successful companies from SF, is intended to fund affordable housing and childcare. Young families would benefit from housing and childcare in Palo Alto as well.
I also was hoping to work with you to enforce our existing zoning laws on billionaire commercial developers whose land lays unused and mis-used, midway through projects abandoned for years, or empty of corporate tenants even before the pandemic. You probably see a lot of these underutilized huge lots on your way to and from work near Stanford Research Park. I really liked your idea of exploring the possibility of using some of this land near or on Stanford Research Park for housing — in fact, I like it so much that with or without you, I am committed to working towards beginning efforts to have these very conversations with Stanford, my alma mater, which has stated publicly that it is in dire need of additional housing as well. With these aligned incentives, it’s hard not to be optimistic about the chances for that to work.
I know you are an environmentalist too, and it would have been great to work with you to urge the city to do all it can to incentivize HP (and Stanford) finally to clean up the HP Superfund Site, whose toxic waste continues to pose a hazard to many residents living near Stanford Research Park – as well as, possibly, to the employees who work there as well. We need a strong environmental coalition on City Council to prioritize this cleanup, an urgent matter made even more time-sensitive given the need for housing and isolation/quarantine safe locations created by covid-19.
And, I hope you won’t give up on the Palo Alto public schools. Although it is true that the PAUSD is having a tough time adjusting to this pandemic – as many/most other public school districts in California – there are things that the City Council can do to help the public schools, once there is a coalition of public school parents in our leadership – public school parents like me, and like you, hopefully, in the future. For example, you heard me advocate as hard as I could for Palo Alto not to break its Cubberley lease with the PAUSD. Our school district needs the almost-$4 million funding that it now lacks due to the City’s lease termination. These things won’t happen in the future, without sufficient representation in city government by the people most directly impacted by the City Council’s decisions – such as public school parents, and seniors, and all others hurt by the recent budget cuts. We could have remedied this together.
Finally, while I obviously support your decision to be home for your future child, I hope you consider re-entering the public sphere in the future. A lot can change over the next few years, for good and for bad. For bad, I think we will see more fall-out from the insufficient tax base on which this city has relied. No city can sustain when it taxes exclusively residents for its services without taxing businesses at all. But this fall out will bring the change we badly need, in the direction of a more fair system of funding our community services, through also taxing our largest businesses.
For good – our communities soon may see additional, needed funding for community services through the (likely!) passage of Prop 15, the Schools and Communities First Initiative. I see that both you and I – and Tom DuBois – are official endorsers of Prop 15, along with hundreds of other California elected officials, municipalities, and nonprofit groups: https://www.yes15.org/endorsers-elected-officials .
One thing you can do to pave the way to help improve Palo Alto’s ability to be even more friendly and inclusive of more economic levels, is to put an Initiative on an upcoming City Council Agenda to endorse Prop 15, as did Santa Clara County. This should be doable, given that two council members – you and Councilmember DuBois – as well as numerous others including former Vice President Joe Biden – already support this important opportunity to close corporate tax loopholes and reclaim $12 billion a year for our state, $1.33 Billion of which would go to Santa Clara County directly. That additional funding would help us revive the community services cut by the City Council over the past few months – Children’s Theatre, electric shuttles, funding for our schools, a more resident-friendly approach to train crossings – so please do what you can while still Mayor to make that happen.
You faced tough circumstances this year as Mayor, Adrian. Certainly much more challenging than any Mayor has faced in many years, even decades. And it is extremely unfair, not to mention, illogical, to lay the blame of City Council’s unpopular actions entirely on you.
That said, what you did in choosing not to seek reelection – only for now, I hope – makes more room for a new candidate with new ideas and fresh approaches to have an opportunity to make our upcoming economic recovery far better than a return to the former status quo. With new voices untethered by the failed practices already attempted, Palo Alto can emerge from recovery as the innovative, family-friendly, inclusive community I know we both seek: a community where public school teachers, fire fighters, seniors, grad students, and young families, can live alongside executives, authors, artists, and grandparents in retirement.
I hope you will continue to join me in working towards these achievable goals.
So happy for you and your wife! Congratulations. Sad for the City of Palo Alto. I appreciated your willingness to go with your conscience and speak without equivocation in favor of SB50.
While I wish Fine well personally, the truth is he was not well suited to his job and it is a good thing that he is effectively “resigning to spend more time with family.” Perhaps he was too young; perhaps he had the wrong temperament. Like Wolbach in the last go-around, he did not accomplish much, and overall did more harm than good.
Overall, this has not been a very effective council – divided, lacking in leadership, overly deferential to the city manager and staff. It’s not an easy job, I grant you, but they can do better than this.
Mazel tov. And may their first child be a fine child. A Libra, even.
I am so glad to hear that Mayor Fine values diversity and inclusiveness-glad and surprised. From his voting patterns it seemed to me that what he valued was business profits.
Wish him well with his family, but to be honest — glad for the city that he has decided to take a different path. Even in his departure he seems focused on labeling people who disagree with his views.
I wish Adrian the best with his new family. Palo Alto is an amazing place to raise a family and I hope his time as a parent is as meaningful as ours was here. I wish Adrian had understood and attempted to preserve that while in office rather than trying to remove single family zoning and increasing office development.
You are so right. I too believe that the ship has sailed here in Palo Alto. I have given up, and will be making my escape next month….There are so many great places to live. I am sure you will find a great place to raise your family.
Thank you for supporting the opening of Foothills Park to everyone.
Fine’s decision not to seek re-election is a welcome one for himself — and many others. Good decision.
I am happy about Fine’s decision.
Adrian was correct when he said “We’ve effectively externalized our housing demand to other communities, and the result is traffic”. He was wrong to support SB50 and its companion bills, which would “solve” this problem by shifting all zoning authority to the state without provision for building the transit solution to fill needs generated by development.
Ironic that Fine said: The city, is more “inward focused” and less concerned about diversity and inclusiveness. He said he doesn’t see a future for growing a young family in Palo Alto and he does not believe the community is prepared to take serious action on equity, inclusion and affordability.
We remember when:
Fine voted to cut funding to library (including the College Terrace Library that has a shoestring budget).
Fine voted for large developments.
Fine voted to have cut funding to community programs affecting youth (that provide free counseling to youth who are under privileged and of diverse background).
Fine says he supports housing and young families and diversity and inclusion, but his motions and votes say he is in developers pockets and opposes free programs for our community.
We see through the words.
We have a strange habit of addressing history with starting points to support an argument. SU, Palo Alto and Mayfield were the original towns in the area due to the building of the university. The forest above the town provided a lot of timber to rebuild SF after the earthquake. Our bay was not closed off for flood concerns. We were built out up to point then grew our southern area with the inclusion of Ford Aerospace and Lockheed Martin – the main employers outside of the university back in the day. Those companies provided the funding and participation in many of the social events that built this area as a place to live and grow a family. Commercial entities provide the tax base for growth.
So we now move to the “progressive” tactics of the city to turn it in to a Manhattan project and get vilified for being YIMBY’s. For me that translates into a location that does not support family support and growth of a place where you bring up your children. Mr. Fine supported the growth in a city that is already built out to the borders – a unique situation which differentiates us from the surrounding cities that were previously groves of trees. If you don’t understand the history of the area then quit trying to make it into something else.
Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: June 23, 2020 at 6:30 a.m. | UPDATED: June 24, 2020 at 6:47 a.m.
Fine said. “It’s like, Palo Alto, you guys are NIMBYs gone wild.”
Resident-1 Adobe-Meadows: I appreciate the history and context of your post. I would have loved to see the Bay back then.
That said, your post repeats one of the most insidious misunderstandings, believed by most of our community — and possibly by the City Council as well?
This is NOT true: “ Commercial entities provide the tax base for growth.”
Here in Palo Alto, we are the only city anywhere in our country to have so many commercial entities and not tax them ONE dime. Commercial entities provide jobs, and also — sometimes — drive traffic (literally) to local restaurants and retail. But they do not provide a tax base for our city, which is one of the biggest reasons our budget is in such a shambles.
Palo Alto’s budget — despite the fact that we are home to some of the biggest and most successful companies on earth: HP, Varian, Lockheed-Martin, Ford (employer of our mayor), and new mega-giants Tesla and Palantir –does not tax them *at all*.
And, despite the urgent need to put a business tax on the ballot for November — a tax that could have and should have exempted all small and medium sized businesses (under 300 employees/$300 million revenue), and also exempted all restaurants, bars, and retail — the City Council refused to do so, continuing to rely in residential taxes and sales taxes (now that hotel tax revenues have dried up) to fund our town that is used primarily by the corporate interests that do not pay for their use.
Adrian’s error, IMHO, was equivocating commercial development, which only drains our city of necessary resources, and residential development, which creates a tax base, makes room for families, and and contributes to the community’s well being…. with none of the negative impacts caused by commercial development, such as traffic congestion, traffic accidents, parking problems, and, of course, toxic waste dumps like the one that still takes up acres in Stanford Research Park.
I think that Mrs. Eisenberg should provide us her personal history from which she is providing her POV. We know that Mr. Weiner of SF grew up in New Jersey so that is his frame of reference as he busily tries to remake the State of CA – make it look like New Jersey where he grew up. More than half the people who run for office came from different backgrounds so bring their backgrounds with them. That is their basis for formulating a direction for their POV.
I grew up in Los Angeles and am used to having numerous ethnic regions which are very successful in duplicating their point of origins and work to keep that flame alive. And it works very well because there is enough room for it all to float along. Our POV here is that we are a university town which provides our main POV regarding politics and of course sports – we all follow our teams. Every city has it’s reason for being for which much investment is provided. Why are we suppose to apologize for that?
As to commercial growth it is the employer of people – US citizens – and matches their pay with the state and federal taxes as any employer should. Social Security is paid one half by the employees and one half by the employer. State disability and it’s additional taxes are provided by the employer in matching funds.
FB is donating a huge amount of resources to the County of San Mateo to help in infrastructure improvement. They all pay state taxes and property taxes. They also help pay for union dues where appropriate. They produce products which includes many subcontractors and builds regional growth.
As to regional, city, state and federal taxes we know that at least county, state and federal taxes are paid. The fact that this city does not have a business tax can be corrected.
Sijmple model: a small group of downtown landlords run the town. They don’t want a business tax, which might cut into their rents. They recruit people for Council. They don’t want Rebecca, who went to Stanford and then Harvard law then worked for Silicon Valley startups but does not do so currently.
I am voting for Rebecca.
And you?
Since we are talking about taxes the Santa Clara County property taxes on individual homes has a carve out for the PA School System. That in the past has help provide us with one of the best school systems in the state. If Mr. Weiner and his troops are successful we will be flooded with apartment complexes which are owned by corporations as opposed to single family owners. We could end up with more children but less tax base to support the school system.
Now you can kick in another element. Back in the day major corporations hired US workers which means that they applied all of the employer – employee taxes allowable. All workers were paying into the system through their personal taxes.
In today’s world Google and other companies are trying to bring in H1b workers. They do not work directly for the companies but for the agencies which are foreign listed. That results in no employer – employee taxes paid by Google and others. So they are getting bigger and bigger, richer and richer, but side stepping all of the corporation taxes which we used to have in place. That will be an accumulating effect for this region. A downward spiral in education funding. More charter schools to offset the lack of funding in the public schools. That results in school closures.
We have our job cut out for us. If the Atkins, Wieners, and ABAG’s are single mindedly focused on forcing everyone into corporation owned housing then we are in trouble.
Good Riddance to yet another woke, progressive, dictator wanna be. Please move far away to find an outward looking town to grow your family but please make it a small one; there are more than enough humans on this planet.
Since the topic of commercial businesses has come up like to add that the big boy companies share technology big time. HP donated a computer lab to CSU-Chico. Boeing shares technology advancement with Cal-State Long Beach Engineering Department. Your local companies that have an engineering focus take classes at SU at the companies expense. I had my Masters paid for by my company because it was business related to my job. A whole network of Corporate and University sharing is in place. That is the value of being in this place at this time. That is what we are about in this city and the surrounding cities.
@Resident-1 Adobe Meadows
The term you are looking for is ‘neo-feudalism’ as coined by Joel Kotkin (https://www.newgeography.com/content/006727-joel-kotkin-qa-the-coming-neo-feudalism). The 0.1% would have us not realize the American dream of owning our own home but rather all living in high rise 800 sq.ft. apartments paying them rent and working for them. As Johnny Cash said “Oh Lord don’t you take me, I can’t go. I owe my soul to the Company store.”
We are surrounded by transnational corporations. Typically they used migrant workers and VISA related workers to eliminate all of the typical corporate employee taxes. That eventually results in a downward spiral to the education system. And in the foreign countries where they are operating they bring in migrant workers and displace the resident population which ends up migrating to the US for jobs. Many of those companies are headquartered in CA. So the net effect hits CA at the state level and the US at the federal level.
Zayda,
That was a great song but it was sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford, not by Johnny Cash. With respect to the housing density debate, let’s focus on maintaining the quality of life that we enjoy versus solving all the problems of the county, state, country, world, etc.