Editorial: For developers, tough sledding in Palo Alto

Sorry, I didn’t explain above that the basement under the sidewalk was proposed for being filled in to resolve the leaks and sags. So Mayor Shepherd still wanted to give the developer credit for the portion of the basement being filled in, by giving the developer above ground office space still.

This change in the wind is long overdue. I would like to see the Weekly publish a map showing the holdings of Chop Keenan, Jim Baer, and Roxy Rapp. Their domination of the Palo Alto Monopoly board — and of the city council and staff — should be documented.

Longtime residents are constantly being told that the destruction of downtown Palo Alto, its independent businesses, its theaters, its livable public spaces, was due to the “free market,” when in fact it has been anything but. Instead, it has been the work of monopolists and corruption.

Palo Alto homeowners need to wake up and realize that, despite the current bubble, the damage these developers do will be hurting property values for everyone else over the long term.

Chop Keenan’s name is appropriate. He likes to “chop” down all the beautiful buildings in Palo Alto.
Gail Price continues to side with developers. She isn’t running for re election in November (thank goodness), so she can continue thumbing her nose at her constituents.
It is imperative that Mayor Sheppard, and council member Scharff don’t get re elected in November.

Spoiled developer throws a tantrum when it is suggested that developers should be required to follow the law like everyone else.

The planning commission and the city council serve the developers, rather than the people who elected them. Their jobs are to serve the constituents, which they do not do. The constituents do not want all of this business development in a residential community, but guess what? More people work in Palo Alto than live here, and that has caused most, if not all, of Palo Alto’s problems.

Unfortunately, some council members have financial investments in these business developments, and stand to make loads of money. These members should be removed post-haste.

The bottom line is, there really is no more room for more development, more traffic, more roads, more housing.

LEAVE PALO ALTO ALONE!

The way our City has dealt with development has an analogy in how our technology can dominate our lives and make us less productive. The City manager/staff and Council don’t prioritize the nuts and bolts City business — things like safety, big picture planning, quality of life, protecting the character of our neighborhoods and quality of the environment, solving civic problems — City “business” processes aren’t structured to keep development in proper context, so developers (between their money and narrow view toward their own wants) end up dominating. Development dominates staff time, City business, City focus, and, when developments are built, they just plain dominate.

City staff end up acting like the people who let their electronic devices dominate their focus. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing, they’ll take a phone call or email when it comes, etc. Taking the call or doing whatever is required often gives the sense that they are doing something, without requiring the kind of mental (and often physical) energy of accomplishing a real task in their lives. They end up less productive, and often unhappy, because for lack of a strategy to put their devices in the context of their lives, the devices end up dominating their time and focus.

Nuts and bolts City work is hard, often thankless, boring work. If you fight tooth and nail to ensure your town has a proper egress network mapped out in case of large-scale emergency, no one is likely to thank you even if the worst happens and everyone survives because of it. Usually fighting tooth and nail for safety before the worst happens is an extremely difficult task, it’s why “safety first” is such a necessary reminder for most humans. If someone dies in a neighborhood because response time is 1 minute longer, probably no one is even going to notice. (Who would know, really, if the person would have survived?) It’s so much easier to schmooze with nice developers and architects. But we hire and vote for people to run our City so that they put those kinds of nuts and bolts civic concerns first, especially safety.

Residents have expressed alarm and concern for a long time about what has been happening to traffic circulation and safety. Both of those issues are actually mandated as distinct elements in the comprehensive plans of California cities, but we don’t have them in our Comprehensive Plan. Safety, for example, is rolled up into “natural environment” and there are very few specific policies that address our current safety needs, particularly with all this development. Safety isn’t first, it’s an afterthought.

The Maybell development took up so much of everyone’s time and attention last year. Before the vote on rezoning the residential neighborhood, neighbors repeatedly called for the “heightened scrutiny” of school commutes that is the City’s own policy demands. But what did that entail? There were no rules whatsoever, no specific guidelines that could be enforced, challenged, or improved. The neighbors hired a respected traffic engineer who found there was no examination of the impact to students biking to school or walking at all in the report. The only thing they could do was point out the total absence of any scrutiny, but what guidelines or processes or big picture planning for safety did “heightened” scrutiny even entail?

For lack of a strategy, a “business” process, that prioritizes what’s most important, our City just kept treating development as the de facto priority. They even spent over $600,000 on an election they really didn’t need to hold, if they had spent some time figuring out how to use modern technology to get free, better feedback from the public, because they could have just set aside their ordinance instead of putting it to an election. Or maybe not even passed the ordinance if they had been listening, and instead worked with neighbors in a working group to come up with a better plan. But that kind of thing only happens when people are tending to the big picture civic business as the priority.

Cities can deal with safety and traffic circulation elements in their comp plans however they wish, they don’t have to have separate elements, but there are specific requirements. Did you know that traffic circulation is even supposed to take the CONVENIENCE of residents into account? We roll those elements into other elements, but it’s left us without any sense of civic priority, and in the face of pressure by developers, City Council just picks up whenever developers ping.

When NO on Measure D won, it felt a lot like that scene in Horton Hears a Who where the residents of Whoville finally got that “Yop!” through and those intent on destroying their little dust speck finally hear the residents yelling “We are here! We are here! We are HERE!”

I feel really sad that the result of hearing us is that our City staff become confused, rather than refocused on what’s important to residents. It isn’t just that they need to change the insular culture, we need good management from Council to examine how to focus City business processes on what’s important. Otherwise, they’ll just go back to picking up the phone whenever developers call and leaving the most important business of civic life as neglected as now.

I do think Eric Filseth and Tom Du Bois will refocus the priorities on what’s most important, so long as we get a majority of residentialist candidates who are as good as they are. I think this kind of clarity will be good for developers eventually, too.

> I do think Eric Filseth and Tom Du Bois will refocus the priorities
> on what’s most important

Very unlikely that they will achieve very much. Neither seems to have much of an insight into how government works–or even what it is supposed to do. Moreover, the council is bound by the charter to be hands off. If these two are going to have any clout–they will have to deal with an out-of-control city manager.

@Rupert of whatever: I’m tired of your incessant, unfounded attacks on Gennady and your equally unfounded insinuations (or more) that advertising in the Weekly buys favorable coverage. If you have proof of such malfeasance bring it forward; otherwise, cut the crap.

@Rupert ,

During Maybell/measure D, PAHC took out at least as many full-page ads or maybe more, than the neighbors. They had $120,000 to spend, the neighbors had shoestrings.

Good people can disagree. I disagreed with Daubers on their Measure D stance, but support Ken Dauber’s candidacy for School Board. So much so, I will support “bullet voting” just for him if it looks like it’s necessary to ensure a win. I do that with full knowledge that I will not agree with him on everything.

During Maybell, Tim Gray really stepped up to the civic plate in a way that made most of the neighbors wish he had gotten on the Council. I voted for him, but even I had no idea he would shine like that when things got rough. He was willing to stick his neck out and play an important and essential volunteer part of the grassroots. He came across as cool-headed, principled, thoughtful, and smart. Willing to think about things, and take a stand. He doesn’t come across as slick, like some other local politicians. That always works against people.

Bribes does have a point, though, Rupert. You do seem to mostly make ad hominem posts rather than discussing the issues.

“you are confusing opinions with attacks. I know that in Palo Alto disagreeing with council or city officials is considered an attack. However , maybe you can tell me why Weiss and gray were not endorsed and kniss was, for example.”

If your opinion is ad hominem, then it is also an attack. Many of your posts are ad hominem and often have little else to say. But maybe I am confusing you with Jerry Underdal. I’m sure that will be deleted, but that is my opinion of Jerry Underdal’s posts (not Jerry Underdal, but his posts).

You said, “I do note that many, many of your posts and many portions thereof were deleted by the moderator because of your style of addressing those that disagreed with you”

You have now characterized the Townsquare deletions of my posts as having to do with how I address others. Was that ad hominem? Let’s look at this thread. One post you may be attributing to me that was fully deleted above, was not by me. In the other post, for some reason the censor deleted a paragraph in which I was simply trying to explain something by drawing an analogy between how the City staff respond to developers and how some people respond to their electronic devices. I wasn’t even addressing anyone specifically. It was just an analogy.

Here’s the text they deleted from the post above:

“City staff end up acting like the people who let their electronic devices dominate their focus. It doesn’t matter what they’re [note: “they’re” refers to people who respond to their electronic devices reflexively] doing, they’ll take a phone call or email when it comes, etc. Taking the call or doing whatever is required often gives the sense that they are doing something, without requiring the kind of mental (and often physical) energy of accomplishing a real task in their lives. They end up less productive, and often unhappy, because for lack of a strategy to put their devices in the context of their lives, the devices end up dominating their time and focus.”

This description of people who let their time be dominated by electronic devices is quite common today and not even controversial. To some extent, the experience is universal, which is why I made the analogy. I still have no idea why the censor deleted it, as is often the case of my posts. There is nothing in it where I am addressing anyone and the style isn’t controversial either. I am merely trying to make the point that for lack of a framework to keep City staff prioritizing the most important civic needs, they end up de facto prioritizing development and responding to development input in the way people end up just responding to their electronic devices.

My post was deleted in which I complained to Weekly censors that they leave Jerry Underdal’s repeated innuendo and mischaracterization of others, particular regarding Measure D and things that happened where he wasn’t involved but I was, even his utterly false charges, but delete when I try to give him some background discussing what really happened. Often what I have to say is no more controversial than what was deleted above. The suggestion that something more positive might have happened if people had been willing to work together early on is apparently so controversial, it must never be allowed to stay. I’m guessing people like you don’t like it when I make a good argument that disagrees with your own views and I get flagged a lot? I really don’t know.

But objectively, I would say your last post only underscored the point I made. Your post had nothing at all to do with the story above, but was mostly ad hominem and speculative.

You said: “All that said, please note that all the council members that the citizens seem to be unhappy with, were endorsed by the weekly”

You keep saying that, but what’s your point? I voted for most of them myself, after making up my own mind, not just following the Weekly endorsement. It doesn’t mean I agree with how they comported themselves in office.

> On what do you base that?

Firstly, few people in Palo Alto have any idea how government works. So why should these two Johnny-Come-Lately’s be any different. But let’s consider some specifics. Of the following topics, which of these two men have a clear, and insightful, paper trail:

1) City Government Expenditures (Past, Current, Future)
2) City Government Revenues (Past, Current, Future)
3) Growth of Salaries/Benefits of City Employees?
4) Dealing with all unfunded employee benefit liabilities.
5) Infrastructure Issues
6) Growth of City Obligations–such as why Palo Alto should be assuming the Air Port’s operations.
7) Zoning Codes
8) Comprehensive Plan
9) Charter Update
10) Review of all City Ordinances for Relevance/Possible sunsetting.
11) General Transparency Issues.

This is a short list, but it covers most of the important issues that people claiming to be ready for City Council should have, by the time they run for Council, have developed opinions on, and researched, these topics. What paper trail can we look for any/most/all of these issues?

Last week the Santa Clara County Grand Jury weighed in on the transparency issues of the Palo Alto government. Looking around the various blogs, and letters to the editors in the local papers–were there any comments by either of these two gentlement? Or will the Grand Jury Report fall into the dustbin of history–as we go to the polls to elect five new Councilmembers?

Given that both of the gentlement are ill-prepared for this sort of decision-making, it’s difficult to believe that they will achieve very much other than some posturing on the dais, if both are elected.

P.S. Many of the above points you’ve listed are exactly why I think it’s critical to the future of Palo Alto to have Filseth and other residentialists on the Council. Especially because of the comp Plan revision.

Mayor Sheppard should rethink her candidacy for re-election in the fall.
The intellectually challenged mayor is going to humiliate herself, by losing in a landslide. The woman is so clueless that she doesn’t even realize how much she is embarrassing herself. The inept manner in which she conducts city council meetings is painful to watch. Council member Kniss tries to cover for her, and tries to straighten out Sheppard’s confusion, but it is obvious that the mayor is flustered and confused.

The question is, is this action by the Council a new reality in Palo Alto, or is it just a bump in the road based on political expediency, contingent on the outcome of upcoming Council elections? The voters in Nov need to
give the answer in strong terms.

The editorial initially portrays what has taken place here as a pragmatic approach to get better projects. Where does staff/ARB approval of The Cheesecake Factory fit into that? The special benefits, bonuses, exemptions were a matter of ongoing city policy despite growing negative impacts and opposition and were granted to developers outside this group of three to others who are now transforming the Hamilton Ave corridor adjacent to Crescent Park, with large underparked buildings at 524 Hamilton and now across lane 39 its sister 611 Cowper under construction and 537 Hamilton across the street.

@change the council,
If it says incumbent, vote for someone else … unless there are fewer residentialist candidates than seats, in which case, don’t even cast all the votes available, because a vote not used then will be essentially a vote for your candidate (and not for someone else running against them).

I challenge those claim that more development are vital to Palo Alto to explain why and how will our lives improve with more development. What is it that we just absolutely must have?

Dear Developers, stop boxing us in. Soon we won’t be able to see sky when we’re walking around Palo Alto due to your sky scrapers:( And has anyone noticed the increase of smog in the area just in the last few years?

“Without “THAT PLAN’, the money to pay for the housing was gone, Without the money the land was gone. Without the land the project was gone. I’m not talking about feelings or motives here.

Are you challenging my statement that PASZ successfully referended the affordable housing project that had been approved for Maybell?”

Yes, the referendum was not whether to approve an affordable housing project or not. The referendum was only to approve or not approve a rezoning, which was the matter that required a City ordinance.

If the City had not engaged in THAT PlAN, the money the City committed from its affordable housing fund would have been available to help at Buena Vista.

PAHC did not quality for that funding round anyway, they missed their deadline. But our City staff verified that they had the upzoning and other demonstrably false information. So the money for other projects in less wealthy communities that would have provided more affordable housing was gone.

Seems like you’re the one who doesn’t care much about affordable housing. You just seem to want to keep beating up your neighbors because certain people at PAHC didn’t get that plan and didn’t get to bust the residential zoning. Your motives for that are important, because your doing so continues to divide people and prevent them joining together to help at BV.

If the only way PAHC can work in our community for the future is to bust neighborhood zoning, then we should revisit our relationship with them. Because it’s not the only way to support low-income housing, for example, had the City backed off and used the money to help the residents of BV buy the mobile home park that would have supported far more low-income housing.

@Jerry Underdal,
PASZ didn’t exist until after Measure D, by the way. Most of the active PASZ members were not there in the beginning. You really have never been able to wrap your mind around what grassroots are. Many, many different spheres of citizens were involved in what eventually became Measure D. Measure D was not ever inevitable and was never anyone’s first choice. Most of the people involved in Measure D had many hopes for more positive collaborative efforts, but the City and PAHC just really dismissed neighbors’ ability to achieve something better/collaborative as much as they dismissed neighbors’ potential to overturn the rezoning. You are doing it right now, you seem to have absolutely no ability to realize that the energy that went into opposing the rezoning would have gone to a more positive effort if neighbors had been allowed, and you don’t seem to understand the amazing competence of the many people who would have volunteered for it.

PAHC had a choice for many months with grassroots reaching out to them to tell them there would be opposition to such massive rezoning, please work with the neighbors. Their response was to say they were not afraid of opposition. The course was chosen by them and the City who didn’t think residents could win a land use referendum, not the neighbors.

A working group could have found ANOTHER PLAN that met everyone’s needs, like at Terman, some of the same people were involved in that. PAHC could have simply worked with the community and applied in the next funding round with broad support for whatever was decided. If the money is not used in one round, then it rolls over. If other projects would have gotten the money, then they would have provided more affordable housing anyway. The goal is affordable housing, not first and foremost a gold star on someone’s professional resume at PAHC.

But the City knew what was happening at Buena Vista and with full knowledge, facilitated committing all the money from the City’s affordable housing fund at Maybell instead. Motivations do matter – you have questioned your neighbors’ for months, and they never questioned yours, despite the inconvenient truth that far more affordable housing may be lost because of such hard pushing at Maybell instead of focusing on what could have been done at BV.

Without a doubt, far more affordable housing was lost somewhere else in California because of our City’s misstatements regarding Maybell in the funding application. The person in charge of those misstatements in now in charge of our Comprehensive Plan revision. Maybe the developers aren’t expecting to be sledding tough for very long.

Development (change) is not inevitable. We have a choice. Let us choose no more commercial development. Otherwise, we are pressured by ABAG to create more pack and stack housing. Even in the absence of such pressures, we are at capacity for any additional firms or people living / working in Palo Alto. Cap both as the beginning to retaking Palo Alto for those who seek quality of life over an emerging urban blight.

If we conduct a study on whether high density housing developments near public transportation options have resulted in traffic reduction we would find out that the answer is no. “Smart development” may work in Manhattan, London, Sao Paulo or Paris, but it will not work here and never has. What we actually do is make a bad problem worse by increasing traffic congestion in areas that can least tolerate it, like our downtown. There is no reason for us to allow any more development and like the above poster said, development is not inevitable. It’s a choice. In Palo Alto’s case it’s a terrible choice we don’t have to make. No more commercial development.

@resident,
I agree with you 1000%. I also agree with everything Jerry Underdal said in the middle of his above paragraph, except I think it applies exactly to the pretense of listening to us the City is putting us through right now. Doug Moran hit the nail on the head in his blog post “Visioning or Potempkin Villages?” http://www.paloaltoonline.com/blogs/p/2014/05/08/visioning-or-potemkin-villages
Someone complained to me just yesterday about how leading he felt the questions in the City’s survey were.’

I agree with you, turning Palo Alto into San Jose Mini-Me isn’t inevitable or even smart. There won’t be a gradual erosion in people’s property values, there will be a tipping point, and the evidence will be that Palo Alto’s property values don’t hold the way they usually do in the next downturn, unless we work hard now to reverse what has happened to quality of life here. I make that as a warning just as I warned City Council and PAHC that there would be opposition at Maybell.

It has been my experience that when I’ve tried to tell City staff or Council anything they disagreed with, they simply dismiss what I say. I’ve continued to give my input but see no evidence of it in anything they produce or how they respond. Right before the Measure D vote, Gail Price told me only a few vocal complainers were against the rezoning even in the immediate neighborhood, which voted 80% against the rezoning (consistent with the internal poll I tried to tell her about). When I tried to tell her why my view was actually fairly representative, she argued with me and flatly refused to believe it. It came down to, she was the great city planner and I was just a resident.

@ South Palo Alto,
“Thanks for the detailed, nuanced background information, as well as the alternatives that did not happen.
It seems that there is a strong “us versus them” attitude throughout these comments (“residentalist party”), and I wonder if this impacts the willingness to find a common ground.”

Don’t look at the post-divorce and make assumptions about how the marriage fell apart. And there’s two different issues there. One where conflict seems inevitable, and one where it was not and tragic that one side “stonewalled”.

“Residentialists” are residents vs this development-crazed City Council that has repeatedly violated the zoning rules and the Comprehensive Plan, and is probably as we speak, hijacking the Comprehensive Plan for their development-on-steroids vision for Palo Alto into the future, while giving the appearance of taking input. That’s been the pattern of how they do things, and I see no indication of it changing. That makes the next election very important. Do we want to be San Jose Mini-me? That’s where we’re headed, and yes, that’s an irreconcilable conflict. It’s a conflict, like Measure D, that residents intend to win, the future of our town, quality of life and property values are at stake. In Eric Filseth’s vision A or vision B, most of the residents choose vision A, and getting it back will clearly not only take a fight, but hard work. It is residents’ quality of life and property values versus (some) developers’ short-term profits. Stay tuned.

I am glad for what Measure D did for awakening the residents to fighting back against the overdevelopment and destruction of our city’s character and vision in the Comprehensive Plan. However, I think it was despicable of Councilmembers to have used the affordable housing the way they did as cover to bust residential zoning in a residential neighborhood.

You only have to look at the difference between the ballots in San Francisco and Palo Alto over nearly identical measures to see evidence of that. SF’s ballot said something like, do we approve an ordinance that let’s the developer exceed the height limit by 80 feet? Period. There was affordable housing in the ordinance, there was all kinds of good stuff, which we all saw in the TV ads with Ed Lee and Gavin Newsome. But the only thing that required an act of the City was changing the zoning, so their impartial ballot dealt with that.

In Palo Alto, where the City Attorney writes the ballot — had they written an impartial ballot it would have gone something like (and I’m just throwing in numbers): shall the ordinance stand that increases the height limit by 20 feet, the density by 4X, the daylight plane by this much, with 40% less parking than required by existing zoning, etc etc. The ballot would have simply enumerated the many variances from the law necessitated by the ordinance. But no, it was worded something more like, Shall we have X kind of existing zoning (leaving off the words “low-density” as described in City code) or Y for affordable senior housing? No mention that the latter was only on 40% of the property, even. (Sorry to go back into that history, I felt like I had to support my contention that the City was using affordable housing to bust the residential zoning or it would get deleted.)

Because unfortunately I think the City led PAHC to believe certain things would happen regardless of opposition, because the City didn’t think they could lose a land use referendum in this town. A planner at PAHC told me personally early on that the City had told them to go after that property and I believe one of the Councilmembers’ firms represented in the sale. So together they dreamed up what they wanted without seeing the zoning as a constraint — the City convinced PAHC to go over even the original zoning they asked for — So PAHC stood doggedly with the original plan and wouldn’t budge. In some ways, you can’t blame them. They clearly thought that was the side their bread was buttered on with good reason and they weren’t going to let go. So the long months of neighbors reaching out, when there really could have been collaboration, met with only rejection, again, for understandable reasons. It really was “stonewalling” on PAHC’s part, as Larry Klein called it (which must have been quite a slap, frankly, when he said it to the public, because it was because of the City that they did it, I’m sure). It was a tragedy in the true sense.

It was really too bad all around, because now there is a lot of mistrust where there could have been a really wonderful working relationship with residents and all the surprising synergies. This really is a unique place – I think few in the public really realize how essential to what happened was the uber-competence and sense of civic responsibility of all these people. It surprised all of us when we learned about each other. If we ever name this place, the most apt name is probably SuperNiceNerdville. Really for many months, most of that citizen energy could have been channeled to a working collaboration, which could have done a lot of good.

That’s the tragedy in this situation. The City clearly had an agenda in the Maybell situation that went beyond affordable housing. Other evidence of that is in how they have really failed to do anything close to the same, when even half the effort would have made the difference at Buena Vista, and in fact their pursuit of that plan at Maybell directly took away from what could have been done at Buena Vista, because the CC used up the money in the affordable housing fund to purchase Maybell even as they knew what was happening at BV.

But CC does seem to have nevertheless co-opted a certain segment of the populace for their overdevelopment vision, who might otherwise have been a forceful opposition to the City being such an active part of bulldozing the 100 established trees (still there, for the moment) at Maybell.

I was once really pro-PAHC, South Palo Alto, but unfortunately, the divorce caused a lot of hurt in the neighborhood. There is still potential for forgiveness and reconciliation, but the Council and PAHC continuing to seemingly rub the neighbors’ nose in it the way they handled their choices post-Measure D haven’t helped. Neither has Jerry Underdal’s constant accusations and mischaracterizations. However, I will say, while I disagree with your conclusion, Mr. Underdal, I think the last post you made is refreshingly full of good information and points. I hope you will continue, it will elevate the debate and maybe even crack the door to reconciliations in the neighborhood. Good people can disagree (but it’s impossible to collaborate if you just call them NIMBYs anytime they disagree with any development no matter how much it violates zoning).

@Rupert,
The city made a 30- year low or no interest loan of money from our affordable housing fund, and that drained the affordable housing fund. PAHC advertised as much in their own ads.

I said “used” and stand by everything I wrote.

The money could have been available at BV at a critical time and wasnt because of Maybell. It is available now as far as I know.

I fail to understand the rational that we cannot place a moratorium on development for fear of lawsuits. Why should we authorize what’s bad for us just because the developers want to get even richer? Let them sue.

Really, why does the Weekly censor delete me for giving a carefully worded (so as not be be emotional) history and leaves things like “that is a false statement — when what I wrote was objectively true.

Rupert, you seem to be one of the biggest critics of the censoring being biased. I wonder how you feel now that they are bending over backwards for you?

@Rupert

“because the CC used up the money in the affordable housing fund to purchase Maybell even as they knew what was happening at BV.”
The above is a false statement.

The above is not a false statement. Weekly, if you are going to leave that, please at least leave my attempts to straighten out such a charge.

Palo Alto was over developed several years ago, and it is continuing to get worse.
This is all too true from the California Ave area south. However, there is also significant overdevelopment in the area around downtown.
None of the residents who do not gain from developers want this overdevelopment.
Unfortunately the City Council for many years has favored developers of all projects. Favoritism is especially notable with regard to over building for most sites and allowing developers to provide fewer than the required number of parking spaces. The basic required number of spaces is already too low for most sites and their purpose.
Housing units will need at least 1 space for each person expected to occupy a unit. Work places require at least 1 space for each person expected to work there when the facility is full.
It is time to sweep out our development-oriented council members. It is time for elections to be by districts–each council member should be required to live in the area he/she represents.
Stop the foolishness now, before Palo Alto becomes yet another blighted western city. At the rate we are going, Palo Alto will soon resemble Millpitis and the east side of San Jose.

The NIMBY attitude of Palo Alto will drive developers away. Why any developer wants to waste time on all the hassles of building in Palo Alto is beyond me. Yes, you can get more money out of projects in Palo Alto but the time it takes is not worth it.

Development is moving to Mountain View and Redwood City where there is less red tape.

In the book it’s spelled Hentzau.

@Rupert,
The above article is entitled, “For developers, tough sledding”

Are you going to go after them for making a false statement, too? There’s no snow. No sleds. No rosebud. They said “sledding”!

I’m afraid I have to give up. The Weekly censor is letting you slam me but continually deleting all the history, context, and posts I have made in reply, except for my statement above protesting that it’s not fault.

Not fair, censors. Either put back the history so the context is there — everything I said about how involved the City was in the purchase of Maybell is possible to verify — or delete “Ruperts” repeated taunts.

@Rupert,
Are you claiming the City wasn’t involved in the purchase of the Maybell property? Are you claiming the City didn’t USE UP (the words I used) the affordable housing funds for the purchase of the Maybell property? Because if you are saying that, you are calling PAHC liars, because they claimed that in their own ads before Measure D.

The whole reason the City had first right of refusal on the Maybell property is because of how intimately they were involved in the sale. But who am I? Just someone who has seen a lot of documents related to the sale, like a lot of the neighbors.

Again, the City tied up those funds at Maybell, when they knew what was happening at BV. They had all of you eating out of their hands (and carrying water for them, too), when not only would that money have been better spent at BV, the citizen action against Maybell could easily have been redirected at that time in support of instead saving BV.

I’m constantly amazed that people who would claim there can be no affordable housing in Palo Alto ever again if we don’t upzone residential neigbhorhoods (despite the fact that 801 Alma was built within zoning) or engage in similar financing mechanisms that involve giant giveaways to for profit developers (despite 801 Alma being built without needing to), and that nothing is perfect so we have to accept whatever they say has to be done in order to get the housing, would not be pragmatic when it comes to choosing between realistically saving BV and tilting at windmills at Maybell.

The choice between saving over 400 low-income residences of existing Palo Altans with the possibility of no ultimate cost to the City, and a development costing tens of millions for 60 spots without any marketing study to show the need for that segment — if we’re being pragmatic, that’s easy.

@ Don’t Worry,
I hope you are right. We would all be better off here. Unfortunately, developers show no signs of giving up. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I’m seeing the same anger at overdevelopment from Sunnyvale through Menlo Park. Many of those groups talk to each other now. It’s only a matter of time before we take up with that group in SF who rejected the upzoning at the waterfront.

I don’t know what you mean by “NIMBY” – if you mean against giant, ugly, overbuilt developments that destroy quality of life and overuse resources and infrastructure, then call away, and good riddance to them. If you mean against affordable housing, I hope you realize all the overdevelopment is actually working against affordable housing.

‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.’–G. Orwell

Despite the few posters on this board, nobody cares about Buena Vista. Supporters can try to prop up their outrage by pointing to a discredited neighborhood survey done by fuzzy headed professors. Supporters can say the city should do this or that, or made bad choices when the residents didn’t get a chunk of money to help them purchase the run down trailer park. But in the end, the trailer park has reached the end of it’s life. Most of the trailers are 50 years old. It’s a one star trailer park sitting in the middle of one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. The property would have to be up-zoned to RM 30 before it could improved. It’s non-conforming (what you call ‘illegal zoning’) today. Even the resident’s own expert testified that it’s currently configured in what effectively would be RM 25, if the city had such a designation.

Nobody wants to see the residents harmed. But their compensation is determined by the city’s mobile home closure ordinance and is paid for by the park’s owner. Buena Vista doesn’t have future in Palo Alto, so please stop trying to inject it into every debate.

A bank makes a home mortgage loan following federal guidelines and under federal insurance. It knows which home is bought and its own people have verified the value of the home. A loan officer is responsible for following dozens of rules to ensure that the investment is proper.

Here’s a multiple choice question:

How is the money used by the bank?

a) It isn’t used at all.
b) It’s loaned.
c) To buy a house.

Answer a) is misleading. Answer b) is technical, ignores known reality, and those who choose that answer are pricks. Answer c) is sloppy, ignoring detail and technical process to imply that the deeper answer is all that matters for the discussion at hand.

Can we get on now with an analysis of what developers actually face in the immediate future in Palo Alto?

“the city NEVER purchased Maybell.”

I never said the City purchased Maybell. I never disputed that the City loaned the money. How many times do I have to repeat that? You said that, I didn’t.

Once again, I said the City USED UP the affordable housing fund for the purchase of Maybell. Shall I start claiming that you just called Buena Vista irrelevant? I quote you above, you said “Buena Vista is irrelevant” Geez.

The fund the City USED UP/LOANED for Maybell, the effort the City made to help PAHC secure the property including telling them to go after it in the first place and facilitating the sale — they did knowing full well that those funds would then not be available for BV.

According to PAHC’s own ad in the Nov 1 Weekly before the election
http://paloaltoonline.com/morguepdf/2013/2013_11_01.paw.section1.pdf
page 15
The City loans came from “the City’s Affordable Housing Fund” “not taxpayer dollars from the general fund” and “It is our understanding that at this time, the City of Palo Alto has zero dollars in the Affordable Housing Fund to cover additional costs”

In other words, the City USED UP all the money in the affordable housing funds for the purchase (to facilitate the purchase, to LOAN for the purchase, get it?) of Maybell, so there was, by PAHC’s own admission, zero money left over for anything else. Zero money left over to help at BV, all the money in the affordable housing fund deliberately tied up at Maybell and unavailable to help at BV, when the City Council KNEW what was happening.

Larry Klein’s lawfirm aided in the purchase. Where are they now to help BV purchase the property? Why has the City been so silent on reapplying the funds at BV? (Of course, things are more complicated now, and the sale of Maybell also increased the comparable sale price.)

And in fact, their misrepresenting that they had the rezoning on state funding application documents ended up meaning that someone else’s affordable housing project didn’t get their funding during that round. But who cares, the only project that matters anywhere in the whole wide world is bulldozing those trees at Maybell for those 60 units, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a NIMBY, right?

The City is not a bank with more money to loan for the next affordable housing project. They USED UP the pot of money to LOAN at Maybell, and were intimately involved in that whole deal — by PAHC’s own admission they USED UP what was available from the affordable housing fund for their LOAN so that there was nothing left for Buena Vista then.

Since the sale of Maybell, Nancy Shepherd has said those LOAN funds can be used at BV now. So if they had not been USED UP for the LOAN at Maybell, they could have been available to help at BV when they would have actually made a difference. Capiche?

This is absolutely relevant to this discussion, enough, because developers getting away with whatever they want has everything to do with what happened at BV, and somehow our City Council got people like Rupert who claim to care about affordable housing to carry water for them. Tough sledding indeed.

Thank you, Jerry Underdal, for pointing to paloaltocompplan.org, where residents can give their input on the comp plan.

To assist residents in their input, the California state citizens guide to planning has a helpful site on The Required Elements of the General Plan:
http://ceres.ca.gov/planning/genplan/gp_chapter3.html

Note that it lists those elements as:
“(LU) – Land Use

(CI) – Circulation

(H) – Housing

(CO) – Conservation

(OS) – Open Space

(N) – Noise

(S) – Safety “

Which is not exactly how our City has its Comp Plan Elements. Cities can roll the different elements together any way they like, but they can’t just leave out mandated stuff. For example, the citizens guide points out things like, “When the noise element is inadequate, the land use element may be invalid, as in the Camp case. “

Note that our Noise and Safety elements are rolled into Natural Environment, where they seem almost detached from addressing the urban aspects.

I think everyone concerned with the future of our City should participate in this online tool. Please also take a look at the state of California’s citizen guide, because it will give the background on what should be in the Comprehensive Plan for comparison.

First know what you have a right to expect as a citizen, then please help ensure our City gets them in the Comp Plan.