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So according to Alison Cormack, what the world needs is more Alison Cormacks. Duly noted! Maybe Council Member Cormack can figure out how to do a better job of making her case to persuade her colleagues and the community [portion removed.]

I’m also astounded by the arrogance in this opinion piece, coupled with a Councilmember abdicating responsibility to lead on that issue that was a centerpiece of her campaign.

Thank you, PA Online, for publishing this.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Indeed

Until another small group of people can come around and target to destroy anything to get what they want.

The best part was her quoted reaction to the library director telling her that it would be named after her when she dies. Her reaction was, "That's fine..." Like it is expected that they would change the name of the library.

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My two cents: I spend some time at Cubberley and find it a refreshing, slower change of pace than other parts of Palo Alto. It is not shiny and new but it is functional and well used. I would use funds for our pension problems, our traffic problems, the train crossings, and affordable housing before I would invest hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Cubberley.

As someone who has been involved civically for a long time, even in changing laws, and who has been the person who gets the ball rolling (the hardest work and the least appreciated), I appreciate what Alison Cormack is talking about. So often there is a strong desire to achieve something in a group or community, but it takes a special kind of person to do the heavy lifting to get it off the ground. Lots of people will help once things are rolling, but very few will help get it started. I don't even like her perspective at City Hall, and I'm even annoyed that in planning Mitchell, they promised a portable stage instead of an actual performing stage, then took away even that without any public input. Yet I am deeply grateful for what she did at Mitchell Park, and I think the cheap pot shots above should be removed. Clearly they come from someone who has never done anything like this for the sake of the community. I totally get what she's asking for and why, because I have been that person. And if I hadn't been so burned by trying to work with our school district in the past, I might have been willing to do it.

Alison, what you did with the City, you need to understand that getting the school district to work with you is a completely different beast.

Even fighting the City on development issues will not bring down the kind of vile, backstabbing, gaslighting, underhanded, scheming, manipulative, dismissive, lying, sociopathic, evilness on you that the school district will if you push them even for really positive, totally win-win things. (First of all, the district people have historically not believed in win-win -- they don't trust ANYTHING that might serve more than one purpose.)

It's going to be hard to find someone to work on Cubberly because those who have a stake in the schools who maintain a good relationship with them, mainly do so because they are at best yes-men (like PTA and head of secondary curriculum). Anyone with the backbone to push even against inertia and for 100% beneficial change is likely to be gaslighted, dismissed, and retaliated against so viciously they could never be effective at partnering with the district. Our district culture is just not amenable to partnering with parents, the community, anyone. There is a reason it's been so hard to get anything done at Cubberly, when there have already been great citizen commissions with recommendations.

Look, the last facilities bond was nearly $400 million dollars. That's a lot of money. How much did it cost to completely rebuild a new library and community center from scratch, about 1/10th of that? Look at the cost of school construction even in very expensive areas like ours, and consider what I just said, and see if you think we got even close to what we could have for our money, including that most of the construction happened during the recession. That's like 9 or 10 new Mitchell Parks, or, say, 4 Mitchell parks and 10 new elementary schools. There was money for Cubberly, and definitely bond language to allow it, and even community members asking the district to include Cubberly in the planning.

If you watched the way that money was spent, it was absolutely not spent in a cost effective way, and best enriched the various construction interests (worked best for them), because there was no entity on the school district side charged with ensuring the money was spent the most effectively and to get the best value for the district (the oversight committee did not do that, that's not their purpose ACCORDING TO THEM). The district people trusted the construction professionals, and let's just say, they didn't give the most cost effective advice.

If you read the previous facilities bond, it was written expressly to give the district the leeway to use it for Cubberly if they wanted to. If you say that to them, they'll tell you that there are all kinds of requirements on how the bond money is spent so they couldn't do that, but if you actually point out that the district didn't fulfill many of the specific promises and specifications in the bond, they'll tell you the bond language is just a loose guide and they don't really HAVE to do any of it. Indeed, there are no laws that give citizens any leverage to ensure the community gets what it's promised when they vote to spend the money.

What makes this complicated? I can tell you, but you really have to experience the breathtaking evilness for yourself to even believe that such behavior could come out of people who are supposed to be public servants working on behalf of children. If we were talking about rebuilding a community center for the city, it's one thing. But we're talking about PAUSD. What you read in the papers is not the half of it.

No teacher housing. They are not low income. Seniors and disabled folks are. One analysis showed that Pausd teachers make more on a daily basis than the average tech worker in the Bay Area. Should we be constructing housing on public lands for tech workers?

Pausd is the second highest paying unified school district in the state. Employment listings in the spring showed few openings for teachers even though there are more than 800 full time teaching positions at PAUSD. Recruitment is not an issue, but educating our low income students is. Focusing on education would be good.

No privatizing a public resource, our public lands for a special interest.

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The community meetings at Cubberley were achieving consensus until Councilmember Cormack hijacked the process and insisted that housing be included in all options. Still, most did not want housing there. There are better places for low income housing.

[Post removed.]

@Housing,
I thought the district owned properly all the way over to San Antonio next to that new hotel monstrosity (looks like the borg collective is taking over both sides of the street and never wants us to have sunshine again). Now that there's no sunshine or greenery over there ever again, it sure seems like putting in some townhomes for young teachers would be a good use of the space on that side.

I have no good words to say about what Scharff and the overdevelopment 5 did to our town, but even the Weekly published Cormack's role in getting the Mitchell Park redo to happen. Those early efforts to get the ball rolling are the hardest and least appreciated. Criticize where it's due, but be a grown up enough to also acknowledge when people do some good. She's trying to find an early heavy lifter for Cubberley. She just doesn't realize that people who could for Cubberley know the district better than she does.

@A Citizen,

The school district owns the site at 525 San Antonio. It is zoned single family residential and has private school there now. It is adjacent to single family homes towards Alma. This location is between Middlefield and Alma on the logical "north" side of the street. The big hotels are between Middlefield and Leghorn on the other side of the street, so not near that school district site adjacent to Cubberley (but actually a separate parcel).

I can't make sense of this editorial. Cormack seems to think:

1. She's awesome
2. Her colleagues on the City Council, and the school board, suck
3. Someone else should fix the problem

Am I missing something?

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@ PA Resident,

If you've never been the person who takes responsibility to get things rolling on just about anything difficult, you wouldn't understand. It's the most difficult and unsung role. In fact, there's even a type of person who recognizes that's going on and likes to swoop in when things get easier and take credit and control.

It is a lonely and hard job being the person who gets the ball rolling. Alison Cormack is pointing out that just citizens got the ball rolling on Mitchell Park, and she thinks just citizens could do the same for Cubberley, she's just clearly unfamiliar with the ways the school district punishes people for getting involved to fix problems. (Problems?! We don't have problems! You must be punished for thinking it! We must gossip about you and do nasty things to your child in school to pressure you to stop!)

Trouble is, the people willing to get the ball rolling are those unique individuals precisely because most people won't.

@PA resident, that summary seems about right to me. Oh yeah, and they should name the library after her, it's only fair.

Property Developers are the biggest supporters of Housing in Cubberley. That land is worth hundreds of millions, and it is very hard to stop their cash influencing our politics. They kick-back to lobbyists and campaigns. But once they have made their money they move on, with Palo Altans without any open space or public buildings. So no housing on Cubberley - it's one of the few open spaces left.

Also fix those playing fields - broken sprinklers and full of holes.

The Cubberley site (except for the eight acres owned by the City) is a PAUSD problem. PAUSD has been unwilling to compromise for forty years as to future plans except to hold on to it and get the City to pay rent for it. The City Council should no longer be an enabler and walk away from the Cubberley agreement when it ends in a few months. Only then, will the PAUSD Board of Education step up and make the meaningful improvements Cubberley so badly needs. PAUSD would lose $5M per year rent and be responsible for the maintenance and other issues of unsafe and run-down buildings. If the City extends the current agreement, another five years will pass, and we will be talking about what to do with Cubberley in every election cycle until then

Wow, the Weekly publishes an embarrassingly self-promoting piece by an elected official; readers point it out; and then Bill Johnson goes through and white-washes the comments.

Alison Cormack is an elected official and then actually wrote this embarrassing piece - she certainly should be able to accept the (apparently widely shared) feedback on how she comes off to her constituents.

If they don't want the feedback, Cormack shouldn't write it and the Weekly shouldn't publish it. How do you justify this, Bill Johnson?

@Ken Horowitz, I must be confused. How can the school district invest to upgrade buildings it leases long-term to the city and doesn't use for school kids? They are in the education business, not the property rental business. They don't upgrade the other facilities they rent out (Fremont Hills, Garland, 525 San Antonio) - the tenants pay for maintenance and improvements.

If the city wants to improve the buildings it owns (most of them) or leases (the rest), I'm sure they can. In fact, isn't that what they've been doing with the $1.8M a year that was cut out of the lease last time?

If the city wants to stop renting the school's portion of Cubberley for community use, I suppose they can, and the district can just go out and find other tenants. The community seems to get good use out of those facilities and fields, but if the city didn't want to make them available any more, that's their call.

@Confused
"They are in the education business, not the property rental business."

When a lot of us pushed for the district to include rebuilding Cubberley as part of the last facilities bond, in fact that was one of the arguments from the district for not doing it -- the rent. (I know, holes in that argument you could drive trucks through, but at the district office, it's all talk-to-the-hand if you try to use facts.)

@Confused
The PAUSD/City lease agreement is no longer long-term. It expires in two months. A five year extension has been proposed and the City Council has to approve it at an upcoming meeting. The City does own 8 acres and can continue its community
center for non-profits on their property. In addition, I am certain that there are other sites besides the 28 acres owned by PAUSD to house the other rentals. Perhaps the City would save money and put it to use on the many projects that need those funds. Currently PAUSD is acting as an absentee landlord; they lease their property to the City and the City is the current tenants’ present landlord. PAUSD has had a sweet deal for too long, and it is time for the City to say no more. Cubberley deserves a better fate.

@Ken Horowitz, sure the city could leave Cubberley, though I haven't heard any council members or staff suggest that. If so, I hope they would be decent enough to give the District more than two months notice (might be required in the lease in fact).

But if they do, the District will just find another tenant. I don't understand why you think the current arrangement is a "sweet deal" for the District. 25 acres of land for long-term lease in Palo Alto should be pretty valuable - I'm sure they would find another tenant.

You seem to think the District is doing someone a disservice - why? Their job is to make sure the land is available if they eventually need a school site. The district learned it's lesson when it sold sites in the '80s. Their job isn't to build a community center or help the city do so - in fact, it's probably not allowed for them to use their money that way. The city has its 8 acres and can build what they want, and also improve the buildings on the land they lease. What exactly do you think the school district should be doing?

Confused is right. What is hard to understand is what Cormack is looking for. Why isn't it the City Council's job to take the next step and say what they want to build at Cubberley, negotiate with the school district about the land configuration, and then issue a bond to pay for it?

Is Cormack saying that the council isn't capable of that level of planning and decisionmaking? If so, I agree.

Or is there something else that she's saying?

Ms. Cormack, I imagine that you're reading these comments. How about some clarification for your constituents?

still confused,

"What is hard to understand is what Cormack is looking for. Why isn't it the City Council's job to take the next step and say what they want to build at Cubberley, negotiate with the school district about the land configuration, and then issue a bond to pay for it?"

Raising money relies on something which the community will get behind. Oh and there would also be a need to trust leadership.

Tough job description (leadership, trust), not to mention issues about transparency. Hmm who can we call?

2,
Again, can’t believe I am defending Cormack, but she has said what she wants plainly and clearly. She wants some citizen leadership to get the ball rolling at Cubberley because the powers that be won’t do it and keep failing us.

She couldn’t be any clearer. She’s hoping the right person will read this and step up to the plate because she’s done it at Mitchell and she’s serving in Council now. It’s time for someone else.

We are in desperate need of citizen leadership to counter the takeover of our town by large soulless companies. We are in desperate need of people who will take the lead on safety so that it’s way more of a priority in decision making before there is a disaster here. The problems are acute enough that getting a movement is way less difficult than getting the ball rolling

The problem is that making a general call like this never works, Alison. You have to find people yourself so you can have enough of a conversation to convince them. And you’ll have to find people who don’t already know how proactively horrible our district people Anne. And you’ll have to be there to give them power to get things done. This is not like Mitchell.

And you’ll have to find people who don’t already know how proactively horrible our district people ARE.

Darned autocorrect!