What a waste of time and money. Traffic and parking problems are already out of control Downtown. Promised improvements never happened. Does anyone half awake still trust our city planners know how to make things better? Instead, they'll just craft more loopholes to help mega-millionaire developers get even richer while the rest of us pay for it.

Let's turn this around in November by electing more pro-community councilmembers.

>> attract funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. At the same time, some city leaders believe the new designation may spur the agency to increase the city's regional housing allocation and require it to plan for more units

Another bargain with the devil. Funding will require more housing allocation which will only "pencil out" when office space is added, making the housing deficit worse. Can't we modify the city charter to require that no project can be approved which adds to the housing deficit?

-Reduce the housing deficit: No more office space!-

Well, this is how traffic gets worse and housing gets more expensive: One short-sighted decision at a time.

Perhaps City Council should have followed the norms of a democracy and asked the people who live near our downtown how they feel about making it a "preferred development area." Residents in Downtown North, Crescent Park, Community South and University South already live with the impacts of over-development and insufficient infrastructure. I would like to see every future traffic nightmare (remember carmageddon?) named for one of the "Gang-of-Four" who voted for this ill-considered change. Maybe we could begin with our traffic-denying former mayor Kniss.

The City Council pro-development already knows how people feel ever since they got the thousands of signatures to curb office growth but they simply don't care. They don't care about the declining satisfaction ratings, they deny we have traffic problems etc. because they know we have less money than the well-paid lobbyists working tirelessly to shift the tax burden from businesses to residents.

[Portion removed due to inaccuracy.]

I'm not opposed to reasonable *housing* additions downtown. That is, housing *only*. We already have far too much office space. Our outdated planning documents don't recognize that modern business practice stuffs twice as many people into the same space as in the past-- and, sometimes, far more than that. In the meantime, SB50 may allow 46,000 new housing units to be built-- that is, 58,000 units replacing 12,000 existing units. Web Link What I don't understand is how SB50 proponents think that people will get from these new units to their jobs at, say, Apple, or Intel, or ... ? Because you know that they are going to want to drive to most locations to the south and east. Only people working in one of the downtown areas along the linear city will be able to take Caltrain.

Yes. Let’s get funds to grow more office space for the Palantir company spies. Let’s face it. All of downtown is owned by them now.

Elections are coming in November. Vote out the "growthers" - Fine, Tanaka, Cormack. Thankfully Kniss is termed out!

Hopefully we can get some people to run who understand that massive office development has led to the oft quoted "housing crisis". It was created by developers and large businesses. The same people pushing these zoning areas to give themselves more area to develop.

This is a deal with the devil. Once we declare an area to develop, they will come in and make us put high rises there and make all of the problems worse.

Vote for anti- growth, pro- environment and quality of life people in the coming election and hopefully they can work to slow the stupidity and greed of Sacramento and developers and tech giants.

What does this designation do to the downtown development cap that was put in place a couple years ago?

People need to think long and hard about more residentialists for the council.

Come election campaigns, we have seen that everyone proclaims they are for the residents and keep very quiet about their track record of never having seen an office development they didn't vote for. During the coming council elections campaigns I hope residents wise up and look at what council members have done and said in the past, not what they say and do during their re-election campaign.

Hopefully, none of the candidates will try and game the system by saying they won't take money from developers. Then personally loan their campaign a significant amount of money, while after it is too late for voters to know find out before voting, accept money from developers that magically amounts to the amount of the original personal loan.

Posted by No-Escape-From-A-Black-Hole, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood

>> People need to think long and hard about more residentialists for the council.

I'm dreaming about it. Unfortunately, the Developers will spend enough money to muddy the waters and confuse voters. Every election, it seems like there is at least one stealth pro-office-space candidate, and it is often difficult to tell who it is until after the election. Money talks. Don't listen to it.

-No more office space.-

Anon wrote:

"Every election, it seems like there is at least one stealth pro-office-space candidate, and it is often difficult to tell who it is until after the election."

----------

My feeling is that endorsements are one of the most accurate ways to predict a candidate's future voting patterns. In the last council election, for example, Liz Kniss was one of Alison Cormack's most enthusiastic promoters. It comes as no surprise, at least to me, to see that Ms. Cormack has joined the pro-developer faction on the dais.

Signs up for this without knowing the details and constraints? Bush league. Vote him out in November.