Palo Alto Matters - Community voices for sustainable solutions
News, data, commentary and connections to help Palo Alto residents get informed, get involved, and speak up about community concerns.
The Almanac – by Barbara Wood / September 29, 2017
The Federal Aviation Administration is considering making the route Surf Air has used to avoid homes on the Midpeninsula – by flying over the Bay – an official fair-weather route. But an organized group of residents from Sunnyvale has turned out in force against the route saying it transfers the noise to their neighborhood.
Palo Alto Weekly – by Sue Dremann / September 29, 2017
Call it what you will: whack-a-mole, a shell game, musical cars. Channing Avenue and Edgewood Drive are the latest streets to become parked up as drivers seek parking spots outside Palo Alto’s ever-expanding zone of prohibited overnight parking.
Mountain View Voice – by Kevin Forestieri / September 28, 2017
Council members unanimously agreed to add language to the North Bayshore Precise Plan that would require the region’s two major landowners, Google and Sobrato, to submit a “local school district strategy” as part of any dense residential project, showing precisely how the developers would assist in building local, neighborhood-oriented schools in the area. The strategy is fairly broad, and could include land dedication, funding, transferring development rights or other “innovative strategies.”
The Mercury News – by Ethan Baron / September 27, 2017
MOUNTAIN VIEW — In a standoff with city officials, Google is demanding more office space for its futuristic new “Charleston East” campus and is threatening to block nearly 10,000 units of critically needed housing if it doesn’t get its way.
The company’s move could derail a plan — given preliminary approval by the Mountain View City Council early Wednesday morning and which Google says it still supports — for construction of 9,850 homes in the North Bayshore development anchored by Charleston East. The Mountain View search giant had earlier told the city it would work with partners to have 9,600 housing units built on its property, said Vice-Mayor Lenny Siegel.
Palo Alto Daily Post – by Allison Levitsky / September 13, 2017
Palo Alto police are 12 officers short of the 92 they’re budgeted for, so the department is offering up to $25,000 bonuses for new hires, police said yesterday.
It’s the first time the department has offered hiring bonuses in almost a decade, Lt. James Reifschneider told the Post. The department has had between eight and 12 vacancies for most of the last year.
Palo Alto Weekly – by Gennady Sheyner / September 11, 2017
Palo Alto City Councilman Greg Tanaka has agreed to pay $733 in fines after the California Fair Political Practices Commission found inaccuracies in the financial forms his campaign filed during last year’s council race.
The agency, which enforces the state’s Political Reform Act, found that Tanaka’s campaign had committed three violations in reporting contributions made during last fall’s campaign season. In two cases, it had failed to disclose contributions of more than $1,000 within 24 hours, as the law requires.
Palo Alto Daily Post – Opinion by Editor, Dave Price / September 12, 2017
In Palo Alto, 2018 will be the year of El Camino Real.
City Councilwoman Lydia Kou recently rattled off a list of 11 projects that are in the works for the King’s Highway.
Most of these projects would result in more housing stacked up against the street, 50 feet tall (the city’s height limit). If Palo Alto isn’t careful, El Camino will become a canyon with a street on the bottom and 50-foot walls on either side.
Palo Alto Daily Post – by Allison Levitsky / September 12, 2017
In a City Council race that hinged on development in Palo Alto, now-Councilman Greg Tanaka failed to identify several donors as real estate developers, California Fair Political Practices Commission said yesterday (Sept. 12).
Tanaka said he has agreed to settle with the FPPC for incorrectly reporting campaign donations and leaving blank or misreporting the occupations of Chop Keenan, Jim Baer, Roxy Rapp, Mark Gates Jr., Joseph Martignetti Jr. and Perry Palmer.
Palo Alto Daily Post – by Allison Levitsky / September 9, 2017
Mountain View Whisman School District is projected to double its enrollment in the next five to 10 years, Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph told the Post yesterday (Sept. 6).
A report last year suggested the 5,200-student district would see about 800 new students in the next five or six years. Then, Mountain View City Council began work on the North Bayshore housing project, which could bring in thousands of homes near Google’s headquarters, bringing the number of new students up to 4,000.
Palo Alto Weekly – by the Palo Alto Weekly editorial board / September 8, 2017
The irony and hypocrisy of this is that the same majority that voted Tuesday to make more commercial development easier has been advocating repeatedly for more housing. If there is one documentable result of the current office-cap restrictions, it is that it has led to more housing projects where office development would have otherwise been likely.
It is not hard to imagine voters becoming cynical about candidates who say their focus is on increasing the supply of housing while voting to make new commercial development, the major driver in demand for housing, easier.