Commentary – Page 2 – Palo Alto Matters – Community voices for sustainable solutions

Guest Opinion: A Palo Alto son asks: ‘Would I raise a family here?’

by paloaltomattersAugust 14, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

Palo Alto Weekly – by Aldis Petriceks / August 14, 2017

Recent college graduate says Silicon Valley culture is ‘placing blinders over our collective vision’

For many today, Palo Alto feels more cardboard than community; more ideal than reality. Silicon Valley’s culture is fixated on status, not service; on power, not people. We might benefit by pulling those blinders back. We might come together in unexpected ways, by engaging our community as much as we do our work — or, God forbid, our phones.

Editorial: Serious or mollifying?

by paloaltomattersAugust 4, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

Palo Alto Weekly – by Palo Alto Weekly editorial board / August 4, 2017

FAA report raises hopes on airplane-noise reduction, but with a long and uncertain time table

The good news is that a long-awaited response to recommendations made eight months ago by a “select” committee of elected officials appointed by local Members of Congress suggest an acknowledgment by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that the South Bay’s air traffic noise problems are real and can’t be ignored.

The big lie about California’s housing crisis

by paloaltomattersJuly 27, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

San Francisco Examiner – Featured Opinion By Deepa Varma / July 27, 2017

It’s official: The rent in California, not just San Francisco, is too damn high.

California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation when the cost of housing is taken into account. Since 2005, more than 2.5 million Californians have been forced to leave the state in search of an affordable home.

Unfortunately, the prevailing supply and demand — “just build” — mantra put forward by opinion leaders is diverting state government from the hard truth that the market has not responded to the demand of California families for affordable homes — not luxury and market-rate homes….

Read story

Dear YIMBYs: The brutal, unfettered market won’t stop displacement

by paloaltomattersJuly 20, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

San Francisco Examiner – OpEd by Leslie Dreyer, Joseph Smooke and Sarah Sherburn-Zimmer / July 20, 2017

Your platform, which relies on the filtering theory, states, “Today’s new, expensive housing becomes tomorrow’s inexpensive housing.” This theory doesn’t hold true for San Francisco, nor likely any other city strangled by the current global speculative market. When the California Legislative Analyst’s Office misused UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project data to advocate for the construction of market-rate housing as an anti-displacement tool, the researchers responded, in summary, by saying:

Producing tons of market-rate units to lower rents may take generations and may never actually work to relieve displacement pressures.
Subsidized units for low-income folks have more than twice the impact on reducing displacement pressures…

Editorial: Facebook’s proposed ‘village’

by paloaltomattersJuly 14, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

Palo Alto Weekly – by Palo Alto Weekly editorial board / July 14, 2017

Massive development proposal will only worsen housing, transportation problems

It’s hard to imagine a better example of how messed up our region’s planning processes and development policies are than Facebook’s latest proposal to build nine new office buildings totaling 1.75 million square feet, likely to be occupied by up to 10,000 new employees, while eventually constructing 1,500 rental apartment units.

Big league politics undermine community solutions

by paloaltomattersJune 30, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

Palo Alto Matters – June 11, 2017

On a national and even global scale, enmities are fueled around the clock by extreme partisan politics, social media bullying and “fake news.” We’re all up in arms about it. But even as we rally to resist, those same tools of division are intensifying conflict and blocking compromise here at home. Distorted battle lines, name-calling and oversimplification of complex challenges are demonizing local interests, dividing our community and impeding balanced and sustainable solutions.

A City’s Moral Impetus

by paloaltomattersJune 25, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

Palo Alto Matters – Guest Commentary by Greer Stone / June 25, 2017

Santa Clara County Human Relations Commissioner, Chairman of the Santa Clara County Justice Review Committee, and former Chair of Palo Alto’s Human Relations Commission

In 2003 the world was a different place. A gallon of gas cost $1.79, a dozen eggs would run you $1.24, and the average price of a home in Palo Alto cost $1,179,000. The world had never heard of Barack Obama, and Donald Trump had not even begun his reality show, let alone his career in politics. Yes, much has changed, but unfortunately, the funding provided by the City of Palo Alto to help the most vulnerable members of our community has not.

Read More “A City’s Moral Impetus”

City Budget – a view of the forest through the trees

by paloaltomattersJune 25, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

Palo Alto Matters – June 25, 2017

City Council will review and approve Palo Alto’s fiscal year 2018 Budget on June 27, before adjourning for a six week summer recess.

Most City decisions involve trade-offs that affect future opportunities, but in deliberating over specific issues throughout the year, it can be difficult to see the forest through the trees. The city Budget shines light on the intersection of those decisions and their cumulative effect as well as the overarching liabilities that constrain them.

This special Budget edition of Palo Alto Matters draws your attention to big picture questions about where we’re headed, explains the bottom line numbers and points to some specific issues of concern in the alignment of values and strategies.

Is PAUSD the City’s Single Top Revenue Source?

by paloaltomattersJune 20, 2017December 19, 2017Leave a comment

Palo Alto Matters – Guest Commentary by Eric Filseth / June 11, 2017

Palo Alto City Council Member, Finance Committee Chair

Outlandish as it sounds, there’s actually a line of thinking for this.

Sales taxes are many cities’ largest revenue source, and they’re a major contributor in Palo Alto as well: normally about 15% of our General Fund, with the Stanford Shopping Center usually being our largest single contributor, last year about $5.5 million.

But in Palo Alto, our lead revenue source is actually property taxes, at about 20% of our General Fund. Most of our property tax revenue – about 75%, or $30 million for FY2018 – is residential. This is partly because our commercial base stays low (basically loopholes in Prop 13), but mostly because Palo Alto residential property values are high; and residential property values are influenced by school districts.

Wolbach and Fine oppose planning for school impacts from city growth

by paloaltomattersJune 15, 2017March 3, 2019Leave a comment

Palo Alto Matters – May 13, 2017

Maintaining the quality of schools and the sufficiency of local infrastructure to support them are of paramount importance to the Palo Alto community. Nevertheless, the current City Council has shown little interest in either planning to ensure that schools can support Palo Alto’s rate of growth or regulating land uses to accommodate future school expansions.

Instead, the Council majority frequently cites PAUSD’s current decline in elementary enrollment as excuse not to worry about how city growth will impact schools in the future. On May 1, Councilmembers Wolbach and Fine went further, opposing a longstanding City policy to consider school enrollment impacts in land use planning. They argued that school impacts should not be considered at all in the City’s land use decision-making, regardless of current or future enrollment, because doing so could restrain development, making Palo Alto “unwelcoming” to newcomers.