May 5, 2019 – Palo Alto Matters
Stanford’s proposed 2.3 million square foot academic expansion will have far reaching local impacts on housing, traffic, schools, open space and more. The city, school district and our county representative, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Joe Simitian, have been mutually supportive throughout the process of assessing the impacts of the university’s General Use Permit application, known as the GUP, and identifying mitigations and community benefits that could offset them. All three agencies recently participated together in a rally calling for full mitigation of Stanford’s PAUSD enrollment impacts.
Last month, the county was poised to issue a list of demands in the form of conditions of approval and community benefits that would form the basis for negotiation of a development agreement to govern the Stanford project. Meanwhile, the school district met with Stanford to discuss school impacts and emerged with a ready-to-sign agreement whereby Stanford would partially offset the per-student cost of new Stanford kids from tax-exempt housing, build a $15 million “innovative space” to be shared with the school district, and provide $500,000 for school transportation improvements. In exchange, the district would drop its demands for a new elementary school site on Stanford land, give up its right to sue and agree not to oppose any development proposed in the GUP.
Unfortunately, the proposed agreement also came with a big catch: the benefits would only materialize if the county signed on to a development agreement to approve Stanford’s expansion. Citing violation of established ground rules that forbid third party negotiations pertaining to the development agreement, Simitian and county staff immediately suspended planned discussions with Stanford and put development agreement negotiations on indefinite hold.
While Simitian has long welcomed negotiations between Stanford and PAUSD, he has made clear that they must proceed independently of the development agreement. News of the proposed PAUSD agreement elicited an unusually strong reaction from him as he criticized Stanford for using kids and schools as a cynical political weapon to force county concessions regarding housing, traffic, open space and other critical impact areas – issues that are of shared concern to constituents of the school district, the city, and the county alike.
The School Board gave the deal an initial enthusiastic reception, but it has not yet been agendized for approval. Supervisor Simitian says that development agreement negotiations will not resume unless Stanford modifies its deal with PAUSD to remove any conditions relating to county approval of the GUP.
For now, Stanford’s GUP will continue to be processed on the traditional review track. The county will release Conditions of Approval in response to the project’s Final Environmental Impact Report on May 23 and the County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing at Palo Alto City Hall on May 30 at 6:00pm. The Conditions of Approval will be available on the County Planning Commission’s website as part of the packet for it’s May 30 meeting.