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City council prioritizes issues for the new year
Housing, zoning and downtown development are discussed
By Daniel Hindin
Affordable housing for teachers and Sunnyvale employees, the review of zoning districts in northern Sunnyvale and intensity of downtown development, consideration of park enforcement issues and exploration of the possibility of expanded local VTA bus service were a few of the issues that members of the Sunnyvale City Council recently gave high priority for the coming year at a recent meeting.
On Dec. 14, the council spent several hours prioritizing these issues that will likely come before them throughout 2001.
Every year, the council participates in this time-consuming process that goes far beyond the efforts of most other cities.
"What's unique is that we sit down at the end of year and decide everything for the following year," says Sunnyvale Mayor Jack Walker, "Most cities come up with things on the fly: That forces them to make decisions out of context. We know exactly what resources we have so we can evaluate what's important and what's not."
Councilwoman Pat Vorreiter adds, "I don't know if there are any other cities that do this. [Most cities] just all of a sudden say, 'Oh, we want to do this.' "
Dan Rich, assistant to the city manager, points out that it takes incredible self-discipline for the council members to go through such a large number of issues with the intention of narrowing 42 important issues down to the 17 most crucial ones.
From year to year, the number of issues they take on changes, depending on how much time each one will take and how much time city staff has available to devote to new studies.
The process actually continues all year long. City staff adds any issue that comes up, whether suggested by a council member, citizen, business, community organization or city staff member, to the ongoing list of possible study issues for the next year.
Staff tabulates how many hours of their attention each issue would take to study completely. Estimates range from several hours up to more than 1,000 hours, depending on the complexity of the topic. After computing time estimates and dividing issues into relevant departments, staff also gives a recommendation to the council based on its perception of the importance of each issue.
After staff puts together a large binder full of all this information, council looks at each issue. Each council member considers staff's recommendations and considers his or her own feelings on each topic.
The council then meets to officially rank each item. They first drop issues they view as unimportant, which is done with a simple four-member majority. They also choose to defer some issues they feel don't merit immediate attention to the following year.
Going department by department, each council member ranks the remaining issues in order of importance.
For example, the department of community development historically contains the most items every year, and this year each council member would rank the remaining 11 issues after the drop/defer process from No. 1 to No. 11 (No. 1 signifying the most important). They add up all of the individual rankings to determine the rank total for each item. The one with the lowest rank total gets the No. 1 ranking for the year.
Inevitably, the council members don't agree on every issue. In some cases, one council member will give an item a No. 1 ranking, while another council member ranks that same issue at the end of his list.
"Each one of us has things that are more or less important to us," Vorreiter says. "Some council members were a little upset [that there pet issue didn't get ranked high], but you win some and you lose some. For example, I proposed looking at housing for workers and teachers last year, and it didn't get support. This year another council member jumped on board."
Vorreiter's housing issue received a No. 1 ranking in the city manager's department this year.
"Some items had quite a bit of discussion," Walker says. "There were a couple of issues we kind of thrashed around. Sometimes I look at my colleagues and think, 'what are you thinking.'
"Some people take it as a personal affront when their issues are killed," he continues. "The trick is not to get too into it. You have to let go of some of your efforts. Sometimes it's a persistence thing; if you keep pushing, it may finally happen."
The public may question some choices the council made. Issues council dropped include reviewing the need to strengthen city support for the homeless, and exploring options to address the jobs/housing imbalance. At the same time, taking a closer look at parking lot landscaping received the third highest ranking in the community development department.
"That's the beauty of how the system works; not enough council members thought those issues were important enough," Vorreiter explains. "I did want to look at the homeless issue. It's more of a regional issue, but I don't think we're addressing it enough as a community."
"In those particular cases we already work on that," Walker adds. "It's one of those things where it's a feel good issue, but there's not much more we could do; we already work with regional authorities [on homelessness]."
Walker also notes the importance of citizen input.
"This is one of the truly excellent processes that Sunnyvale uses," he says. "It provides citizens a way to get more involved in the process. The sooner people get into the process, the more they can impact it. A comment at the beginning will do much more than when you're just approving something."
The council held a public hearing on the study issues on Nov. 28, before the Dec. 14 ranking session. They plan to approve the issues at their Jan. 23 meeting. Members of the public can still speak about specific issues at the January meeting, but once council approves the items, they are placed on the official 2001 schedule.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
