Letters
Divisiveness burdens city
I don't disagree with your criticism of the conduct of the Sunnyvale City Council session of April 16. However, there is at least one inaccuracy and one glaring omission in your observations.
First, you don't have to be a "city insider" to be aware of the dissention between various council members; it is obvious to even the casual observer. That we seem to have competing groups paddling in different directions is also evident. If the citizens know it, so do the council members.
The point that you and others missed or ignored is that the travel budget was a side issue and diversion, and the rude and unprofessional behavior witnessed on April 16 only a surface manifestation of deeper issues. The real problems here are that this divided council places a very real and unnecessary burden on our city manager and staff, forcing them to walk a tightrope and possibly make undesirable compromises so as to avoid offending one or the other competing council factions.
The other and more serious part of this is that the council may be manipulated by either city management or private interests who would play one council faction against another to achieve their own ends to the detriment of the Sunnyvale citizens. Think about it.
Don Nolan
Cathedral Drive
Serious problems with development plan
Your article about the Downtown Urban Development Study missed some very key points, to wit--
Regardless of whether or not this plan is any good, the notion of such a radical plan not being voted on by the citizens (by a direct referendum vote for example) is clearly undemocratic and scandalous. An advisory committee with only five citizens at large and 16 other members with business interests represents a classic conflict of interest. The fact that this "citizen's committee" should have this kind of power is completely unjustifiable and ridiculous.
You didn't mention key points made by those opposed to the plan. One of my points was that no one seemed to know what was in the report and what it meant. For example, one of the blocks says it has 240,000,000 square feet of office space. (Yes, that's 24 million). That's 24 times bigger than the World Trade Center Towers. Downtown San Francisco has only 38 million square feet of office and I thought that was a lot. The fact that this obvious typo got published after being carefully "studied" by the Advisory Committee, the Planning Staff, Robert Paternoster, City Manager Robert La Sala, the Planning Commission, and the consultants, show me that this group has no idea what their numbers mean. But hey, eventually someone would catch the mistake, right? And that's my point. Like Vice Mayor Julia Miller said, what's the rush? Why vote on such a massive change to the heart of our downtown at 2 a.m. in the morning?
Let's talk about size. If you look at the report you'll see that this plan invisions lifting 31 downtown blocks (in other words the entire downtown plus Mathilda up to El Camino) an average of 5 stories in the air, or 60 feet. Can you imagine that?! Not only is that unbelievable, there was debate by Valerio over whether a model should be built after the vote to approve the plan! Did you catch that??!! His reason was that it might give the impression to the citizens that it was too big and massive, and they might not want it!!
Also did you notice that most of the public speakers were business interests, property owners, and business advisory group representatives? I was only one of about six citizens who spoke negatively about the plan. Didn't it seem odd? Maybe orchestrated? Why do you think they kept talking about the need to push the vote that night? The euphemistic phrase used was "keep the momentum going... "
Your article mentions that the plan will rebuild the old street grid back. You are wrong. Look at the drawings in the report and see that the mall stays. They only talk was about "possibly" opening up the mall. And what does that exactly mean?? They're totally vague because the chances of that happening are almost non-existent. First of all it's too costly and involves shutting down Macy's and other stores. Second, the city can't force the owners. Third, it's all BS just to get people talking about it. Please note that the mall is staying. As a matter of fact the plan calls for adding three stories on top of it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The "mission statement" talked about creating a traditional downtown that is pedestrian friendly. This plan is just about as far from being traditional and friendly as you can get, not to mention the fact that it will be horribly ugly and massive and destroy our city more so than the mall did when they tore down the old downtown. The subject of the plan being "trendy" was brought up. Miller noted that 'trendy' doesn't last and successful things that last the test of time are not trendy. Other council members nodded agreement. But no council member took the cue. No discussion of that pregnant topic by our fearless council.
A "study" by definition shows more than one option to something. This "study" was no study. They even say in the report that their intention was to build upon the 1993 Downtown Specific Plan, which was also a shoddy piece of work that was rushed through the "process." This "study" only considered one plan and that was for max-ing out our downtown to the hilt, just because an "economic consultant" told us we could. By the way, the report didn't offer any substantiation for the demand claims. "Jerry" just pointed to the Chronicle article a few days before, which I also read, and also was just speculation.
These are just a few comments I have about how ridiculous the whole thing is/was. I could keep going.
Andy Maloney
S. Taaffe St.
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
