By KATHERINE PETERSEN
The Sunnyvale City Council debated, deferred, deleted and ranked pending legislative issues at its annual workshop Dec. 14 at the Community Center.
Forty-seven items survived the councilmembers' scrutiny and remain scheduled for official discussion in 1996. Issues that did not make the list were either consolidated with related ideas, postponed to 1997 or laid by the wayside.
Items that the council voted to study include revisiting the issue of lifetime term limits; reviewing city-imposed mandates on businesses; studying how the city can best serve children, teenagers and families; developing programming guidelines for KSUN-TV, such as showing outside productions and meetings; developing a plan for citizens to learn more about the city's services, such as the Department of Public Safety and the library; examining enforcement of the city's zoning codes; considering making Tasman Drive two lanes instead of four; studying a possible ordinance to prevent interference with clients of health-care facilities, such as Planned Parenthood; and studying the possibility of expanding the tennis center to tournament level.
Although the legislative workshop is an informal council meeting, about 30 people attended, including city employees, board and commission representatives, and members of Leadership
Sunnyvale. The seven councilmembers, City Manager Tom Lewcock and 10 department heads sat at tables forming a "U" in the front of the room.
Up until three years ago, councilmembers ripped the pages of rejected issues out of their notebooks, crumpled them up and threw them at a wastebasket in the middle of the room. Nowadays, they just turn the pages.
Councilmember Jim Roberts said the practice was stopped because it could be insulting to citizens who may have proposed issues that were later discarded as unimportant.
Various issues attracted some interest but were passed over because they needed at least four votes to end up on the calendar.
The council deferred studying campaign finance reform until 1997 and deleted the study of changing council races from individual seats to an at-large election.
Reconstruction of the original Murphy House, expansion of the Sunnyvale Historical Museum and formation of a rotating mural program were ranked low on their list of action items.
Some of the issues approved by the council for the 1996 calendar are continuations of 1995 issues, such as finishing up the study of what to do with property along Stevens Creek Corridor. Citizens requested that the council consider different options including selling the land to residents, after the council voted down a multipurpose trail along the route last year.
At a public hearing on the topic, residents voiced concerns that if Sunnyvale continued to own pieces of property along the creek, demand for a trail would revive and come before the council again and again.
Roberts said that the city does not like mandates imposed by the state and federal governments, so it needs to reviews its own.
"We might find that the mandates achieve what we want or we may find they are inconsistent with the message we want to send in governing the city," he said.
Incentives programs could be implemented to replace some of the city's mandates.
Councilmember Manuel Valerio said the legislative workshop was a good experience for him. "I think we made some good choices, like the bubble ordinance, although I was not particularly in favor of lifetime term limits," he said.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, Wednesday, December 20, 1995.
©1995 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.