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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Public Safety Officers attend a Sept. 15 candlelight vigil held for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The year in review 2001
Reality Check
By Jesse Ducker
During a city council meeting on April 3, former Mayor and current Councilman Jack Walker said that "it's time to change the paradigm" when dealing with problems in Sunnyvale. At the time, he was talking about his decision to support a motion preventing the widening of Wolfe Road at its intersection at El Camino Real. It was a particularly emotional debate, and was an attempt to resolve a 10-year conflict. The motion passed 5 to 2, and for the first time many people could remember, the council had vote against using further construction as the means to solve the problem of a congested roadway. And it had done it knowing it would cost the city a lot of money in state funding.
"The reality is it's time for city council to do its job," Walker said. "We were told that Highway 85 would solve things for years to come, but it's already jammed up. [Continuous building] hasn't worked for 25 years. ..."
During a Sept. 25 council meeting, Suzi Blackman, the CEO of the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce addressed the council and the larger Sunnyvale community. She said she was concerned about how the year's economic downturn was affecting the city's businesses. "It's time for residents to step up to the plate," she declared.
Throughout 2001 Sunnyvale residents and city government spent a lot of time stepping up to the plate and handling often-unforeseen problems. The city of Sunnyvale spent much the year dealing with the growing pains that came along with of its own success. In recent years, the city had grown at an unprecedented speed and began a substantial rebuilding of its downtown. And in recent years, the economy was strong enough to back it up. Now with the situation changed, the residents and government of the Sunnyvale had to adapt.
Sometimes parts of the community openly resisted the direction they perceived the city was moving. One example was the bitter and vocal objection to the addition of a crematorium to the Wyant and Smith Funeral Home. It sparked not only a civil suit against the city of Sunnyvale, but also three different campaigns for seats on the city council. Even though both the suit and the crematorium opponents lost in their respective fields, they certainly set the city on notice.
With the council elections came a new face to the city council as well as a new mayor and vice mayor. Planning Commission veteran John Howe joined the council in November, along with incumbents Fred Fowler and Julia Miller, who became Mayor and Vice Mayor, respectively. And while the transfer of titular power from Walker to Fowler didn't go as smoothly as in years past, Fowler stated his commitment to helping guide the council in further intelligent action during his watch.
"The council members are all smart people, and they all have the city's best interests at heart," Fowler said before the inauguration. "We have to get these smart people to bang ideas off of each other. We have to govern and control that interaction process, and make sure everyone's ideas get heard."
It's to the city's credit that it dealt with the last year's potentially crippling economic downturn in an intelligent and measured manner, and thus has weathered much of the storm thus far.
Year in Review 2001
January-March
April-June
July-September
October-December
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
