Things won't necessarily look the way they used to in the 1970s though, as the new plan includes tall, high-density buildings and at least 1,700 new residential units to be built within the downtown area.

During a five-hour discussion about the downtown plan, the council also considered the acceptance of the environmental impact report, which mentions the city's schools.


Schools left out of loop

Somehow, in the midst of two years of discussion and planning between city staff, developers and the Downtown Stakeholder's Committee (made up of business owners and residents), the Sunnyvale School District was left out of the loop.

Joe Rudnicki, superintendent of the school district, told council members that city staff ignored the numerous attempts the district made to exchange input and work together to deal with the impact the downtown plan would have on local elementary schools.

"The schools where development is being proposed are at or over capacity," Rudnicki said. The development could cause traffic congestion as overflow students are transported to other schools in the city, he said. The development could also force the district to opt for year-round education or for building two-story schools in place of the current ones, he said.

These impacts to local schools aren't fully addressed in the environmental impact report that was released in April, Rudnicki said. But according to Trudy Ryan, director of planning, the downtown plan's impact to schools is not an environmental issue.

However, the impact to schools is mentioned in the environmental impact report. The mitigation measures to deal with the impact outline a fee to be paid to the school district as required by state law, according to Valerie Armento, city attorney. "The law says the mitigation is the payment of the fees. There are certainly practical implementation aspects of the downtown plan that are not to be included in the EIR," said Armento.

But some feel the money may not be enough to deal with the impact. Melinda Hamilton, president of a local community group Friends of Sunnyvale said, "Throwing money at the schools doesn't mitigate the impact. It takes nine acres to build a school."

Rudnicki agreed. "We're talking about millions of dollars, if we add a small school to the area, for example," he said.


Mix-up in communication

The Downtown Stakeholder's Committee began meeting two years ago and presented a downtown plan to council last year. Since then, the plan has faced much opposition.

According to Rudnicki, the school district sent at least two letters to the city during this time providing some input as well as asking for more communication between the city and the district.

The problem, said Rudnicki and Bob LaSala, city manager, is that there was a miscommunication between the city and the school district. City staff sent a letter seeking input about the plan to an intern at the district who wasn't employed by the district, but actually worked for a person who was contracted to provide services to the district. The district never saw the letter. The mistake was not discovered until two weeks before the city council was to adopt the downtown plan.

"Other school districts had no problem with us. To depict that [the miscommunication] was intentional is a misrepresentation," said Robert Paternoster, director of community development.

Rudnicki said he neither supported nor opposed the downtown plan.

Ron Swegles, planning commissioner, said he did ask city staff about the impact to schools when the commission considered and eventually approved the environmental impact report and the downtown plan. "I had asked several times from staff about the availability of classrooms for the new students that would be moving in to the downtown area," Swegles said in an interview with The Sun after the city council meeting. The response Swegles got from staff was that the school district was nonresponsive.

Rudnicki said, "If you're not asked, you can't be nonresponsive."


School study to be done

Rudnicki and Ben Picard, deputy superintendent of the district, met two weeks prior to the June 17 meeting with LaSala and Paternoster to come up with a solution. At the city council meeting LaSala asked council members to consider adopting a joint school facilities planning study between the city and the district to assess the impact the downtown plan would have on local schools and come up with solutions to address the problems.

The city council approved the study unanimously. Council member Jack Walker said, "We need to work cooperatively with the school district. Even if we're not required to, we have a moral and ethical obligation to work with them."

The council also approved staff's recommendations to most aspect's of the downtown plan.

While some members of the community said that redevelopment may not even take place in the next few years, council member Walker said that the 1993 downtown plan didn't work before because the Town Center Mall was still in place. Now that the mall's potential owners, The Forum Group, plan to tear down the mall and rebuild much of the original street grid, the potential for the downtown to evolve with the plan is a reality.