The Sunnyvale Sun

Letters & Opinions

Speak Out

A new library
in Sunnyvale
is long overdue

I love living in Sunnyvale and I am proud of the city. I do believe that our city is long overdue for a new library. I have three children at home who use the library. For them and their children who would benefit from a new library, I encourage everyone to support Measure B.

I do so because this is good for the city and its future.

Jay Shinseki

Bernardo Avenue

'Library of the
Future' won't be
just a building

We recently received a slick brochure touting the wonder of a new Sunnyvale library. What is not acknowledged is that in the last 10 or 12 years, much of the function of a library has been supplanted by the World Wide Web. I find myself frequently researching a subject or historical fact, but have not been to the library in several years.

If this reality were faced and much of the current library research material were replaced by an expanded patron Internet access, would this not leave plenty of extra space in the current facility for novels and items not well served by the Internet?

Further, although touted as "just $108 million,'' truthful disclosure would reveal that with interest over 30 years, this amounts to between $270 and $300 million.

A "Library of the Future" is not a new brick and mortar shrine, but one that adapts and makes use of the technology that Sunnyvale and the rest of the valley is internationally famous for, for a whole lot less than $300 million of tax burden for us and our children.

Phil Stewart

Sunnyvale

NASA is taking
benefits from
local military

While NASA has used imaginative ways to provide perks for the rich and has permitted Carnegie-Mellon and other institutions to locate on Moffett Field, it is also clandestinely stripping away the modest benefits earned by military personnel of the Bay Area.

Earlier this year it closed the auto parts store, garage and gasoline station. To make room for "NASA's long-range plans for site development," the two Naval Exchange Stores are to be closed Feb. 2, 2008. The commissary Store will probably follow, because one market attracts customers for the others.

When those facilities are gone, Bay Area military personnel will have to drive to Travis Air Base, 87 miles from Moffett. A benefit not within reach is a benefit denied.

All this is happening in the back yard of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Barbara Boxer and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It is time some branch of government stopped NASA from eliminating military personnel benefits they earned while in harm's way. Gushing with gratitude is not enough!

Andy Syka

W. Iowa Avenue

Shortcomings in
planning process
must be corrected

Several recent actions taken by the Sunnyvale City Council seriously impact surrounding neighborhoods, but continued development was prioritized over local concerns. Neighbors to such projects as Trinity Baptist Church/Classic Communities or T-Mobile cell phone antennas at Ortega Park were informed almost after the fact. This reveals serious shortcomings in the city's planning process that must be mitigated.

The public notification process needs to become "public" a whole lot earlier. By the time a notice is posted, the plans have already been drawn and run by the city's planning staff. As soon as a developer formally expresses an "intent to develop" the public should be made aware by posting on the site and in the Sunnyvale Sun, at a minimum.

Public trust needs to be restored by restoring professional ethics to this process. On the national level, members of the Senate and their staff cannot, for two years upon leaving government employ, go to work lobbying or consulting for an industry seeking government contracts. I strongly urge the city council to consider similar regulations that would apply not only to the planning staff, but also to city council members, including former mayors.

Use the same terminology for Sunnyvale's homeowners as you do for developers. What's a variance for one is a variance for all. Recognize exceptions as being just that, exceptional. They are not precedents. Precedents are meant to be followed; exceptions are one and only. Do away with the double standard of allowing developers "deviations'' and Sunnyvale homeowners hard-to-get variances.

Carol L. Weiss

Steuben Drive

Sunnyvale must
start going in
the right direction

I endorse a change in our way of doing city business because of the place in history we find ourselves. We have a criminal federal government, one that perpetrated 9-11, and now seems intent on destroying most of the Middle East based on lies and deceit so our greedy oil corporations can have at their sands.

We have global warming and peak oil, which should be forcing us to constrain our consumption habits, eliminate growth as defined by today's paradigm, and work to create sustainability in all our life's processes. We need dramatic change if our species is going to survive on this planet, but instead our wonderful city of Sunnyvale is being directed in the opposite direction:

*Seven- to eight-story Moffett towers being built to bring in more commuters through our city.

*A proposal and draft envoronmental impact report out that would put a massive bridge over 101 and 237 at the north end of Mary Ave in order to accommodate these commuters, putting more CO2-emitting vehicles on our neighborhood streets and threatening the lives of our children walking to the myriad schools in this area.

*A measure on the ballot that would increase the tax rate for all homeowners in Sunnyvale in order to build a monstrous building. They want to call this building a library, but the things that make it a library (furniture, books, computers, administrators and librarians) aren't being paid for by this tax increase. And all the drawings to date for this behemoth structure would crush the Charles Street Gardens, where food production is being done locally for local consumption, the right direction for a new societal paradigm.

*The steel and concrete downtown is being built with the ideal of increasing our unsustainable consumption habits, and more room is being made for cars to gather and to clog our already over-clogged city streets to get there. These 40 acres could be used to create a model of sustainable living with farms alongside housing, a community with a purpose.

It's not about the candidates, it's about this city and its people standing up and learning the truth and changing directions. Telling the truth about the criminals that perpetrate high crimes and misdemeanors and those that would cover up these heinous acts. Telling the truth that our way of life today is destroying future generations' chances of having a way of life. We must change our ways--and for me telling the truth about the realities of today is crucial, not the candidates that stand before us to keep the ball moving in the same direction.

Josh Salans

Sunnyvale