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City Beat
Neighbors and school agree on new project
Valley Christian gets city council approval Jan. 22
By Kate Carter
A heated controversy about a new school trying to locate in Willow Glen came to a conciliatory solution last week when the opposing neighbors and school officials came to an agreement and got it approved by the San Jose City Council Jan. 22.
It was an almost anti-climatic end to a month-long debate over whether a Valley Christian Elementary School would be appropriate for the northeast corner of Hamilton and Leigh avenues. School administrators said the site, which they would lease from Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, was the only one they could find and to which they could afford to relocate their 450-student school. Neighbors said, though, that the school, adjacent to the existing Blackford Elementary School, would exacerbate already-bad traffic through the Hamilton-Leigh intersection and would contribute to noise in their neighborhoods.
Working with city planning department staff and District 6 City Councilman Ken Yeager's office, and with help from the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association, the two groups came to an agreement about where to locate the driveway and an approximately 30,000-square-foot, two-story classroom building on the site to most reduce traffic and noise.
"All of this speaks so well for our city," Yeager said to the hundreds of people spilling out of the city council chambers for the council hearing Jan. 22. "Nothing is more important to all of us than education and our neighborhoods. It only happened because we were able to compromise. It's a big victory for everybody."
Last fall, the school had requested the building be located on the eastern edge of the site, near the residential neighborhood. But neighbors worried about the noise this could generate in their streets and beyond. They also said a traffic study commissioned by the city for the project diminished the impact the Leigh Avenue driveway location would have on traffic. The location is closer to Blackford Elementary to the north and has no provision for left-turn access from Leigh.
The planning commission approved the plan in November, but four neighbors appealed the approval to the city council. They said they did not oppose the school, and they understood the timeline constraints the school faced, but they wanted the project to be appropriate to the neighborhood so as to avoid problems in the future.
Eleventh-hour wheeling and dealing following a Jan. 9 Willow Glen Neighborhood Association meeting at which both sides presented their concerns resulted in a new, and ultimately approved plan which located the school building on the property's northern edge, away from the neighborhoods. It also located the Leigh Avenue driveway closer to Hamilton, allowing for a southbound left-turn pocket from Leigh and a deeper on-site space for cars to wait during student drop-off and pick-up, rather than forcing the cars to wait on the street and congesting the intersection. The Valley Transportation Authority agreed to relocate a bus stop to accommodate the future driveway area. In addition, a second left-turn traffic lane will be added from eastbound Hamilton to northbound Leigh, to allow more people to get through the intersection and into the school.
In addition, the school has already agreed to stagger its school start times among its own classes and with those at Blackford Elementary and to require carpooling.
School Chancellor Claude Fletcher spoke on the school's behalf to encourage the council to approve the final plan.
"We did have an interesting process of getting here," he said. "We wanted this process to be an educational experience [for our students]. One of the most important elements of politics is the art of compromise. This is not an ideal solution on either side."
Neighbor Keith Bierman, one of those who appealed the project's initial approval, spoke for all the neighbors involved who now support the new project, saying, "I would like to be the first to welcome Valley Christian to the neighborhood."
After their short statements, the council voted 9-0 to approve the project (District 4 City Councilman Chuck Reed abstained because Valley Christian is a client of his law firm), bringing a drawn-out debate to a quick close.
"The neighbors did it all," said Willow Glen Neighborhood Association Vice President Helen Solinski, who wrote letters and liaised with Yeager's office and city planning staff to resolve differences. "It was an honor to work with these people; they were determined and well-organized. You can turn a negative situation into a positive situation."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
