|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Portola Valley is in a pickle.
For years the state encouraged cities to provide affordable housing. The Portola Valley Town Council on which we served, like the councils before us, made good faith efforts to take modest actions within our strong design and planning guidelines, dictated by our general plan, but the residents shot down every project.
We weren’t alone; few cities came through to address the ever worsening housing and homeless crisis, particularly after redevelopment funds were discontinued under former Gov. Jerry Brown. Facing a catastrophe of epic proportions, the state had no choice but to act. Hence the exponentially increased Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) numbers for every jurisdiction in the state, enhanced penalties for cities that do not comply, the creation of a new state department to enforce the mandate, and dozens of new housing laws making it easier to build.
Final housing elements were due at the state Department of Housing and Community Development by Jan. 31, to be reviewed and either certified or sent back for changes. When the Town Council did not adopt our element by the deadline, they created a timeline to approve it by March 31.
At the March 29 council meeting, after more than 140 hours of public meetings leveraging the input of hundreds of community volunteers, including a 15-member Ad Hoc Housing Element Committee, the fire department and geological and wildfire experts, an expenditure to date of over $500,000 in public tax dollars and a staggering number of town staff hours, the three new council members pulled a dark rabbit out of the hat at 12:30 a.m.
They declared that they could not support the housing element, objecting to the inclusion of Glen Oaks on the site plan. Glen Oaks has been on the plan for eight months, a fact they could not have missed given the many meetings since they were elected that featured the housing element. Never once in those meetings did the council members who opposed the approval — Judith Hasko, Mary Hufty and Craig Taylor — object to Glen Oaks. Consequently, Portola Valley does not have a compliant housing element and under the builder’s remedy, a developer can exceed our density limits if 20% of the units are designated as low-income housing.
One of the hardest parts of serving on a city council is making unpopular decisions, particularly in a small town where you cannot escape running into unhappy constituents at the market, the library, the schools or on trails. We sympathize with the newest council members, especially since they were supported by the very people who encourage them to delay this critical vote. But this is what they signed up for, and there is no hiding from taking unpopular votes.
Developing a housing element is a daunting, contentious process. Portola Valley has been blessed with a dedicated and talented staff who have successfully navigated the complexities and produced, with the help of the Ad Hoc Housing Element Committee, a draft housing element widely recognized as one of the best in the county, meeting the demands of the state while maintaining critical elements of local control.
Besides wasting tax dollars and time by pushing back blindly against the new state mandates, we risk losing additional staff members. Already our town manager and town clerk have resigned, preceded by the resignation of the assistant town manager. Under constant attack from a small coterie of disaffected residents and an impossible workload, several others are likely to follow suit.
There is still time to fix this. Portola Valley has almost 60 years of history showing that we know how to accommodate change within our guidelines while cooperating with the state, resulting in hundreds of homes developed since incorporation in 1964. To the new council members, please, do what you were elected to do: approve the housing element and send it to the state before we hemorrhage more staff members and face the prospect of a big fat builder’s remedy project. As former Congresswoman Jackie Speier always said, “If you aren’t making half of the people unhappy, if they aren’t calling you names, you aren’t doing your job.”
Please do your job. Free the housing element.
John Richards and Maryann Moise Derwin are both former Portola Valley Town Council members and served a term a mayor.
Thank you so much for this important and timely OpEd. I could not agree more with all of the points made here. As a long-time resident of Portola Valley, I am disappointed to see that the new council members have been unable to recognize the importance of approving the Housing Element in a timely fashion after all of the money, time, and effort (by highly competent community members, Town Council representatives and staff) that has gone into this process. For the sake of the community, it is now time to focus on good governance. Portola Valley has the opportunity to be a leader here and show what a volunteer local government can achieve when faced with a daunting task. I hope our new representatives will recognize this and seize that opportunity.
Let’s focus on the specific issue. This is not about punting on the Housing Element, but about wanting to ensure that all alternatives were reviewed and analyzed before eliminating the livelihood of others with respect to the Glenoaks Equestrian Center site.
Councilmembers Hasko, Hufty and Taylor want to make one final effort to save a small, thriving business and associated jobs for its employees, mostly lower-income. The Glenoaks Equestrian Center site, owned by Stanford, is currently planned for 16 moderate and above-moderate faculty homes, which means multi-million dollar homes, NOT affordable housing. (Stanford has already planned for 27 faculty homes across Alpine Road). Hasko, Hufty and Taylor want to find a better solution, doubling back to see if Stanford would be amenable to developing on a portion of the site and allow the existing business to continue, and/or Stanford would allow development of housing for the employees of Glenoaks and Isola Stables, a lower-income group than currently planned.
I commend Councilmembers Hasko, Hufty, and Taylor for putting in the extra work and doing their due diligence with respect to the Glenoaks site. While the state has challenged all communities with its mandate of new housing units, the goal was for more affordable housing and not to eliminate businesses and jobs.
With all due respect, I am intentionally focusing on the bigger issue, which is having a functioning, balanced Town Council that represents the overall community’s interests. To me, this means managing the town’s financial and human resources responsibly and respecting the outcome of a very professional committee that studied this issue for almost 2 years, involving hundreds of hours of work, input by all kinds of professionals, and literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. As a community member, I am growing very tired of divisive politics that are overly concerned with optics. I would like to see Portola Valley be a shining example of respect, collaboration and pragmatic government. And in this particular case, I would like to see the council take into account the hard work that has already been done and move forward with the Housing Element as soon as possible.
It would be fair and very much appreciated if former town council members Derwin and Richards in particular, would abstain from publicly criticizing their successors in office. Former presidents of this country don’t do that either.
The more so, since during their time in office, and with Ms. Derwin being the mayor, the Town of Portola Valley has made deploringly little progress towards fire safety and improving evacuation routes and procedures. They put the cart before the horse in that they were pushing housing development before fire safety.
My hope is, the new town council will do better.
Like Karen Askey, I also commend Council Members Taylor, Hasko and Hufty for their efforts with the Glenoaks site. Yes, a lot of work was done during the past two years and all three Council Members have acknowledged that. But at this point, it is their votes that actually count. Their reservations are not only reasonable, for those impacted at Glenoaks, they are essential.
Given the unnecessarily heavy hand that state officials have used with Housing Element issues, Portola Valley officials waiting a couple of extra months to get it right is well advised. Portola Valley is lucky to have such thoughtful Council Members who are willing to take some heat to arrive at a better solution and plan. The rest of us should thank them and support them. They are doing the right thing.
And we should keep in mind that none of the residences that Sacramento is demanding we build will be anything close to affordable. This Housing Element is a gift to developers and builders who support Sacramento politicians and who couldn’t care less about our neighborhoods.
Thank you, Karen, for explaining succinctly the actual issue. There’s a reason these Town Council members were voted in, and we are so grateful that they are doing the job the were elected for—measured, intelligent, and balanced examination of how to represent the whole community on complicated issues.
Thank you, Karen, for your thoughtful response, and thank you, Town Council, for sticking to your consciences and principles and making difficult decisions in the face of vocal and aggressive opposition.
The voters have spoken and we DO now have a balanced, functioning town council that represents the overall community’s interests. I am also hopeful that we will also be managing the Town’s finances more responsibly now and publish audited financial in a timely manner. Just because certain staff member choose to leave for various reasons in no way means that the council is not managing human resources responsibly. I would urge those who did not run for election to respect the time and effort of our volunteer council members and realize that we who are not on the council do not possess all the information, especially in personnel matters.
The low-income workers who would lose their livelihoods if Stanford develops the Glenoaks equestrian facility into moderate and above-moderate housing for university staff are real people who deserve consideration. Sometimes I fear we lose sight the ramification on the lives of individuals when we focus on lofty theoretical goals.
As to staff leaving town and why, I remember visiting Town Hall one spring afternoon as an Almanac reporter and being there to witness a one-sided, one-minute vicious berating of the staff by Martin Anderson, a Reagan administration big stick, Hoover Institute big stick, acolyte of economist Milton “Obscenity” Friedman and a Portola Valley resident — the town of record when he died in 2015.
He stood in the doorway and just vituperated. If I’d had my wits about me, I would have pulled out my notebook, indicating that he was going on the record, but my wits had been captured by the spectacle of a former White House official being ungentlemanly.
I don’t blame staff for thinking twice about staying there. Town Hall always, always was a welcoming and civil place, but that civility was due to the notable and consistent professionalism of the staff. Civility can also be attributed to the citizenry in general, but there were notable exceptions.
Our new PV Town Council is taking needed time to review alternatives before sending the Housing Element to Sacramento. Would that the prior Council had taken an equally serious look at some of the subtle and not so subtle “side effects” of the housing plan. Primary among them, in my view, is the unrealistic expectation that “affordable” housing will result, and that fire safety has been adequately addressed.
As for our “professional” Housing Element Committee: yes, there were long and frequent meetings—during which sincere safety concerns of current residents were repeatedly pushed aside or ignored altogether. (Example: A petition signed by 500 residents was never addressed by the Committee or the Council.)
Thank you to the new Council.
And please, former Council members: do not criticize your successors for trying to improve on the plan they inherited.
Seems like several commenters are making a pitch to protect a facility to preserve lower paying jobs (admirable), but without a comparable focus on enabling people who work those jobs to live in the same community. That’s how we get into these housing issues in California – we opt for more jobs, which is good, but seldom back some of the inevitable community trade-offs (zoning density, funding BMR housing) that are required to enable the less well-paid workers to live in the same community.
There are no easy answers, but we should be cognizant when some our preservationists tendencies are at odds with with some of the costs and responsibilities that come with that preservation.
I wish the “Former Guy”and the “Former Gal” would quit trash talking and attention seeking. The current town council members are doing fine without the information in this Guest Opinion. After all we have heard the TFG’s opinions enough already
I must confess to a bit of amusement. So often when people on the extreme right disagree with what I or others have said, they say we should keep quiet or be silenced. Rather than trying to silence those who you disagree with, why not just engage in democratic dialog, and say why you think we are mistaken?
The idea expressed above that former Portola Valley Town Councilmembers should forever stay silent after they leave office seems just plain silly.
I served on Portola Valley’s Town Council for four terms from early 1978 until December 1993. I was Mayor for three terms. By running for office, being elected, and taking an oath to uphold the California and US Constitutions, I never thought that I was surrendering my future right to free speech or to participate as an active member of our democracy and community. (I was 25 when I was elected, 40 when I handed over responsibility to those elected in my wake. I would hate to think at my current age of 70, that I should be required to bite my tongue and say nothing for ever more.)
Btw, speaking of ex-Presidents, if Abraham Lincoln, Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, or Harry Truman (among others) could speak to us now, I for one, would want to hear what they might have to say, rather than to tell them to shut their traps.
Why silence others; rather why not debate using reason and actual facts? Why hurtle gratuitous insults or ad-hominem insults instead of giving reasons, details, and engaging in reasoned intellectual debate, I beseech you. (Think of those intellectual fathers of our American Revolution, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Please do this. I promise, it’s not too painful, but perhaps a bit mind expanding.) Actual, respectful discussion is interesting, fun, and educational. Please give it a try. You might like it.
In any case, I guarantee that it will be beneficial to our community and our body politic to think and discuss in a reasoned manner.
(to be continued)
Continued from above:
In addition, the individual who said that former Town Councilmembers should stay silent, also said that Portola Valley had made “deploringly little progress towards fire safety and improving evacuation routes”. Really?
Just a few years back our Town Council appropriated funds to remove Eucalyptus trees in our public right of way, and required private applicants to do the same on their property when applying for new project approvals. At that time, our Town Council received a lot of criticism for wasting public money and overburdening private applicants.
If only Stanford University and San Mateo County had exercised such foresight, a good man killed by a falling Eucalyptus tree, with a now bereaved family, who worked in our Town, but could not afford to live here, might still be alive. But why bother with such details of actual public policy, especially if those hurt weren’t among us?
Jon Silver
Jon Silver:
I agree with everything you said except one thing. It is not just those on the far tight that would silence those that disagree with them. Those on the far left demonstrate the same behavior. One only has to go to a college campus to witness it. There is zero tolerance for any opinion of anyone on the “right”. Your post is right on point and applies to BOTH sides of the political spectrum.
This is really great article. I learned a lot because of this.
[regarding my post above]
“I agree with everything you said except one thing. It is not just those on the far right that would silence those that disagree with them. Those on the far left demonstrate the same behavior. One only has to go to a college campus to witness it. There is zero tolerance for any opinion of anyone on the “right”. Your post is right on point and applies to BOTH sides of the political spectrum.”
I wish to say that I agree with this critique of my post. It is a very apt criticism.
After posting my comment, as I was falling asleep, I realized I should have been more thorough in what I said.
Of course, those who are engaging in dogmatic thought and authoritarian principles do such things from all parts of the political spectrum.
I say this as no excuse for myself, but I had been thinking primarily of those who I personally interact with, and those who actually hold elective office in our United States; after all we don’t see Blue state governors banning books or discussion of certain topics in public schools, or calling those who they disagree with, “The agents of George Soros”, or worse (if that is even possible). Nor do they justify violence against those with dissenting views.
But of course, there are unelected “leftists,” such as those we recently saw at Stanford Law School (which polling has shown were a minority of law school students) who sought to silence a right-wing judge who they disagreed with. Such behavior is shameful. All of us must stand against it.
As a former Progressive Republican (back when that was not an oxymoron), I considered it my obligation to speak out against those on the left, who were intolerant of intellectual difference, or who sanctioned violence in the struggle for peace (back in the 1960s). As a kid, I spoke against the SDS, and especially its Weatherman faction during the struggle to end our American War in Vietnam. [continued]
I considered violent “leftists” traitors to the Peace Movement.
Dogmatism of all varieties is the enemy of human progress. It doesn’t matter whether such dogmatism is grounded in religion, or political ideology. If a follower must believe in the “truth” of a statement simply because Reverend Moon, or L. Ron Hubbard, or Comrade Stalin has said it, it is equally fatal to human progress and thought.
Free inquiry and debate are essential for our future if we are to have any hope of surviving into the next century.
Jon Silver