Thursday, May 14, 2015

Council Should Rescind Any GPA Item Unrelated to Housing Elements, by Randy

Randy points out that "it is not in the public interest for agreements other the ones pertaining to the Housing Element to stand."
He requests that any actions taken on General Plan elements other than the ones pertaining to the Housing Element be rescinded by the Council.

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From: Randy Shingai
Date: Thu, May 14, 2015 at 4:14 PM
Subject: Dec. 3, 2014 Council meeting
To: City Council <citycouncil@cupertino.org>, City Clerk <cityclerk@cupertino.org>, Carol Korade <CarolK@cupertino.org>, manager@cupertino.org, Aarti Shrivastava AartiS@cupertino.org
Dear Cupertino Council,

Yesterday, May 13,2015, I attended the quarterly Economic Development Committee meeting.  At the meeting, Aarti Shrivastava said that at the Dec. 3, 2014 City Council meeting, the Council had reached agreement on elements of the General Plan other than the Housing Element.  Councilman Barry Chang strongly disagreed with Ms. Shrivastava, as did Jason Lundgaard.  Both said that there was only agreement on the Housing Element portion.
 
Consider blog entry:
 
The video segment posted in the blog entry is from about 2:02:30 or so into the City's meeting video for the Dec. 3, 2014 continuation meeting.  Here is the link for the full meeting video:
In the video segment captured and presented in the blog entry, it was clear that the Council was only going to consider the Housing Element, and was going to postpone dealing with other elements until the two newest council members were "up to speed".
 
This agreement was apparently overlooked, and according to the meeting minutes other elements were considered and agreements were reached.  I'm not interested in how it happened, but I think it is not in the public interest for agreements other the ones pertaining to the Housing Element to stand.  The blog entry correctly points out that once the agreement was reached to only consider the Housing Element, many members of the audience may have gone home due to fatigue.  The ones that remained in attendance, including Mr. Lungaard, Councilman Chang and myself, likely became inattentive when topics outside of the Housing Element were discussed.
 
I want to point out that the Dec. 2,3,4 Council meeting itself was a redo of an earlier meeting that was rescinded due to a violation of the Ralph M. Brown Act.  Proceeding with those agreements intact would undermine trust in government.  I therefore request that any actions taken on General Plan elements other than the ones pertaining to the Housing Element be rescinded by the Council.
 
At the very least, I would like a discussion of this at the May 19, 2015 Council meeting.  I would also like this included in the public comments for that meeting.
Thank You,
Randy Shingai

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