Sample Letter to postpone Vallco EIR, by Xiaowen

Please email the letter to citycouncil@cupertino.org, cityclerk@cupertino.org, cityattorney@cupertino.org, planning@cupertino.org, davidb@cupertino.org

Please make sure to include the bold part of the sample letter below. It would be better that you could rephrase it as your own word. For the rest of the letter, you could choose to whatever you deem appropriate for your letter.

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Dear City Council members,

I am writing to express my concern regarding agenda item 10 of the June 16, 2015 City Council Meeting. This agenda item asks to approve the budget EIR of Vallco plan and starting negotiation with the consultant. I think that it is premature to start the EIR process and hence urge you all to delay approval of this item. The following are the reasons of my request.

1. On May 19th City Council Meeting, the council members requested a redline copy comparing the new General Plan, Community Vision 2040 to the 2005 General Plan. Councils agreed that such a copy is necessary for both the councils and residents to review the changes in the new general plan so that we can have a better plan for Cupertino’s future. I applaud this decision of the councils and appreciate the hard work of the staffs for releasing the red line copy on June 10th. Right now, the redline copy is open for public comments and public comments period ends on July 31. Only afterwards, we can have an effective discussion on the general plan and hopefully it can lead to a more clear vision for the future development. Without this clear vision, it is irresponsible to plan a big project like Vallco.

        

Moreover, a proper EIR relies on city’s planning policies and strategies in order to evaluate the project impacts and mitigation strategies. Since we are still in discussion of which policy and strategy should be kept, deleted or modified to the new General Plan, it is impossible to have a EIR done correctly.

2. The scope of the EIR is not align with visions from most of residents and does not have sufficient community inputs. In the current agenda item, the scope of EIR is defined as

• 2 million square feet of office
• 800 housing units
• 600,000 square feet of retail

Such a vision of Vallco is purely based on developer’s request. It is not the vision of Cupertino residents. There is no community outreach done as forming this scope. In fact, there are quite some letters from residents in the Staff Report of May 19 Council Meeting urging councils to keep Vallco as a retail center. Moreover, city’s own retail consultant also suggested to have a proforma review done to verify if developer’s request is necessary to keep the project financially viable. Without proper investigation, without proper community outreach, it is premature to start the EIR process with the above scope.

3. Furthermore, the above scope is not far from the recent EIR for the General Plan, Community Vision 2040, which is

• 2 million square feet of office
• 600 housing units
• 600,000 square feet of retail

In this EIR, it is already identified that traffic, air pollution and noise are significant and unavoidable impacts. Moreover, according to this EIR, public infrastructure such as sewer system is already at the maximal capacity around Vallco, it is not possible to sustain such drastic development with the current infrastructure. With the latest enrollment projection from school district, it is also very obvious that such development will bring tremendous enrollment pressure on neighborhood schools. Then, what is the purpose of spending such money on the EIR?  Do we expect to see different conclusions than the existing EIR? More importantly, do we have a solution for all the problem of such a project will bring?

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4. The bidding process of the contract is not open. There is no information regarding how this particular contractor is selected. For such a crucial project, we should take more caution and select the best consultant we can find. I would urge councils to direct city staff to have an open bidding process for the consultant when we are ready to start the EIR process. City of San Jose was sued by state agency due to underestimating  greenhouse gas emission in its general plan and this particular consultant happens to be the one who prepare the EIR for San Jose.

5. The complexity of the project asks for more options to be included EIR. Vallco is the last piece of big land in Cupertino. The potential and possibilities are as huge as the challenges. Even when we are ready to start the EIR, we should have options for comparison. Above all, we should analyze the option of keeping Vallco as a retail center. With all the developments around Vallco, there could be opportunity to increase the retail square footage at Vallco. All potential options should be thoroughly studied and evaluate.

In summary, the city and the residents are not ready to start Vallco planning yet. It would be better for the healthy growth of the city to first have a clear vision on the General Plan before any discussion on Vallco. Please hold off the approval of any negotiation and budget on a Vallco EIR, especially with the current project scope.

Finally, I would like to put this correspondence into the public records of June 16, 2015 City Council Meeting.

Sincerely yours,

 

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