Cupertino's New General Plan is Questionable by Liang

From: Liang C
Date: Thu, Jul 23, 2015
Subject: Cupertino's New General Plan is Questionable
To: City Council <citycouncil@cupertino.org>, "City of Cupertino Planning Dept." <planning@cupertino.org>

Cupertino’s new general plan “Community Vision 2040” (CV2040) did not follow the generally accepted review and approval procedure used by other cities and Cupertino in the past. Resolution 14-211, which approves CV2040, should be rescinded.

The Housing Element was well publicized, and sparked animated discussion by several hundred residents at the December 2014 council meeting. The rest of the general plan was reviewed only briefly. CV2040 was never put on the agenda as the new general plan, since the City has insisted “the majority of the General Plan’s content will remain the same.” City staff indicated that besides the Housing Element changes, CV2040 contained only minor “clean-up” changes, mostly for compliance with state laws. In the course of a single meeting, the Council approved CV2040, a 360-page document.

Unknown to most, CV2040 contains massive changes. In June 2015, at the request of residents and the Council to clearly identify the changes, the city staff published comparison tables at CupertinoGPA.org. The tables indicate that policies were added, removed, and edited. Many policy changes were not required by state laws. And the Council never voted separately to include these individual changes.
Some important policies were removed, including the policy on job-housing balance, the policies to maintain a tolerable traffic condition, policies to protect neighborhood from pollution, policy to encourage headquarters in Cupertino.
The General Plan is a constitution for the development and growth of Cupertino. Like any legal document, it should be examined and reviewed in detail since minor details might influence millions of dollars in revenue or expenses, the quality of schools and the character of life in Cupertino. Any unintended damage done as a result of a well-intentioned, yet badly-worded policy, would be very hard to undo and could haunt the city for decades.

The fact is that the 360-page document was first available in any Council meeting on Oct. 14 for the Planning Commission and it was first on the Council agenda on Dec. 16, 2014 (not counting Nov. 10 meeting). Without a comparison table or red-lined copy, do you feel in good conscience that you could approve the new general plan in one meeting without much deliberation?

We spent more time editing and rephrasing a simple 300-word reader's letter to Cupertino Courier.

Please do the right thing and rescind Resolution 14-211. Then, put the draft general plan "Community Vision 2040" on the agenda for multiple meetings to be reviewed in detail.
Liang-Fang Chao
Cupertino Resident