Ignatius - Request Council to deny certification of FEIR

From: Ignatius Y. Ding

Date: Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 2:24 AM
Subject: Request Council to deny certification of FEIR
To: Cupertino City-Council <citycouncil@cupertino.org>
Cc: "Amy Chan (Acting)" <manager@cupertino.org>, City Attorney's Office <CityAttorney@cupertino.org>, "Grace Schmidt CMC (City Clerk)" <graces@cupertino.org>, Cupertino City Planning Division <planning@cupertino.org>

** To City Clerk:  Please place a copy of this letter in the city archive as a public record.  Thank you.

Dear City Council,

I strongly urge you to not certify the Vallco Final EIR for the following reasons:

EIR is Inadequate because:

• failure to have a community based project, the "revised project" is a concoction of and recommendation of a portion of City Council and City Planning Commission instead:

"As discussed in the Draft EIR, the City is undertaking a community-based planning process to develop a Specific Plan for the project site, the Vallco Special Area. Based on input from City Council at its June 4, 2018 Study Session on the Vallco Specific Plan, the City has identified another alternative to the proposed project that would achieve all the goals expressed by the different council members at that meeting,..."

• The Vallco Specific Plan (VSP) were developed with no substantial participation of community members since most of the meetings were conducted in the middle of workday while residents were at work and unable to attend any of the meetings, except the "kick-off meeting" in one evening.
• the FEIR is biased and clearly states that while it's a "community-based" Plan what we ended up with came out of some people on city council:
• a substantial number of components in the VSP were taken from the failed proposal known as "Measure D" in 2016.  Many of the drawings in the plan do not match with the numbers in the spreadsheets which makes the calculation of space, cost and reserved areas impossible to determine the environmental impact throughout the VSP, including, but not limited to, the following pitfalls:

-       failure to provide a stable project, creating a moving target EIR, bait and switch Proposed Project with completely different objective Revised Project

-       failure to properly notice schools within 1/4 mile of the project

-       City of Cupertino undermines and disregards FUHSD as Lead Agency to determine efficacy of the project site, which is contaminated, for students' use (See attached)

-       failure to study General Plan Recognized Scenario B as an Alternative to Project

-       failure to study Performing Arts Center and Outdoor Concerts for noise impacts

-       failure to study impacts from expanded Recycled Water production construction and Sewage Treatment

-       failure to study impacts from relocating students to other schools

-       failure to study cafeteria workers' traffic and housing demand in office amenity space 

-       failure to study air quality modeling under the green roof for safety of stagnant air impacted by freeway exhaust

-       failure to study city anticipated freeway cap at Wolfe Road and I-280.

-       failure to fully indicate direct and indirect growth inducing impacts.

-       failure to write an unbiased EIR, statements include that Measure C was to increase house allowable height to 45'.  Or that City Council recommended the Revised Project are biased and not allowed in an EIR.

-       failure to notice FUHSD and CUSD 30 days prior to certification which are within 1/4 mile of Vallco

-       failure to clearly state that the site is listed as a hazardous waste site multiple times pursuant to 65962.5 and subject to corrective action (See SCC-DA Memo attached)

-       failure to inform the public by having soils testing of a contaminated site before certification.

For these above reasons, and the others unlisted here, I urge you to deny certification of the Vallco FEIR.

Ignatius Y. Ding

41-Year Resident of Cupertino