Liang - Set an Expiration Date for any Allocation or Approval

From: Liang-Fang Chao

Date: Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 12:49 AM
Subject: Set an Expiration Date for any Allocation or Approval
To: City Council <citycouncil@cupertino.org>, City Attorney's Office <CityAttorney@cupertino.org>, manager@cupertino.org, "City of Cupertino Planning Dept." <planning@cupertino.org>

Dear Mayor Paul and Councilmembers,

I hope that we learn from past failures, intentional or not, so that don't hand out free giveaways (upzoning or massive allocation) without keeping the developers accountable.

Caution 1: The Developer A could get the increased allocation (both in Tier 1 and Tier 2) and sell Vallco for a higher price since it is already upzoned. Developer B might pay double or even triple the price to purchase Vallco. Then, Developer B will come back to the City and cry out that he cannot make any profit and demand the City to give him more concessions. At the same time, Developer A already walked away with hundreds and millions of profits, if not more, which he made all in one night from your approval of massive allocation for Vallco. You can see an example from Mountain View already. Developers want Mountain View to waive Development Impact Fees because the land value is too high.

Please never "assume" something won't happen. Anything that could happen to make more profits for someone will happen. Like SB 35 application.

Caution 2: The State gives us a deadline to produce housing units in the 8-year cycle. You must also give the Developer a deadline to produce housing units; otherwise, their allocation should be taken away so that we could give it to other developers. The Council has approved 600 housing units at Hamptons with a 10 year or more expiration date. They might not get anything built before Housing Element cycle is up. We should provide incentives to ensure the production of housing units. If the housing units are not produced within the specified deadline, both the office allocation and the housing allocation would be taken away, for example.

Since there are thousands of units involved, perhaps 25% of the office allocation would "vest" only after 25% of housing units have started construction, for example. This way we ensure that the developers won't make profit, while not delivering the housing units.

Your job is not to rubber stamp whatever that's put in front of you. Your job is to make sure that the General Plan and the Development Agreement has clear and objective standards to keep the developers accountable, even when the property changes hand.

Sincerely,

Liang Chao

Cupertino Resident