Mark Goines — an ex-Trustee of Los Altos School District as of the November election – is an owner of one of the 17 properties in the Mora Drive 5-acre, Mountain View, light industrial site, which is being seriously considered for purchase with Measure N bond monies, according to an anonymous source. At the Feb. 9 Los Altos School District board meeting, the board reconvened the powerful ad hoc board 10th Site Real Estate Committee…adding Mark Goines This committee is authorized to search for sites, select a site and negotiate a land deal.
Mark Goines conflict of interest? Illegal? Or just Unethical?
Mark Goines is a participant in Mora Partners, LLC, which also includes Patrick Kavanagh, the owner of a local construction company, Kavanagh Construction. Mora Partners LLC is the owner of record of 2221 Mora Drive, shown in the photo at the top of page above. The blue building has a simple sign –Kavanagh Construction – and at this time may be used primarily for storage. [A recent Google search on Mr. Kavanagh returned a north of Shoreline location as well. ] A recent Employees page for the Kavanagh Construction website listed Mr. Kavanagh’s son Brian, and also about the same age, Mr. Goines’ son, Tommy. See Goines 2009 campaign page for family photos. Lalahpolitico cheers on fathers’ bringing their kids into the family business and also applauds private lending among friends.
It is great that Mr. Goines invested in his kid’s employer/business. It’s not great that Mr. Goines stands to benefit handsomely from a Los Altos School District purchase of his land, and it’s even worse that he is involved in the Tenth Site Real Estate Committee. In that position he can “persuade” [manipulate?] the other committee members to agree that Mora Drive is the “best way forward” among all the options being considered by the current LASD board. Wrong.
In his campaign filings, Mr. Goines has listed his occupation as “investor.” My sources think the 5 acre site may be worth $50M. Parcel 19’s share [.11 acre] is 1/50. That means buying 2221 Mora in 2005 for about $500,000 (suppose cash) and selling it in 2015 for – let’s just say for $1,000,000 – will earn a rate of return of about $7.2%. Not at all bad considering that short term interest rates on cash have been at about 1% since 2008. Shrewd.
Mr. Goines does have a penchant for brushing up against the edge of what is legal and ethical. He was fined $3000 in 2010 for a conflict of interest violation while he was a trustee. Here’s a quote.
“California law states that, absent an exception, a public official may not make, participate in making or in any way attempt to use his or her official position to influence a governmental decision in which he or she knows or has reason to know he or she has a financial interest. The following used his official position to influence a governmental decision in which he had a material financial interest: Mark Goines, Los Altos School District board member, used his official position to influence a governmental decision in which he had a material financial interest. $3,000 fine.” FPPC Press Release.
Lalahpolitico: Ok, I get that Goines is NOW an Ex-trustee. So it’s legal to be on the 10th Site Committee? Just ethically dubious.
But sadly if we looked, would we find that after September 2013, when the courts nixed the purchase of Sunnyvale’s Raynor School, the prior Board of Trustees probably moved Mora Drive up towards to the top of the not so secret 10th site list? Perhaps by April 2014, after the City of Los Altos nixed talking about the Hillview site, and the prior Board nixed talking about Rosita Park as part of a site solution, the prior Board rushed to get their act together and launched the $150M Measure N. Was there a tacit agreement that Mora was now the No. 1 target for acquisition?
[…] It is a fact that that some Los Altos School District board members, staff and consultants have been dropping hints that sub-par sites for the 10th school might be considered. Even though all our other schools are 10 acres and up, the district’s architect, Lisa Gelfand, has stated that a “5-6 acre site could be enough” and that sometimes sites have “problems – like soil toxics –because they are being converted from industrial or agricultural zoning. You don’t find a perfect site.” So here is more info about the Los Altos School District toxic site being seriously considered for a new school. […]