On April 30, the Los Altos City-School subcommittee agreed to form a temporary ad hoc Public Lands subcommittee which will meet every 2 weeks starting May 20 in order to have exploratory talks about the possibilities of using publicly owned land more effectively for student and community benefit. The tentatively scheduled meetings are contingent on the full City Council and the full LASD board of trustees approving the new ad hoc Public Lands subcommittee with at least 3 of 5 affirmative votes.
At the April 30 meeting of the standing City-School subcommittee, City Council member Jean Mordo uttered the “H word – Hillview.” He is willing to explore leasing the Hillview parcel and “recyling” the lease money, “keeping the monies in the family” rather than paying it to some private outsiders. City Council member Jan Pepper did NOT utter the H word and was much more circumspect in her endorsement for leasing anything. Leasing of any City owned public land would have to be fair market rate, with the city getting something “significant,” because the City includes many South Los Altos residents “who reside outside the LASD footprint.”
LASD trustee Tamara Logan did not want to publicly discuss the District’s interest in acquiring the Old Mill Offices site or its timeline for any decisions or actions. She was willing to explore using District sites like Egan, Blach and Covington for a second school and how the City could help alleviate traffic concerns. She thought both sides should try to explain why they thought their respective sites were not underutilized, so that the parents and community could understand the constraints.
Bottomline: Both sides are “willing to get everything out on the table and talk about it.” Lalahpolitico has heard from back channels that Jean Mordo is alone on the council in thinking Hillview is a good/decent place to site a whole school. Lalahpolitico speculates that the council will emphasize the city’s other lands – Rosita Park and McKensie – at the future meetings of the Public Lands subcommittee. Tamara Logan refused Mordo’s and Pepper’s suggestion to include Bullis Charter on the new subcommittee. Here is the audio file.
Public Comments which occurred at the beginning of the meeting are at the end of this post. Bill James of Oak School brought a message that PTA leaders “feel” finding school land is a joint city-school obligation even it it isn’t. Mike Abrams, a downtown leader said succinctly, “What I’ve noticed is that the city has land, but no money. The school district has no land, but it has some money. Maybe a subcommittee can be put together to do something for all the possibilities.”
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPTION OF MEETING
Lalahpolitico transcribed the most interesting parts of the discussion about “publicly owned” land. An ellipsis denotes omitted remarks. I omit some because they are unintelligible or not that interesting. Speakers include Jean Mordo and Jan Pepper of Los Altos City Council; Tamara Logan and Vladamir Ivanovich of LASD Board of Trustees; Jeff Bair and Randy Kenyon, LASD executive staff; Marcia Sommers, City Manager, City of Los Altos. Here is the uploaded file. You may use the times below to find that time in the audio file. a less than 100M download.
18:00 Mordo: What is the minimum size of land that makes sense.?
Tamara Logan : We’ve done lots of study of sizes… Obviously we are looking at 4 acre site. That is not a optimal site. But there are lot of different things we could do. What we choose to do depends on what property we get. I would say 4 acres is in the minimal range. We also though maybe we could move the district office and put another school here [at Covington campus] Use your [city’s] current property…. unintelligible, but we haven’t gotten into a lot of detail on that one.
19:20 Jan Pepper: So the intent to purchase the property you’ve got right now…any decisions? [Lalahpolitico: Jan is alluding to the 4-acre Old Mill Offices center at 201 S. San Antonio Road.]
Tamara: we don’t want to have a public discussion about those negotiations.
However we can make a fast decision; we can call a school board meeting in a day and buy a property if we have to.
…..
Vladamir: 22:00: Why do you care about our decision/action time line? How does our timeline affect you?
Pepper: I’m curious. The whole community is curious. I’ve been in business and if you have a project your have a plan and a timeline for getting something done.
Tamara: Obviously you all have experience with how long it takes to get a civic center built. Government process, community input, align the communities. Two new board members need to be brought up to speed. What’s been looked at, what’s been discarded, what we might want to look at again.
23: 18 Mordo: You have one big advantage. You are able to raise 150M with no detail and then you can study what to do. We have been studying for 10 years, and we have no clue what kind of money we can get.
……
Tamara: I wish I had had the $ 150 M 5 years ago
24:24 Tamara: What could we do here [Covington]? What could we do with the middle schools? What are the problems with those. We understand what the limitations are to our properties, why things might work, why they might not work. What we’d like to do is talk to you guys, say if we were going to use one of our properties is there something you could do to help us alleviate traffic concerns? Why aren’t we looking at all civically owned land that we might be able to create…whether it’s moving some of the classes out at our schools…whether it is putting some civic piece here [at Covington] and putting a school there… what some of the details might be.. and why they might not work .. and bring those details to the public and let them know the pluses and minuses and maybe it might put some of the discussion to bed. Where are you two with that?
26:00 Pepper: We are two votes. I would be open to that discussion. I think it is good to get everything out on the table and talk about it. I would be curious how … would that process work..could we bring MV and LAH to the table too? But we could start with just Los Altos.
………
Tamara: Let’s start with two properties maybe.
28:00 Mordo: First we need to figure our if our city council is willing to talk. I am. Jan Pepper is a little more circumspect. She’s willing. I will even pronounce the H word. Hillview. Taboo. I don’t know why. I have no history. I am new on the council. We have 18 acres. according to you Vladamir it it worth $234 million. Are we using this site optimally? I don’t think so. If you guys need 6-7 acres, maybe we can put a school there and still have enough facility there [for the city].
We have put a lot of constraints on ourselves. We have said, or rather the past council said, we should not touch any of the trees. They are sacred. It is sacred not to build above 2 stories. We cannot move anything that is there now. With all due respect [ Police Chief Younis was in the room], the police could be elsewhere. So anyway, if we say everything is on the table. Maybe we can find a better use for the 18 acres.
One advantage I see is if you guys find a site.. you will eventually will find a site, I am sure you will … that amount you will pay, say 60 -70 million dollars, is going to go outside the family, the community. It is going to be a private person who is going to get the money. Whereas if somehow it comes to us [the City] it stays in the community, we can recycle that money. I am willing to talk about anything. But before we can go any further with that, we need to sit down with our council to see if we have 3 votes to at least explore talks. – Jean Mordo
………
Vladamir: I suggest a smaller group, meeting quickly and often… in order to develop a framework
Discussion of Structure of group ensues… Bring in an architect? City said no, their architect is no longer on retainer. Jan Pepper preferred more of a facilitator, not an architect who is “self-interested in seeing a project occur.”
….
33:00: Mordo: Even with your $150M, given the price of xxx, this is not infinite. If you were to lease a number of acres from us, then you wouldn’t have to put out the 50M for purchase of that. It would just be a xxx for 20 or 30 years.
Then we take that flow of money, that rental, the city can borrow a certain amount of money against that rental stream without a bond issue. Then that would reduce the size of the city’s bond issue. So we recycle the money. We use it twice.
34:00 Baier: Yes, How can we look at publicly owned assets and optimize the use for the entire community.
….
34:25 Pepper: For people who live in S. Los Altos, who are not in the LASD footprint, using city assets to help the LASD District doesn’t benefit them. If we provide some land, then we need to get something back significant.
… You could prepay $50 Million.
35: 25 Vladamir: I’m not an architect. But I don’t see why our schools have to have exclusive use of land. [Lalahpolico: they don’t have such use per the Civic Center Act.] We can have some sort of xxx, one floor is city, one floor is leased to a school. It is a possibility. I’m not the right person to make that judgment. I really would like to have that discussion. [Lalahpolitico, so Vladamir’s idea is that the city uses the LASD land rent money to build a civic center building and rents one floor to a school.?]
…….
45:15 Mordo: Our community center is for children and seniors. If we can take care of some of the city recreation program needs for children at the schools then it reduces our need to build special facilities – a field, a pool, etc. [at Hillview or on other city land.]
44 20: Tamara: I love how Mountain View has tot-lots next to MV- Whisman schools. We have spaces at some of our schools where the city could put all day tot-lots which would expand to the whole school open space after school. We could add skateboard parks possibly.
SUPPORT OF LASD FOR CITY COMMUNITY CENTER BOND
…
46: 15 Mordo: Yes we want the support of the board, but it would be even better if it translates to the wider community of the school parents. But I have to believe if we start doing things together, the atmosphere will change dramatically, and people will see the bond issue positively.
…
46:44: Tamara: we hear from parents about underutilization of city properties. I’m a sure you get that from a ton parents and maybe think you get that from some of us board members. We also hear that about our [LASD] properties being underutilized; but of course we don’t think they are underutilized. I think we both need to hear from each other in a small group setting.. alleviating some of these concerns.
INCLUDE BULLIS CHARTER IN LAND DISCUSSION?
…..
47:00 Mordo: How about we include a representative from BCS on this ad hoc public land subcommittee .. I think it would send a very nice message.
Tamara: We don’t have a member from Covington school.. we don’t represent single school; we represent the the entire district. We won’t have anyone from Egan, we won’t have anyone from Blach. This [proposal] concern me.
Mordo: It’s not significant
Pepper: Maybe just think about it. Bulls has its own board. I don’t know how you [the District] represent BCS. [Lalahpolitico: good point!]
Mordo: Because of the past rift and the past wars, I think it would send a nice message
Pepper: OK, how about we start out with just us, and maybe when we expand with MV, LAH we add BCS.
Tamara: It would be difficult… We want to discuss the community as a whole.
PARK IN LIEU MONIES?
Baier: City of MV has park in lieu money for us if we locate a new school in Mountain View. Does LA have such money? [Park in lieu are fees that are charged to developers. These are monies that must be used only on city parks and recreation expansion or improvements.]
Pepper & Marcia Summer: It’s $5 million slated for community center. It is restricted for parks and recreation purposes.
CITY – SCHOOL TRAFFIC COOPERATION
This is a summary, not a transcription. The standing city-school committee and perhaps the new ad hoc public lands committee will be discussing 3 traffic projects: the pros and cons of reviving the rear entrances to Blach and Egan, a traffic light at Covington and Miramonte, and widening the narrow sidewalk in front of BCS along Portola [this sidewalk project depends on grant money, and it will take about 3 years to completion]. Pepper said it might be possible to get money from VTA for a school bussing pilot program, though there should be a survey of potential users – for example the Mountain View families who drive to Covington – before launching a pilot.
The City is open to making it easier to expand the number of crossing guards at more crosswalks. The District explained that start and stop times for Egan, Blach and the charter are already being staggered about 30 minutes. The City is giving presentations to PTAs about the newest revision of the Safe Routes to School maps. These are normally revised only when the District changes boundaries, and the city will work to incorporate route suggestions from parents.
CITY PERMITTED TO USE PTA TO ENGAGE PARENT COMMUNITY
This is a summary, not a transcription. The City was concerned that its community input events about its Community Center plan were not attended by any parents. The District said the City could use the PTA lists next fall to engage with District parents.
UPCOMING MEETINGS TO DISCUSS PUBLIC LAND
The proposed ad hoc Public Land Committee Meetings were tentatively scheduled for May 20, May, 27, June 10 at 6pm. Location TBD. Membership is to be the same as the membership of the standing City-School Committee: Jean Mordo, Jan Pepper (City) and Tamara Logan, Vladamir Ivanovich (LASD).
There was no discussion of whether these meeting were to be open to the public and Brown Act compliant, but Lalahpolitico expects that they will be at least 3-day advance notice public meetings. Or at least I hope so.
PUBLIC COMMENT at Beginning of Meeting
Sharon Clay, Covington Parent, was the first speaker, and she spoke on school busing, Lalahpolitico was unable to transcribe her remarks, which were partially taped.
Mike Abrams, Downtown Property Owner and stints on the Planning and Transportation Committee. “ What I’ve noticed is that the city has land, but no money. The school district has no land, but it has some money. Maybe a subcommittee can be put together to do something for all the possibilities.” [Lalahpolitico: Wait a minute. The School District actually has a lot of land, over 100 acres. Its school sites are up to 50% larger than average in California.]
Bill James, Oak Parent. “My wife and I are the Measure N guys at Oak. Our Oak parents ask, Where is the city in all of this? The question continues to come up. What is their role? Thank you for being here. Our parents at Oak do think of school land and city land as being public assets, as being in a pool of assets. I’m sure that your governing boards and your staff think of things as being a lot more distinct. But I am really struck that parents don’t see it that way. ”
“Part of it might be that in our neighborhood there are not city parks. Our school is our park. They are community resources that everybody uses. So people [go by and] look at Hillview. It looks like a school. They know the public owns it, and they think why not that site for a school site. There are lots of reasons why not, but I just want to raise the awareness among this group [city-school subcommittee] that the parents FEEL that way. I brought this message at the request of my parents to the PTAs at the cross-district meeting. That message seemed to resonate with the PTA leaders. These are people who are co-Presidents of PTAs and they are mostly engaged the school facilities issues. It is of high important to them. But they all did think of the public use question as being a joint question. It is good that discussion is out in the open. There will be a strong need to communicate with the public about what all the resources are, how we are solving these solutions, how we are all working together to do that. ”
Nancy Barrow. Gardner Bullis parent. “I advocate for looking at currently owned land either by the city or the school district. Land prices are outrageous. I am open to using some of our larger school campuses for two schools. I am open to using Jr. high schools to build BCS two separate campuses. I don’t know the details. I love the idea of reusing what we have. Re SRS,I live in the Orange-University neighborhood. We use Redwood Grove, Shoup, and Lincoln Park a lot. Sadly there is a huge increase in traffic. Please help. ”
Natalie Elefant. Grandparent of a child a Covington. “Thank you for having this meeting about publicly owned land… I just wish that Mountain View and Los Altos Hills also were here.”
Carly Soren. Parent – One at Egan and one Almond. “Our kids are using community parks… I’d like to see more distributed city recreation programs: yoga, pottery and woodworking. Palo Alto High Schools have City classes in the evening and on weekends.” [Lalahpolitico: I’m not sure if any of the City recreation classes occur at the two Los Altos – Mountain View high schools?]
