Foreigners running the city

Jim Griffith has created a nice page to gather feedback from Sunnyvale "study issues" at http://www.dweeb.org/2010studyissues.html. His quick capsules are much more readable than the official city site, which is nothing more than a bunch of links to pdf files. And these are not even searchable PDFs, but simply scanned images. (The 'copyright 2003-2005' at the bottom of the page is an indicator as to how much attention is placed on the city web site. So much for being at the center of technology.)

Sunnyvale has an entrenched 'professional' staff. Some live in the city, but many live far away. Some city employees even intentionally seek out housing outside the city to avoid a potential "conflict of interest". Unfortunately, this also reduces the "shared interests" of actual residents of a city. Thus we end up with cases like the staff recommendations on study issues. Some examples:

Out of 17 public works study issues, staff was in favor of 2, "plastic bag ban" and "guided bicycle routes through neighborhoods". The city bicycle/pedestrian commission ranked 6 study issues as worthwhile. The bike routes did not make the cut. While rejecting or ignoring the preferred plans of the BPAC, staff is more than happy to favor devoting 120 hours for guided neighborhood bicycle routes. This is just three weeks work, and does actually provide some benefit (if implemented), so it is not all that bad.
The plastic bag ban is bad. It was encouraged by the county government association. Staff estimate it will take 510 staff hours for this study issue. Why there may be plenty of arguments for and against a bag ban, spending time studying it now is mere waste. San Jose is in the midst of preparing an EIR on a bag-ban ordinance that is set to start in 2011 at the earliest. Palo Alto and other bay area cities already have bans. Why spend time rushing and studying? Sunnyvale is clearly not the innovator in this issue. Trying to spend so much time "studying" it will either replicate other work, or lead to another 'different' ordinance. If you are going to be a follower, do it right. Or better yet, just wait. With a number of bay area cities already enacting bans, chain retailers will likely just follow the same policies through the region. This gives Sunnyvale the benefits with almost no cost.

While staff is interested in spending hours pioneering for plastic bags, they have no interest in pioneering for livability. With many of the BPAC requests, the response is "oh, we follow some standards. We don't see any point in making them better." One study issue simply asks staff to share its criteria with the BPAC. Staff rejected it, saying they planned on sharing. (I think the point was that they had not. Otherwise, the BPAC would not have need of a study issue.)

Staff also believes that Sunnyvale of today is exactly the same as Sunnyvale of 12 years ago. (They reject an issue to improve the Homestead bike lane because it had been studied before in 1998, back when some of those Homestead High students now using it were still in diapers.)