On Sept. 9, The Weekly sent questions to candidates for public office in Sunnyvale. Candidates had until Sept. 24 to respond to the questionnaire. Below are the responses provided by District 6 candidates Eileen Le, Beverly Blau and Richard Lesher. Responses are presented verbatim.
What are the most important concerns of the residents in your district?
Lesher:
- Amenities (equitable community investment)
- Housing
- Public Safety / City Controlled Paramedic Services
Blau: Stopping the Village Centers Master Plan, which would replace our local grocery store and restaurant with townhouses. We want more affordable housing, but we don’t want to create a food desert in the process.
Le: District 6 is not optimized for the residents who live here. We’ve seen new housing and development within the last thirty years, as well as demographic shifts as young families move in, but the infrastructure is only now starting to catch up – and we have 20,000 new housing units coming in over the next decade. We need to take deliberate steps to ensure access to retail, groceries, and pharmacies, and to ensure that the district is connected to the rest of the city through well maintained streets, safe bike lanes, and easy to access public transportation.
How will you balance the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the individual?
Lesher: Our society is built around the rights of the individual. The Constitution provides for that. It is imperative that individual rights are not trampled on for the majority consensus.
Blau: It’s hard to please everyone, but I will listen with an open mind and try to understand why people are for or against an idea. If we make decisions with empathy, we can hopefully satisfy most people.
Le: Individual rights are important, but one essential role of government is to intercede and protect communities that might otherwise be overlooked or spoken over. For example, we as a society have decided that smoking is a health hazard to children, who cannot vote – and though individual people can still choose to smoke, we have put strict laws around tobacco advertising to youths and where physical tobacco store locations can be placed near schools. I feel that individual rights are protected and extremely important, and jurisdictions including Sunnyvale must carefully weigh how to balance that against a community’s best interests.
Sunnyvale needs housing. What will you do to ensure that Sunnyvale ramps up its production of below-market-rate housing?
Lescher: Generally speaking, vast housing development opportunities are plentiful in Sunnyvale. The challenge now remains motivating private investors to commit to the construction of said housing investment projects. It comes to finding a balance between financial incentive, and speed of executing housing projects. Where financial incentives for investors might be lower in some projects the reduction of high pay off projects can be countered by projects that are faster to completion. That way investors can put their money back to work in another project sooner if they are not able to generate higher payoffs with slower projects.
Blau: I will learn more about the Moffett Park Specific Plan, and I will support more high-density housing there. More supply should cause housing prices to go down.
Le: Sunnyvale’s housing element has been approved by the state, and the existing plan of upzoning in downtown, Moffett Park, and near Lawrence Station will bring thousands of new housing units within the next decade. Housing production has slowed because of external factors – construction costs, high interest rates – but those are expected to fall within the near future, after which production will ramp up again. I would like to explore raising the below-market-rate housing requirement for developers from the existing 15%, but that would have to be weighed carefully so that developers are still able to build given the high costs.
Government moves slowly. Where is the balance between studying/analyzing/assessing a subject and getting it done?
Lesher: Many voters I speak with say Sunnyvale takes a long time to execute projects. For example, the refurbishing plan for all of Sunnyvale’s parks has been planned to be completed over 20 years. Children that have not been born yet will graduate high school before that timeline has been completed. That’s comically unacceptable.
- Sunnyvale needs to fully understand the work flows of their operations in order to even start to be in a position to reduce project times. Sunnyvale can be smarter with their processes. There should be ample room for improvement without compromising the analysis process.
Blau: I believe we should iterate, like businesses do. I believe in pilot programs to demonstrate potential, before we invest more money in grand plans or ideas.
Le: Study issues should be reserved for high-risk or high-cost projects only. The city should push through low- risk and low-cost programs without the additional administrative burden. The city’s approach to GBI, with a study issue and a pilot program, has been measured but extremely informative; I have been appreciative of the caution as we explore a new program and try to gauge the effectiveness of this as a poverty mitigation and homelessness prevention tool.
Do you support the changes proposed for the charter? If so, explain why those changes are necessary.
Lesher: I support 24 meetings a year vs. a monthly standard, and the use of gender-neutral language.
- Inclusion of non-US citizens on boards and commissions needs a vetting process. Nothing is wrong with non-US citizens in roles in the community. However, Sunnyvale is in the heart of one of the most important parts of the world economy. Without a vetting process for those roles of city leadership of non-US Citizens the system will be taken advantage of by dangerous world competitors. I say this with my biases and experience as a former Military Intelligence Analyst for the US Army.
Blau: I believe the language we use affects the way we behave. If we want to be more inclusive, we need more inclusive language.
Le: Yes, I support the changes. Many Sunnyvale residents are extremely well-informed even if they are not citizens; we have a vast number of East and South Asian residents in particular who are green-card holders and who are both informed and involved but who cannot currently serve on some of our boards and commissions. The citizenship process for green-card holders can be extremely onerous and can take decades depending on a person’s country of origin; failing comprehensive federal immigration reform, we should allow active and engaged residents to have a voice as appointed commissioners.
The city is going out for a bond to pay for a new library. What do you see as the path forward should voters reject that bond measure?
Lesher: If the bond is voted down an obvious first step would be to pursue options for remodeling all or segments of the current library. Perhaps sponsorship with our local tech industry leaders could also be pursued.
Blau: The purpose of voting is to learn the will of the people. If voters reject the bond measure, then it seems as if people don’t want a new library. Or, at least they don’t want to pay for it. If there is an underserved part of the community that would benefit from this (and are underrepresented at the ballots), it may still be worth pursuing using different strategies. We should figure out what is needed. More services? More resources? More internet access? A place for people to go on hot days? Perhaps we can accomplish our goals without building a multi-million dollar new building. Or, we can look for other sources of funding. Federal grants, state grants, private donations.
Le: The Sunnyvale Library is an important place for residents to gather for books, programs, and digital access – but it needs to be renovated. If the bond measure fails, the City can put forward the bond again in a special election, though that would be expensive, or pair the library renovation with the renovation for the department of public safety building later in the civic center renovation timeline.
With some pretty ambitious environmental goals, how do you see the city balancing those goals with competing goods such as financial impact, the will of residents and so forth?
Lesher: The most straightforward way to incorporate environmental goals is to make the community amenities closer. Bike baths need to be used by commuter bike riders, as well as recreational biking. Accesses to services and amenities need to be reachable without having to get into a car.
Blau: It’s certainly easier for businesses to comply with environmental policies if such practices are lower in cost. We should make it easier to do the right thing. How do we get Sunnyvale residents to agree with environmental goals? We could figure out a branding campaign to explain to people why the environment is important. Life is short, and we’re all temporary inhabitants of this planet. Let’s stop being a–holes* to the next generation of humans. Sunnyvale residents are smart enough and progressive enough to want to do the right thing.
Le: Sunnyvale residents are committed to sustainability – and so am I. I’m proud to have received endorsements from the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, and 350 Bay Area Climate Action. Climate change is an existential threat to us all, especially for the next generation, and investments now in clean energy, active transportation, and green building practices as outlined in our Climate Action Playbook will yield results not only for health and safety but, long-term, for financial outcomes as well.
*While the Weekly is committed to presenting answers verbatim, Ms. Blau’s verbiage was edited to be suitable for a general circulation paper. We believe her intent is clear without the need to publish profanity.
Again, Sunnyvale’s candidates for District 6 are Eileen Le, Beverly Blau and Richard Lesher. Election day is Nov. 5, 2024. To register to vote, visit the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters website. The deadline to register to vote is 15 days before the election.
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