How to Bring Innovative, Not-Insanely-Wealthy People Back to Palo Alto
The other night, I found myself reading my almost-three-year-old daughter a children’s book from 1950. The book focused on family life, and I had to explain some of the things she didn’t recognize. The father was smoking a pipe, and sitting in front of a fire. There were no TVs, phones, or laptops anywhere in sight. Explaining to her that I’d had neither a laptop nor a cellphone growing up unleashed a series of “why”s I could only answer meekly.
The world has changed immensely — not only since 1950, but since 1996, when I arrived at Stanford as an 18-year-old freshman from Philadelphia. There are things I like about those changes, and things I don’t like, but one thing is clear: there’s no going back.
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October 09, 2014
Yes to Measure B For Quality of Life and Public Safety
This piece is reposted verbatim from the Invest or Die blog from Palo Alto Online, with permission from Steve Levy, Director/Senior Economist at Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy (CCSCE).
The upcoming election will be full of both local and statewide election choices. Most attention in Palo Alto has been focused on the upcoming city council elections. But there is another choice on our local ballot (Measure B) that will directly support the quality of life and public safety in our city now and in the years to come.
Measure B will raise the transient occupancy (hotel) tax from 12% to 14% and provide approximately $31 million (roughly 25%) of the $126 million needed for the next round of infrastructure investments. The other 75% will come in roughly equal parts from 1) monies provided by Stanford as part of the agreement to expand the medical facilities, 2) hotel tax from the five new hotels currently planned and 3) monies in the city's infrastructure reserve, parking fees, city surpluses and other sources.
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October 06, 2014
October 2 City Council Candidates Forum
Last Thursday night, Palo Alto Neighborhoods (PAN), PTAs, and PA Weekly sponsored a Candidates Forum for the 12 City Council candidates: Incumbents Karen Holman, Greg Scharff and Nancy Shepherd, and new candidates Wayne Douglass, Tom DuBois, Eric Filseth, John Karl Fredrich, AC Johnston, Lydia Kou, Seelam Reddy, Mark Weiss and Cory Wolbach. Half of the evening was devoted to questions directly from the sponsors, and the latter half was open to questions from the audience. Due to time limits, only a portion of the candidates were asked to respond to each question.
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October 06, 2014
LWV City Council Candidates Forum
Last night was the League of Women Voters City Candidates Forum at the Etz Chayim Congregation. The 12 candidates each had time to give opening statements, ask each other questions, take questions from the audience and give closing remarks. Most of the candidates expressed their desire to increase parking availability, reduce traffic and congestion, and restore public trust in city government.
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October 01, 2014
School funding, enrollment, and housing strategy
Quick synopsis:
Palo Alto families often fear that increased local housing will degrade school quality through budget and enrollment pressure. A closer examination of the budgetary and enrollment impact of various housing types reveals that higher density apartment units would be a highly effective tool to shore up school finances without contributing additional enrollment pressure
Local Housing Policy and School Funding-- the beginning of an investigation
A few months ago, I sent a message to my good friends declaring my strongly held belief that Palo Alto should invest in more housing options in the downtown areas. I believe that increased access to a variety of housing makes for a more diverse, healthy, sustainable, and fun city.
I was expecting some common pushback. “Wouldn’t this create more traffic and parking problems?” Why, no… putting housing near services and offices near transit actually helps us deal with our traffic and parking problems. “Wouldn’t this be environmentally irresponsible?” No…. dense housing is FAR greener than sprawling single family homes.
Finally, one of my friends whose opinion I always value wrote back: “I get what you’re saying, and I agree with you in general. However, our schools are overstretched already, and that is the main reason that we moved here. Screw with that, and you’ve lost me!”
Hmmm… that’s a very good argument that touches me personally as I have two young children in the Palo Alto school system myself. I had to go investigate.
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September 28, 2014