Renter protections, city finances hot topics in Palo Alto council race
With the recent loss of a longtime rental property in downtown Palo Alto and the city burdened with unfunded pensions, renter protections and city finances have become key issues in the City Council race.
Five candidates — incumbents Eric Filseth, Tom DuBois and Cory Wolbach and challengers Alison Cormack and Pat Boone — are vying for three open seats. Because of a ballot measure passed in 2014, the council next year will shrink from nine to seven members; council members Greg Scharff and Karen Holman termed out this year.
Filseth, DuBois and Cormack think it’s paramount that the city better manage the budget and set aside more money each year to pay down pensions.
Filseth considers the pension debt and health care costs the city’s most serious challenge over the next four years. He said that if the city doesn’t pay down the interest on pension debt each year, it could eat up as much as 40 percent of the city’s operational budget within 10 to 15 years, making it difficult for the city to provide basic core services such as fire and police.
“It is a very long-term thing, and it will touch everything we want to do for a long time to come,” Filseth said. “We need to change some things or there is going to be a crisis.”
With a new city manager coming in next year, DuBois thinks the city should streamline projects, end the practice of meeting with developers outside of public settings and open labor negotiations to public scrutiny.
“We need to get more transparent in every decision
we make,” DuBois said.
Cormack, who chaired a successful bond measure in support of city libraries while president of the Palo Alto Library Foundation in 2008, said better communication from the city could go a long way toward opening up city government. She said the city website has yet to be made mobile-friendly, and residents still cannot see projects planned or already underway in the city nor find information about meetings involving each project.
“We have a handful of people who understand how it works and go to the meetings … who we’re relying on to do the work that technology should be able to do,” Cormack said.
Boone, a former television reporter, is the most outspoken candidate on renter protections, and would like to tackle that issue immediately. He considers himself an outsider in the race, stating that he has no endorsements and represents no interests other than residents.
Boone said the current council bears a large responsibility for the planned eviction of tenants from President Hotel Apartments in November.
“I think how we zone for housing is really important,” Boone said. “I’m shocked that a majority (of the council) didn’t come out and say what was going on. … I would have been a lot more transparent with residents about any backdoor meetings with developers.”
Boone said he would fight for a “just cause” eviction process and hire a code enforcement officer to make sure rental landlords’ properties are up to code and tenant complaints are being explored.
Wolbach also favors the just cause process as well as relocation assistance, strengthening yearly lease requirements and the city’s mediation program, and requiring earlier notices of planned rental increases.
“I’m the only candidate who has been consistently fighting to address all aspects of the housing affordability crisis in the past four years,” Wolbach said. “The single most critical reason I ran four years ago was to address the jobs/housing gap. It is the origin of the traffic and housing cost problem.”
The council last year adopted a housing plan with a goal of 3,500 to 4,500 new units by 2030, but has been slow to see projects come forward until recent months. Wolbach said he would like to see commercial properties, particularly at Stanford Research Park, converted into residences; an increased percentage of units — up to 30 percent or higher — in market-rate projects set aside for affordable units, even if it means exceeding the city’s 50-foot limit; and adjusting the “granny unit” ordinance to allow for more small units, particularly those targeted for seniors, low-income
renters and people with disabilities.
DuBois supports teacher housing, possibly by building housing on city parking lots and converting commercial space to residences, particularly in the Ventura neighborhood where Fry’s Electronics currently operates.
Cormack is interested in exploring housing, particularly for seniors, as the city looks to redevelop Cubberley Community Center and also wants to allow for additional granny units.
“We have many long wait
lists on our existing senior housing and they aren’t always affordable,” Cormack said.
Cormack, Filseth and Boone are also interested in creating a business registry in order to institute a business tax to help pay for infrastructure upgrades.
“We need to tax businesses to pay for more shuttles and buses and improve the traffic system,” Boone said. “For instance, on El Camino Real you have six lanes. Maybe during heavy traffic, it could be four lanes of traffic on the side where traffic is heaviest. … But we don’t even have a transportation chief in Palo Alto. We’ve got nothing, we’ve got a council just talking with no action.”
Filseth said he thinks the city should explore something along the lines of the employee “head tax” that is on the ballot in Mountain View, adding that he favors the city at least matching and possibly going higher than the county’s recent $68.50-per-square-foot housing impact fee imposed on commercial development. The city currently imposes a $30 fee.
“I think it’s inevitable we’re going to do something like the head tax in the future,” Filseth said.