Hi Sylvia:
Thanks for the note. And you catch me with my evening glass of wine which with the wonderful heat is a strong G&T cause life got in the way!…. Watch out ;). Hope to not bore you.
Variances do include the minor adjustments you mention such as fences and rooflines, but they can and have included bigger issues such as cutting important trees, and massive basements etc . Whether they are a different order of magnitude comes down to one’s values. I value open space enough that I’d rather unmolested open space with a smaller patch of development. And you may prefer to have large estates dotted through the open space with their street/driveway cutouts. There we are totally able to differ amicably. Some like Pinot, some Cabernet. But we can drink together!
You ask about expensive concessions, and you could refer to the link you provided to find them.
– Undergrounding of PV’s access power lines along Alpine Road. (Very expensive)
– BMR units for our state obligations.
– Interconnection of our water services on Westridge and West alpine providing redundancy for the adjoining neighborhood’s convenience and safety.
– Safety access to the open space for fire defensibility.
– Many plantings of mature trees so that the buildings be hidden from view by the passerby.
– But I won’t kill all the surprises in the package. Folks should read it!
As for my point about lot sizes, you are correct. The General plan did not approve them as they likely were developed before the town came into existence. (Thanks to the two other very gracious folks.. who know who they are.. that privately and politely pointed this out to me earlier). But what I labeled the “more importantly” in that comment was that small lots do not by definition affect our sense of rural living. These lots unnoticed existence demonstrates, in our own town, that it can be done without damaging our sense of place.
In addition, since we bring up timing – as a point of fairness I would raise that Stanford (as a farm and as a university) owned the land in question almost a hundred years before the Town of PV came into existence. So “WE” are the interlopers in a sense of the word. And in that sprint, I’m very grateful they have left the land undeveloped for all these years. I’ve enjoyed it for almost 40 years! Starting when I did a yard out here while in college!
Surely, I wish Stanford didn’t have to develop it, but given they do, I don’t feel its my place to be overly burdensome. I think we should pursue a balanced trade of concessions so both PV and Stanford can enjoy their respective property.
And here I’ll add a point about the Law. Lawyers chime in! There is a long history of “grandfathering” in the jurisprudence in this country. That is why you can buy a 1965 Mustang and not have to get it up to today’s EPA standards. This is a privilege we in the US enjoy. I have lived the opposite abroad, and it can be NOT fun! I bring this up because having had to hire enough lawyers in my life, I’ve learned that in civil matters, the person that is right doesn’t win, it’s the person with money that wins. Not because they pay anyone off, but because they can afford to pay their lawyers until the other side cries “uncle”. So I don’t think we should tempt Stanford to put their legal office (which marginally costs them nothing) to pursue a case against PV over grandfathering… or some other legal theory… since our legal/administrative resources are already in deep trouble due legal action by other local interveners. My point here is that we should be careful too. We are talking to the 800lb gorilla. And to the Lawyers out there that say grandfathering in zoning is a non starter…. You may be right. But for every lawyer I’ve hear say “No Case”, Ive heard another say ’Slam dunk”. And in the end… while they litigate it, the town could go broke.
So on a more positive note…. I’ll add a list of other benefits that the project brings, but aren’t really marketed in the documents you posted:
– Infusion of young and diverse families into the town. Yes, not as diverse as some would want, but something.
– More ‘customers’ to support our school system.
– Avoidance of lights and cutouts in the open space. The reason it is so expensive to develop is the slope. And yes, per the GP, Stanford loses square footage doing this, but we would suffer this scarring if they just followed the GP. It isn’t impossible. It’s expensive and inefficient. But at our local real estate prices, VERY doable. A quick look at the topographic map of all of PV shows that there are many areas of similar slopes that are developed in the Westridge area.
– Traffic reduction! This is an unscientific comment as I don’t have the flow studies to prove it, but my informal assessment is that the larger newly developed PV-standard mansions consume TONS of services. These all arrive in vehicles. I was at a friend’s house on Westrigde, and there were no less that 5 service vehicles in the secondary parking. These vehicles are rarely counted when calculating traffic loads because ‘they don’t live there’. But from a practical point of view… we will see them in morning traffic, or in the backup if there were a fire. 37 Stanford faculty in smaller housing are not going to have this multiplier effect with services.
– And so on.
The real message that just your and my constructive discussion here surfaces… is that this is INCREDIBLY COMPLEX. To do such a complex proposal justice, we would have to spend days of careful analysis with multi-variate tables of benefits and trades – which I know you are good at since we did that kind of stuff together in college. But as we learned back then, and only on a much smaller scale… its hard work! And that is why we elect a town council, a planning committee, and hire a town staff. We hired/elected them to do this work for us. What we should be doing is using the feedback tools the town has provided to remind them of what we VALUE so they can use those values in their work… and that is it.
My take is that it is unfair to them for us to reach conclusions about these proposals without having done all the work they have to gather the data, understand the data, get familiar with the data, do careful analysis, learn the rules, limitations, codes and bylaws. (And I’m willing to concede that someone out there may have done all that.. but if they did, then they should run for office, win, and get in the process). That is what we elected our representatives to do. If the loudest ’side’ in this ForumRollerBall game wins then that is a new game. But it isn’t the way our town is organized or how the General Plan is designed to be administered.
So I repeat my sentiment. We have to help our elected officials make this very challenging decision. We can help them by letting them know precisely what we VALUE. We have to trust them to take that forward to the analysis they use in the tradeoffs for their approval. None of us get veto power. Even they don’t get it. We diversified our veto risk by having a councils/committees.
And to those that don’t like the outcome.. which we don’t know yet. VOTE.
Hope you are well and that we both get an outcome we are happy with,
Or as we say in Mexico. We know was a good negotiation when we both are equally happy and unhappy with the result… (Stanford vs.PV in this case)
I’m going to make some dinner.
Regards,
Dan
Ps. Please forgive typos , verbosity, and bad grammar. Just ripped this out while the G&T lasted and hunger cut things short!