Jamie McLeod on massive 900 Kiely Boulevard project

On 8/18/2009 Jamie McLeod gave her justifications for approving the massive 900 Kiely Boulevard high density development (note that she never says that it is what the people of Santa Clara want - she was not governing from a democratic standpoint - but from a Kleptocratic or Aristocratic one):

Thank you, uhm, we've looked at this project now twice and the first time we looked at uhm the EIR and discussed a lot of the traffic impacts and a lot of the issues that were raised tonight and uh personally I think they were issues, they will be issues that are associated with this project but Given that the EIR has been approved uh some of those are uh some of the issues that we have been discussing that are associated with the project are frankly water under the bridge. Uh Because that document has been approved. Uhm, and So now what we're looking at tonight, what I am looking at tonight is the project before us. given some of the uhm the previous the previous approval that's been established and what I'm looking at is a design that has been improved upon from the previous design uhm The other thing I know the density is a very controversial issue but we do have a uh housing shortage in the Bay Area and the South Bay in particular and I know it's difficult when the neighbors are feeling like that's being put upon their shoulders uh they're not many areas in the community where we uh have this opportunity for infill.

Santa Clara, along with San Jose, Mountain View and Sunnyvale continues to change zoning and allow developers to tear down commercial buildings of one height and replace them with commercial buildings of larger heights. They overbuild commercial. And then the politicans like Jamie McLeod tell the people that they have to allow them to degrade their quality of life - make their city more crowded - because there is a housing shortage. The solution is not to build high density residential. It is stop tearing down small commercial buildings and replacing them with larger commercial buildings , and to start tearing down some of the overbuilt commercial buildings. The politicians will be quick to say that they city can't survive with less commercial. And yet, the city once survived beautifully with less commercial buildings.

But uh council member Kornder and I serve as co-chairs on the general plan update steering committee. And we're seeing those pressures on the need for more housing in the area and infill housing is an environmental issue because it does avoid sprawl and people having to commute from other areas and whereas I would love to see some uhm more improvements especially around greenhouse gas issues and I keep raising it but this is gonna become a larger and larger issue as we move forward. Uhm, and so I'd like to see us grappling with this more but the traffic impacts from large commutes is a huge greenhouse uh greenhouse gas issue. So uhm given that it has been improved design uh given that uh we do have the housing demand uhm you know some of the issues again I think are outstanding issues but I think we've lost the opportunity to address them through previous approvals on this project. So uhm ehh with the addition I think that the uhm development management plan that was mentioned is an important one ... we've seen some headaches come up with that before but I think. That will help to address the ongoing issues. So I will be supporting the motion.