League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Santa Clara County, CA November 3, 2009 Election
	Leon Leong Answers Questions Candidate for Council Member; City of Palo Alto

The questions were prepared by the the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. In light of the economic down turn and possibly reduced income for the city in future years, how do you propose to both balance the budget and meet the cities desires for quality services ?

The Budget needs more transparency so that the City Council can better make policy decisions on services. Once the council can understand the costs and overhead involved, policy decisions can be made on where to devote resources and where efficiencies can be found. A recent example is the cost of the city's phone bill, where the city auditor determined that the city could have been saving hundreds of thousands of dollard each year.

2. An updated Comprehensive Plan is due to be approved in 2010. What changes if any should be made to the Plan and why?

The Comprehensive Plan needs to ensure we have a balance of land devoted to services (e.g. parks), school sites, community serving retail and housing. Over the past 12 years, Palo Alto has added over 2,500 housing units, with neglible additions to parks, elementary schools, and an actual decrease in retail. This had lead to overcrowding at schools, traffic congestion and a taxing of our city services. We need the comprehensive plan to refocus to the balance of retail, office, parks & schools that made Palo Alto a premier choice for establishing a home.

3. The Baylands Master Plan guides land use east of Route 101. Several land use changes are currently being proposed relating to composting, recycling, parkland, airport needs, and hotel development. What land uses do you think desirable and what uses are incompatible in the Baylands?

The current mix of use of the area east of Route 101 provides many benefits to the residents: parkland, golf, airport, and should be maintained, as the effects and trends of global climate change are monitored and analyzed. The long term effects of global climate change may be the biggest driver of what use will be made of the area east of Route 101.

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Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' responses are not edited or corrected by the League. LWV Palo Alto is using Smart Voter information to publish a paper Voters Guide. Therefore, word limits apply to some of the sections. Contact Veronica Tincher <vtincher@yahoo.com> if you misplaced the instruction sheet with the word limits which was mailed to you. Your answers will be taken from Smart Voter at 8 p.m., September 18 and will be published in the Voters Guide. After that date, you are free to enter more information according to the Smart Voter guidelines.

Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: September 6, 2009 14:45
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