League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Santa Clara County, CA November 3, 2009 Election
	Christopher R. Moylan Answers Questions Candidate for Council Member; City of Sunnyvale; Seat 2

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

Questions & Answers

1. What experience related to city government would you bring to the City Council?

Four years of accomplishments on the Council itself, plus five years as a planning commissioner, and three years as a county transportation commissioner. In addition, I served on ad-hoc committees established by former mayors Miller and Chu regarding taxation and community engagement.

2. What concerns are of particular importance to the city and how would you address them?

My longest-held concern is that the city tends to consider large development projects independently and not as coordinated parts of a long-term strategy. I have already succeeded in getting the community together to create a new Vision element of the General Plan; what remains to be done is to get the Council and city staff to incorporate its goals into all routine items. The consolidation of the General Plan that the Council just authorized on October 20 will help.

The biggest near-term concern is the downtown redevelopment, discussed further in the next section.

3. What solutions do you propose to complete the Downtown Project?

The current problem with the downtown is that the financing member of the partnership (RREEF, 95% owner) cut off all funding six months ago. Fortunately, when we removed the previous developer (Forum Group) from the project, we wrote into the agreement with the new team that they had to show continuing willingness to fund the project or we could declare them in breach and they would lose their property. We used that leverage in negotiations to get the funding needed to allow Target to open on time. The lender has since defaulted on a loan it got from Wachovia Bank, which is now taking steps to protect its investment, and that is a good sign for the project. The best strategy, if Wachovia chooses not to become the new lender, may be to break the remainder of the project into pieces and have different lenders involved with each piece. The cinema would be a good candidate to develop early, since it would be likely to bring in more foot traffic, making the retail locations more attractive to businesses, and thus making the whole project more attractive to lenders. We should be willing to try out-of-the-box approaches like the one used in Long Beach to handle vacant storefronts: turn them into art display sites so that their partially-occupied downtown was a combination shopping area and museum. It has been stated by many planners from other cities that a cultural amenity within walking distance is key to a downtown redevelopment.

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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.

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

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: November 2, 2009 11:26
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