League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Santa Clara County, CA November 4, 2014 Election
	Tom Dubois Answers Questions Candidate for Council Member; City of Palo Alto

The questions were prepared by 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. How would you balance neighborhood and city-wide concerns?

I will clearly make resident concerns my top priority, and use the filter of "how does this benefit" residents when evaluating issues. As our comprehensive plan elegantly states: "Commercial activity but not at the expense of our residential neighborhoods."

Many residents are concerned about the rapid pace of development and the adverse effects of that development, the difficulties encountered by citizens trying to participate in city council decisions, and the lack of transparency in government.

My goals are to require high-quality commercial development that adheres to our existing zoning rules, get baseline measurements about traffic, employment, population changes, and make sensible zoning and services decisions that benefit our community. The Comprehensive Plan is being revised, and I want to ensure that the needs of Palo Alto residents are represented in that plan. We need to zone for the type of development we want, not what we are currently getting.

The city also needs to provide planning consistency. We have too many exceptions and not enough enforcement, which contributes to an atmosphere of uncertainty and encourages horse-trading between the city and development projects. The city would be better served with clear processes and fewer exceptions to streamline the process and provide certainty for developers and residents alike.

Openness and trust in government is becoming a larger factor. In addition to issues reported by the recent Grand Jury, other factors erode trust such as granting exceptions, uneven enforcement, staff reports that are dense and one-sided. There is serious work to be done to regain trust and have people believe in the positive impact of government.

2. Palo Alto and surrounding communities are under economic pressure to grow and environmental pressures to live and work closer together. How do you envision Palo Alto responding to these pressures?

Recovering from the economic downturn has been a mixed blessing for Palo Alto. As money flows into this city as an investment strategy, residents are experiencing a lot of stress from rapid commercial development of office space and increased transience of the workforce, and this has adversely impacted a sense of community that most Palo Altans care about. I have been active on the new Housing element and in the community to develop plans aimed at preventing people living in Palo Alto from being displaced.

I would like to see the city diversify its housing inventory by creating smaller units near services and transit such as California Avenue and University Avenue. At the same time we need to ensure our infrastructure, schools, parks, and community services can keep up with the growth.

We need ongoing real-time data collection systems to understand what is happening and why, and work to decrease the adverse impacts of development by making sensible planning choices that allow organic development to happen. Much of our neighborhood retail and charm continues to be replaced by chains, making this a less interesting place to live. This is a damaging trend and citizens are very sad to see valuable neighborhood character being replaced by huge buildings with incompatible architecture.

Further work needs to be done to reflect the concerns of Palo Alto residents, such as completion of our Comprehensive Plan including the vision and goals for the future of the city, PC Zoning ordinance reform, and Specific Plans for the areas of the city where denser development is proposed. We need these Specific Plans to ensure we have plans based on verifiable data that includes impacts on traffic, air pollution, noise pollution, and other environmental impacts including the cumulative impacts of projects. The plans also need to include community services and supporting infrastructure.

3. What proposals do you have to alleviate the traffic and parking situation in Palo Alto?

Traffic and parking are symptoms of the underlying issue--overdevelopment. We need to stop digging ourselves into a bigger hole. That means requiring building developersto fully account for community impact of how future employees will get to work.

Even more fundamentally, we need to update our outdated assumptions of how much space is used per employee, and actually account for the number of people in the building (which we currently do not do). One of my first steps in office will be to change the occupancy assumptions of one person for 250 sq ft of office space, to a much lower metric such as 1 person per 100 sq ft of office space.

Our parking mess is the result of years of neglect + we need to apply many approaches to improve the situation--new parking garages, increased shuttle service, residential permit programs (free to residents), and transportation demand management programs enforced by companies to encourage use of alternative means of transportation. We need ongoing real-time data collection systems to understand what is going on where. We need to develop a business registry to understand how many employees we have in town, how they get to work and where they park.

---

Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' statements are presented as submitted. The answer to each question should be limited to 400 words. Direct references to opponents are not permitted.

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

Candidate Page || Feedback to Candidate || This Contest
SmartVoter Home (Ballot Lookup) || About Smart Voter

---

Created from information supplied by the candidate: October 21, 2014 16:52
Smart Voter <http://www.smartvoter.org/>
Copyright © League of Women Voters of California Education Fund   http://www.lwvc.org
The League of Women Voters neither supports nor opposes candidates for public office or political parties.