We haven’t been shy about sharing our educational “reform” position with you: we distrust the charter school movement.  We believe they are a means for private corporations to strip school boards of their resources and teachers of their benefits by providing cut-rate education under the false flag of “school choice.”  After all, corporations exist to make a profit.  Would you really want your child’s education outsourced to the lowest bidder?  Of course not!  That’s why you’ll pay anything to live in the Real Bay Area!

Charter Schools’ Negative Impact on the Educational System

Charter schools are being implemented all across the country, whether parents want them or not.  This is happening because some very wealthy people, not one of them with any education background, see this as a way to profit at the expense school boards and teachers unions.  Much of the current “school reform” movement has been taken over by tons of money from foundations from the Walton (Walmart), Gates (Microsoft) and Broad (construction and insurance) families and, of course, the Koch brothers.  These groups have completely derailed real school reform in favor of their plan to corporatize our educational system.

All that money crowds out real reform in favor of forcing charter schools, despite their lackluster performance despite their ability to cherry-pick students.  There are stories everywhere of neighborhood schools forced to close, fire all the teachers and administrators, and then reopen as charters, despite complete opposition from the affected teachers, parents and children.  Needless to say, this is most likely to happen where parents are not well-represented in the political system.  That is, this process is most likely to happen in poorer neighborhoods rather than wealthy suburbs.  Remember Waiting for Superman (which is, of course, pure propaganda)?  The Bay Area school in the film was in Redwood City.  And look at all the corporate charter schools that have popped up in Oakland and San Jose.

Click on through to find out what happens next.

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Google housing axed in city’s general plan

by Daniel DeBolt, Mountain View Voice Staff

Council members were not moved Tuesday night by last-minute efforts by the Chamber of Commerce and the mayor to keep housing as an option for future development of Google’s neighborhood north of Highway 101.

Council members voted 6-1 in a final approval of Mountain View’s 2030 general plan, a kind of road map for redevelopment in key areas of the city and the culmination of four years of meetings, and a “community visioning” process in 2008.

Largely by increasing allowed building densities and heights, it encourages redevelopment along El Camino Real, in the East Whisman area, North Bayshore (north of Highway 101), Moffett Boulevard and the San Antonio Shopping Center area.

Council members removed an allowance for as many as 1,100 apartments along Shoreline Boulevard between Highway 101 and Charleston Road. The housing would likely have been used by employees of Google and other tech companies in the area and was supported strongly by the Chamber of Commerce, which posted a YouTube video promoting the idea and whose members largely support North Bayshore housing, said president Oscar Garcia.

Here’s the video mentioned above.

But higher density along El Camino Real!  Yay!  Too bad for all the Google employees who thought that walking to work was a good idea.  The City Council is dedicated to making you live in another zip code and buying commuter vehicles.

You can read more about the backstory on the plan and the vote in this article from last week.  The plan the City Council voted in is supposed to guide Mountain View development through the year 2030. 

Housing at Mayfield mall site dumped for offices 

After almost a decade of contentious planning and untold millions to design, the 27-acre housing community planned for the Mayfield Mall site has been ditched for a $90 million deal to re-use the existing buildings as an office campus.

Congratulations to the citizens of Mountain View! You are victorious!

You stood tall and proud in the face of evil developers who threatened to add more housing to the Real Bay Area.

You fought valiantly at efforts to reduce commute times and potentially prevent housing prices from eternally going up.

You held your ground when confronted with the threat of allowing more people to live in your city.

Kudos to you Mountain View citizens. Kudos to you!

And kudos to the commenters of the Mountain View Voice website! Like this one!

Bravo to office space vs. housing and all the traffic that would bring. What a lot of wasted time and money over this past decade trying to fight the housing development(s). Went to a lot meetings at City Hall to fight the developments and did not feel our council members did enough for the existing neighborhood. Am very grateful the existing structure will be reused and that our beautiful trees will remain. I hope traffic through our neighborhood will be kept to a minimum. The old Mall/HP campus is lovely when the trash is picked up and and the weeds are kept down.

Because nothing says less traffic like more office space!

Here’s some news from Mountain View about a multimillion dollar project that doesn’t involve stainless steel kitchen appliances or Berber carpeting.

Developer sues city for denying permits

Owner of ramshackle apartments still owes city $97,000 in fees

by Daniel DeBolt, Mountain View Voice Staff, Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Summer Hill Apartments at 291 Evandale Ave. remains closed. Photo by Michelle Le.  (Article in MV Voice 2/23/09)

The former owner of a large Evandale Avenue apartment complex has filed a lawsuit against the city that claims he lost as much as $24.5 million when the city opposed his efforts to renovate the apartments after his redevelopment project fell through.

Plaintiff Sal Teresi claims that city officials, under the direction of former city attorney Michael Martello, engaged in "capricious and arbitrary conduct" to prevent him from renovating the 64 vacant apartments at 291 Evandale Avenue, which he ended up selling in the middle of the recession. As a result of the city’s actions, Teresi claims he lost $4.5 million in rent over five years and $16-20 million from appreciation of the building.

The issue took center stage in a City Council meeting in October of 2009. Teresi’s lawyer claimed then, as Teresi’s new lawyer claims now, that Teresi had a right to re-roof and repair the buildings without being subjected to a design review process, which the city officials told Teresi was required June of 2008. In the 2009 meeting, City Attorney Michael Martello disagreed, saying that "under their theory they could rebuild the entire complex" without any oversight.

Teresi’s troubles began when he had lined up a buyer for the property just before the recession hit, and decided to vacate the apartments before closing escrow, according to the claim Teresi’s lawyers have filed in the case. The sale fell through when the real estate market tanked. After unsuccessfully trying to find another buyer, Teresi needed to rent the apartments again to pay his bills.

Wow, all those new Facebookers, Googlers, VMWearers and StartUppers driving rents through the roof, while a whole apartment complex is sitting empty!  Do you hear the sound of opportunity knocking? This developer did, and he thought it would be a great idea to sell the place and deliver it to the new owner tenant-free.

After he got the tenants out, whoops, the housing market collapsed!  I hate it when that happens.  I’m sure you can figure out what kind of troubles he’s had since, especially since the City of Mountain View didn’t consider him the most responsible of apartment owners.  According to the lawsuit:

[T]he city and the city attorney at the time — Michael Martello — treated Teresi Investments with "intentional and disparate treatment" when they denied the company permits to renovate the property in 2008 and 2009. The property’s next owner, Bay West Realty Capital, was given "favorable treatment."

This is an Open Thread.  Tell us about your favorite crime magnets, because some of the local coverage of this place suggests when the fences went up, the crime rate went down.

Another day, another school staving off impending doom.

Teachers, school staff OK salary freeze

by Nick Veronin,  Mountain View Voice Staff

Teachers and staff of the local high school district have agreed to forego salary increases for two years.

The pay freeze, together with a change in retirement benefits for some staff members, will help the Mountain View Los Altos high school district save money, officials said.

At its Sept. 13 meeting, the high school board approved salary freezes for teachers and school staff represented by the California School Employees Association.

The teachers union and the local chapter of the CSEA went along with the district’s plan, which ensures that salaries will not increase for employees represented by either union until the 2011-2012 school year at the earliest.

Cupertino Unified School District added five furlough days to this year’s calendar as part of the staff contribution to covering a $3.4 million shortfall.  San Jose Unified schools took last week off.

State legislators budget deal, after 100 days of no action on allocations, does not pay schools the full amount they are owed.

Some schools are asking the voters for help.  Three school districts have placed parcel taxes on the November ballot, including Cambrian (Measure L, $96 a year), Foothill-DeAnza (Measure E, $69), East Side Union HSD (Measure I, $98),  Another four are seeking bond measures: San Jose/Evergreen (Measure G, $268 million), Santa Clara Unified (Measure H, $81.1 million), Franklin-McKinney (Measure J, $50 million), and Moreland (Measure K, $55 million).

The parcel taxes require a 2/3 vote to pass, the bond measures require 55%.  And if you want some political intrigue, two neighborhood associations have organized against the San Jose/Evergreen bond measure, claiming the community college district has wasted money on unneeded projects, needless travel, and consultants.  The best quote from the arguments against the measure is “The San Jose Mercury News has said that their fiscal credibility on a scale of 1 to 10 is zero.”

How are things in your school district(s)?  Any stories of treachery in budgeting?  Wait, isn’t Los Altos in the Real Bay Area?  Why are they dealing with budget issues?  What do you bet nobody read down this far? 

Survey: Bay Area workers highest paid in 2009
Data shows workers in nine-county Bay Area earned 20 percent more than national average

Workers in the Bay Area were the highest paid on average in the nation last year, according to data released Friday, July 23, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The data showed workers in the San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland metropolitan area earned 20 percent more than the national average in 2009, the agency said.

The survey included the nine-county Bay Area, plus Santa Cruz and San Benito counties, in that category, according to bureau economist Todd Johnson. The data showed above-average wages in all of the employment categories surveyed, but particularly among construction jobs, service jobs, sales, office and administrative jobs, and professionals.

Workers in the Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas, metropolitan area on the U.S.-Mexico border were paid the least, earning 79 cents for every dollar earned by workers nationwide, the agency said. Bay Area workers also were the highest paid in 2008, earning 17 percent more than the national average, according to Johnson.

— Bay City News Service

No wonder everyone’s still dying to move here! And that can mean only one thing: $800 per square foot is here to stay!

Record number of property value reductions in county

The Santa Clara County Assessor’s Office today announced $21.4 billion in property value reductions on approximately 118,000 properties in the county.

The figures, based on an initial analysis of the assessment roll by the assessor’s office, represent a record number of reductions. The numbers won’t be final until the roll is completed on July 1.
The decrease in assessed values means a further hit to already cash-strapped schools as they see their revenue from property taxes drop.

Assessor Larry Stone said the number of reductions in assessed value will likely greatly exceed the number of increases.

"The last 36 months is by far the worst economy I’ve experienced in the 45 years since I left graduate school for Wall Street," Stone said in a statement.

The reduction in assessed values is $4 billion greater than last year, Stone said.

To someone who is outside of California, this may seem like bad news… but in reality, this is excellent news. This means that homeowners will have low property taxes from now until forever thanks to Prop 13. This means less revenue for government, which means a smaller government, less services for people, which means more opportunities for businesses and private enterprise to fill in the gaps! And for these homeowners to become landlords and increase GDP.

Woot! Even better, according to the comments for this thread, houses in the Real Bay Area were not impacted at all! Double woot!

A wealth of qualified census-takers

by Chris Kenrick
Palo Alto Online Staff

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The U.S. Census-taker who knocks on your door this spring just might have an M.B.A., or even a Ph.D.

Silicon Valley’s high jobless rate has created a wealth of talent to staff the 2010 Census, which is now on final countdown to Census Day April 1.

By that date, every U.S. resident should have returned the 10-question form they’ll receive sometime in mid-March. If one hasn’t mailed back the form, one of those ultra-qualified census workers will be knocking on the door.

Jim Kamenelis, a longtime Silicon Valley IT director, is one of those with ample qualifications. An experienced IT manager who was looking for work after a failed startup, Kamenelis was hired by the Census Bureau in the summer of 2008 to help ramp-up to the big count. He expects his job to end this September, he said.

Kamenelis said he has tested about 15,000 local applicants for census jobs, which are on-again-off-again depending on tasks at hand. He has also managed a variety of preparations, such as updating addresses and maps, required for the upcoming count.

"There’s an incredible pool of capable people available right now," Kamenelis said.

"It’s amazing how many talented people we hire — we have lawyers, business executives, a lot of retired military, and one lady here is a Ph.D. in computer science.

"These are a lot of accomplished folks who, for whatever reason, are unemployed and this is the best thing available to them."

You heard it here first folks. Another reason why the Bay Area is special? Another reason why the next decade is going to rock for this fine valley?

We’ve got the best census takers and workers in the WORLD! Just think of all the innovation these PhD’s, JDs, MBAs, and military folks will be able to add to the census process. I bet all the other cities in America are just drooling with envy as to how lucky we have it.

Without a doubt, we are surely going to have the best counted census in the world right here in the Valley. Congrats!

Mountain View Voice : The happiest place in the USA
The happiest place in the USA
Poll finds more smiling faces in 14th Congressional District

by Daniel DeBolt
Mountain View Voice Staff

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According to a national poll, Mountain View and the surrounding region is the happiest place in the whole country.

The Gallup Healthways Well Being Index, which tracks national happiness levels on a daily basis, recently began breaking down the results by congressional district. Ranking at the top is California’s 14th Congressional District, which includes Mountain View, much of Silicon Valley and the Santa Cruz Mountains.

“Of 435 districts in the country, people in Congresswoman Anna Eshoo’s district apparently feel happier than in any other district in the country,” said city manager Kevin Duggan. “I think it’s great.”

He added, “It’s good that people feel good about their circumstances in such trying times.”

The city of Sunnyvale has pounced on the poll results, and now claims to be “the happiest place in America” in a press release on its Web site. The accolade comes from TV personality “Dr. Oz,” who for his Nov. 9 show contrasted Sunnyvale to the city of Hazard in Kentucky, which is in the least happy congressional district in the country, according the poll.

Further proof as to why house prices are completely justified here in the Real Bay Area. If you’re not living here, you’re going to be unhappy!

Mountain View Voice : Report: Silicon Valley jobs decline while pay increases
Despite record unemployment rates, some sectors of Silicon Valley’s high-tech economy continue to shine, according to a report released Wednesday.

“While the employment picture may sound a bit negative, the wage picture was much more sunny,” said Amar Mann, regional economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, who co-authored the report titled “After the Dot-Com Bubble: Silicon Valley High-Tech Employment and wages in 2001 and 2008.”

Mann said the six-county Silicon Valley region lost more than 85,000 high-tech jobs between 2001 and 2008, a decline of about 17 percent.

The region comprises Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties.
However, the average Silicon Valley tech worker’s salary grew by 36 percent during the same period, from about $97,000 a year in 2001 to $132,000 a year in 2008, Mann said.

By contrast, salaries nationwide grew by just 25 percent between 2001 and 2008, he said.

I don’t know about you, but is excellent news. This means that we’re finally getting rid of all the undesirable, ignorant, people from Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley will be now the true center of the intelligent world. Seriously. If you’re not clearing $85,000 – please just leave. Please. You’re a disgrace to the Bay Area. Thank you.