Rengstorff grove to be spared Rengstorff grove to be spared (January 27, 2006)

Child care center now moving to temporary senior center site

By Jon Wiener

The city will go forward with a controversial plan to build a high-end child care center in Rengstorff Park.

In a 5-2 vote Tuesday night, the city council bowed to pressure from neighbors and agreed to move the project out of a secluded picnic area and to the site of the temporary senior center.

A parade of speakers with green slips of paper pinned to their shirts, mainly neighbors of the site, ripped the council for taking away scarce public parkland in the name of low-income families.

"To call this a low-income project is very, very misleading," said T.S. Wu, pointing to the estimated $1,000-a-month cost to enroll a child in the center. Wu, 76, lives in a condo at Parkview West near the grove and said he takes walks in the park on a daily basis.

Council gadfly Don Letcher, a self-described "irate citizen" who has never missed an opportunity to speak against the project, led off the public comment by telling the council, "Shame on you, just shame on you." Other speakers called the council's support for the project "disappointing," "wrong," and "a mistake."

No city building project in memory has generated nearly as much opposition as the child care center. Senior citizens soundly rejected the original plan to combine the project with the new senior center. When staff elected to build it in the south grove, operators of private centers emerged to protest the project as a subsidy for a competitor.

The city pressed ahead with the project, setting aside $1.9 million to pay off a construction loan from the Packard Foundation. But a trickle of complaints from residents of Parkview West turned into a steady stream by the end of the summer, and eventually forced the council to ask staff to come up with alternative sites within the park boundaries.

The options before the council included the original site, the temporary senior center, an open patch of grass along Rengstorff Avenue and a parking lot along Crisanto Avenue. The Crisanto option was popular with residents and council members, but operator Children's Creative Learning Centers said they might have to pull out because of the lack of visibility.

According to the staff report, the use of the temporary senior center site will eliminate one of two handball courts in the park, create potential traffic jams in the parking lot and force the city to look for a new permanent home for the senior community gardens.

"As Mountain View grows, there's going to be demand for more services," said council member Laura Macias. "We're all going to need to learn to share." Macias said services like child care will benefit everyone in the community, even those who don't use them. Macias joined Mayor Nick Galiotto and council members Mike Kasperzak, Tom Means and Matt Neely in voting for the temporary senior center site. Vice Mayor Greg Perry and council member Matt Pear were opposed to all alternatives.

Most of the audience broke into nervous applause when Perry proposed dropping the plans until the city could find a site that was not on public parkland. Given the unenthusiastic endorsement the project had received from some council members, his motion looked like it might pass. But only Means switched his vote, meaning the project once again narrowly survived.

Only two residents, Marilu Delgado and Olga Melo, turned out to voice support for the project. They pointed out that the child care discussion was competing with a city-sponsored workshop on gangs at Castro School taking place at the same time.
Developer bristles at park fees

Earlier Tuesday, the council approved a 115-unit rowhouse project on nine acres of mostly abandoned industrial land at Evelyn Avenue and Moorpark Way.

Developer Shea Homes is projecting that each three-story, three bedroom rowhouse will sell for $650,000. The company will have to pay millions in impact fees, including $2.9 million to the city's subsidized housing program and $2.5 million to a parkland fund.

"We think it's unfair to require us to build a park and open space plan at the same time we are paying an in-lieu fee," said Don Capobres, community development manager for Shea Homes.

Rowhouse developers are required to provide landscaping or some kind of open space on 30 percent of their land. On top of that, they must provide public park space proportionate to the number and size of units they build. Capobres argued that two small parks in the middle of the development should count towards both requirements.

Irritated council members dismissed his objections, saying that city staff had been working with Shea Homes on the project for a year and a half. Perry derided the maneuver as "garbage."

City manager Kevin Duggan said the city has not identified what the funds will be used for, but said options include purchasing land for a neighborhood park in the area or improvements to the Stevens Creek Trail.

The development borders the New Frontier mobile home park and Mt. Eden Floral Company's warehouse. The owner of the Mt. Eden lot has cited the encroachment of residential space as the reason for asking the city to re-zone his property for housing.
Meredith asks council for war memorial

The council agreed to discuss a request from Mountain View Voices for Peace to allow a temporary memorial commemorating the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Mountain View resident and peace activist Karen Meredith, mother of the late Lt. Ken Ballard, addressed the council Tuesday on behalf of the group.

Voices for Peace is aiming to erect the memorial in Pioneer Park or Civic Center Plaza in time for the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on March 20.

Meredith cried as she read a statement to the council. But council member Matt Pear questioned the motive behind the request and said he wanted to handle it carefully. Said Pear, "You have to ask the question, 'Is it a memorial, or is it another display of political expression?'"

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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