|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
According to Vice Mayor Alison Hicks, there’s no question that Mountain View is going to grow. Being located at the heart of Silicon Valley, she said, makes that inevitable. But how that growth takes shape is something that city leaders can influence, which is why Hicks ran for the City Council four years ago.
“I want to make that growth great,” the 64-year-old retired city planner told the Voice.
When she first ran for council, Hicks knew her career experience would bring a unique perspective to a city that’s constantly grappling with how to grow sustainably.
“But the pandemic struck, and many of the things that I had hoped to do, we started, but we didn’t get very far down that road,” Hicks said.
Now seeking her second term – one that, this time, won’t orbit around the pandemic – Hicks said her top priority is livability as the city grows.
“I share the concern (with the community) that we need the infrastructure,” Hicks said. “We need parks and other kinds of open space and green space, we need to upgrade our transportation, our sidewalks, bike paths and the safety around those particular issues, and also we’re going to have to expand our schools.”
Hicks said the council’s plans to update the city’s Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan over the next year will play a pivotal role in adding more green space.
“First, we have to discuss exactly what people want and where. Then we also have to discuss the revenue streams,” Hicks said. “… We’re going to have to work closely with our schools to rebuild the relationship we have with them and have them provide a little bit of green or park space to the city. But I think we’re going to have to look beyond that, at some alternative funding sources.”
Hicks said those sources could include things like the Transient Occupancy Tax, a tax on hotels; a real estate transfer tax; increasing park fees for offices; or a commercial vacancy tax.
When thinking about how to ensure public amenities come with the growth the city is planning for, Hicks said she often thinks back to when Mountain View’s Downtown Precise Plan was significantly updated about 30 years ago. At the time, she said, Mountain View’s downtown shifted from mostly one- and two-story buildings to what felt like skyscrapers by comparison: four stories and higher.
“People I’ve talked to who lived through that are very happy with that development,” Hicks said. “…And I think it’s because there was kind of a deal struck between developers and residents. Developers got more density, but residents got cafe tables, they got wide sidewalks, they got street trees on Castro.”
From Hicks’ perspective, this approach to development has faded in recent years, and it’s something she said she’ll advocate for if reelected.
“We’ve added density, but we haven’t added that human focus, those elements of livability,” she said. “And I think if you don’t do that, you get a backlash.”
Another quality of life issue that’s come with a great deal of controversy from residents is the city’s Narrow Streets Ordinance, which effectively banned RVs – and dwelling inside them – from most streets in the city. Hicks voted against the ordinance, which passed in 2019. But after a majority of voters favored upholding the ordinances in a 2020 referendum, and with additional safe parking spaces added by the city in recent years, Hicks said she now supports upholding the will of the voters and enforcing the ordinance.
Housing affordability and homelessness, she said, are top priorities if reelected. While the pandemic was “mostly bad news,” as Hicks put it, it did enable a lot of new programming for homeless people that she’s proud to have been a part of: the LifeMoves transitional housing program, the transformation of the Crestview Hotel into housing for vulnerable populations and additional safe parking spaces.
Looking to the future, there’s a regional megabond underway that Hicks believes will make a big difference in generating more affordable housing in Mountain View.
“With the land prices here, we cannot create affordable housing without a subsidy,” she said. “It really does take a commitment that’s beyond what any individual city can make on its own.”
Mountain View is currently working to revamp its R3 zoning district through a form-based approach, which aims to make it easier for developers to build the apartments and condos that tend to be the most affordable types of multi-family housing.
“The idea (with form-based zoning) is that the community comes up with some forms that housing can take, and some very strict design requirements,” Hicks said. “Once we’ve come up with those then (developers can) do almost anything inside.”
But with the state’s density bonus law, which allows developers to build higher and denser in exchange for offering affordable units, Hicks said it’s hard to know whether future development will actually take the form that residents are expecting.
“The community will come up with these lovely duplexes or triplexes, and then the developers will come in and add another couple stories and there’s no way to enforce the design element,” she said. “… That’s an open question for me.”
Another top priority for Hicks is addressing the climate crisis. Though it can be daunting for cities to attempt to tackle such a global problem, Hicks believes there are concrete steps elected officials can take to make an impact.
“I think that we’re in a place where cities can take steps that are both ambitious and practical at the same time. A lot of those steps are around electrification,” Hicks said. “We have hired additional sustainability staff, and in particular a chief sustainability officer, and given this work its own office and a $7 million budget so that we can actually get things done, because you need people and money to get things done.”
Hicks said the Mountain View Sustainability Committee is working in conjunction with other cities in the region to accelerate the city’s carbon neutrality goals. She’d like to see the city utilize the Inflation Reduction Act and other possible funding sources to give people incentives to switch to electric when their old appliances need replacing.
“That’s one of the big leaps forward that we need to make in order to reach our carbon neutrality goals,” she said.
Hicks’ key endorsements include the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, State Senator Josh Becker, the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, County Supervisor Joe Simitian, Mountain View YIMBY, and the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce.
