Tomorrow, Tuesday October 28, the Santa Clara City Council may vote on a motion to reconsider its recent decision regarding the city’s new parks funding ordinance. Please tell the City Council NOT to reconsider its vote, and to keep the parks funding ordinance at 100% of cost recovery.
What You Can Do
1. Come to the City Council meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, October 28 at 7pm at:
City Council Chambers, 1500 Warburton Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95050
2. Email the City Council today ([email protected])
What’s Happening
For decades, Santa Clara has lagged far behind other local cities in terms of parks funding. Where other cities collected over $1 million annually, Santa Clara’s annual fees amounted to only a few hundred dollars. The resultant lack of adequate parks was made painfully obvious when the city started looking for a place to relocate its Youth Soccer Park, and considered putting soccer fields in Ulistac Natural Area – a priceless piece of native habitat. Your emails and public statements saved Ulistac then, but it will be threatened again in the future if the city has no additional revenues to buy parkland.
This summer, the City Council passed a development impact fee ordinance for the first time to provide funding to buy land and make improvements to parks. However, developers immediately began pressuring councilmembers to set the fee schedule significantly lower than the actual cost required to provide sufficient parkland when new residential development is built. Two weeks ago, the city council was asked to reduce the development impact fees down to only 65% of the actual cost, but instead voted 4-3 to keep the fee schedule at 100%.
This was a major victory for parks and open space in Santa Clara. However, there are rumors that the developers who tried to get the fees lowered may now be asking councilmembers to reconsider last meeting’s motion. We need you to tell the city councilmembers to uphold their stance on parks funding by NOT voting to reconsider the 100% development impact fee.
Thank you for your continued support of our local parks.
Sincerely,
Alice Kaufman
Legislative Advocate
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