September 2025

OPPOSE SB79: Insufficient historic protections

Senator Becker,

We urge you to vote NO when SB79 comes back to the senate for its concurrence vote. While the bill was amended in the Assembly to allow some protections for buildings on a city’s local historic register, these will be insufficient to preserve the look and feel of Mountain View’s Historic Retail District H and the immediate vicinity, which includes buildings not only on our city’s local historic register, but also eligible for the California and National Historic Registers.

The key point is that many buildings on these historic registers are adjacent to others which are not on those registers, but complement their look and feel to provide a historic presence in the core three blocks of our downtown. SB79 would allow these adjacent buildings to be demolished and replaced by 7 story or higher modern buildings. These new buildings would tower over our few remaining historical buildings leaving us with a sad reminder of who we once were and what we once had.  Our former historic retail district would be ruined.

Thank you for considering our views on this critical issue.

Robert Cox, Louise Katz, Nazanin Dashtara, Muriel Sivyer-Lee, Toni Rath, Peter Spitzer, Maureen Blando, Jerry Steach, David Lewis, Carol Lewis, Hala Alshahwany, Carole Griggs, Leslie Friedman, Nancy Stuhr, Natalie Solomon, Sean O’Malley, Diane Gazzano, Lorrie Wormald, and Alice DeGuzman 

For the Steering Committee of Livable Mountain View

Santa Clara County Assessor Candidate Rushi Kumar:

Several members of the Livable Mountain View steering committee received communications from your campaign, indicating that you are seeking our organization’s endorsement for your candidacy for Santa Clara County assessor.

Livable Mountain View will not be endorsing a candidate for the Santa Clara County Assessor’s race this year.

Our organization’s focus is on lobbying on land use issues that affect the City of Mountain View. While we have done candidate endorsements, we only endorse candidates for offices in which the elected official will have a significant role in shaping the land use policy in Mountain View. Consequently, all our previous candidates’ endorsements were for those running for Mountain View City Council.

Once again, thank you for your interest in Livable Mountain View.

Robert Cox, Jerry Steach, Carole Griggs, Muriel Sivyer-Lee, Maureen Blando, Leslie Friedman, Hala Alshahwany, Peter Spitzer, and Nancy Stuhr

For the Steering Committee of Livable Mountain View