January 2026

Mayor Ramos, Vice Mayor Clark, and Members of the City Council,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Item 3.1: Senate Bill 79 and Assembly Bill 130 – Impact on Development Review Process and Operations.

Livable Mountain View has been a consistent advocate for an SB79 Local Alternative Plan with the goal of preserving our downtown historic commercial district H and historic buildings in district A which are eligible for the national and California historic registers. We therefore support Approach C, which includes such an alternative plan. While the items in Approach A and B are a useful and helpful part of the work the city should engage in with respect to SB79, only Approach C has the potential to keep the historic core of our city whole.

We also support delaying work on non-urgent long-range planning items Dark Sky Ordinance, Citywide Objective Design Standards, Downtown Precise Plan Update, and Moffett Boulevard Precise Plan as none have the urgency of the SB79 deadline.

Beyond this, we would like to urge staff to prioritize the work essential to providing a completed local alternative plan before SB79 becomes law on July 1, 2026.

By providing detailed maps of the transit-oriented development zones, staff has already made significant progress toward the goal of an SB79 local alternative plan with the goal of preserving our downtown historic commercial district and adjacent historic buildings. But staff estimates that Approach C could take up to 18 months to complete. The staff report cites “technical and environmental review work” as the basis for its estimate, but does not provide details as to why items in this and other approaches should take this long.

The key steps needed to create an SB79 local alternative plan are to identity the historic area to be preserved, place it on the local historic register, determine that it is no more that 10 percent of the transit-oriented development zone in which it resides, and locate an area to which the density can be transferred. It is reasonable to expect this work can be completed n no more than a few months.

In our letter to council and staff, which is Attachment 5 to the staff report, we note that the historic area which we have identified is less than three percent of its transit-oriented development zone and that the corresponding density could be transferred transit-oriented development zones within the East Whisman Precise Plan with no additional upzoning.  If it would help speed up the process, we can provide our calculations. We believe that staff should be able to forego a CEQA analysis as the purpose of an SB79 alternative plan is to not change a particular area of our city and that no upzoning will be needed elsewhere to accomplish this goal. Staff can also, as it has done in the past, enlist the help of consultants to meet its goals.

Furthermore, as we stated in our letter in Attachment 5, we believe that even councilmembers who prefer to see some redevelopment of district H should be in favor of submitting an SB79 local alternative plan, because it preserves council decision-making over the preservation area. Council could redevelop parcels in a way that preserves key aspects of the Downtown Precise Plan, including the requirement of ground-floor customer-facing uses. By doing such redevelopment as gatekeeper projects, the council would be able to require community benefits.

SB79’s statutory deadlines put enormous pressure on the city council and staff to act quickly to submit a plan that will preserve the character and vitality of our commercial district.

Thank you for considering our views on this important topic. Once again, we urge your support of Approach C and carry through with it in a timely manner.

Robert Cox, Louise Katz, Hala Alshahwany, Nazanin Dashtara, Maureen Blando, Leslie Friedman, David Lewis, Carol Lewis, Peter Spitzer, Muriel Sivyer-Lee, and Jerry Steach

For the Steering Committee of Livable Mountain View

Mayor Ramos, Vice Mayor Clark, members of the Mountain View City Council and City Planning Staff,

First, let us congratulate Mayor Ramos and Vice Mayor Clark on their election to the offices of mayor and vice-mayor last Tuesday.

As we have continued our efforts to understand the content and ramifications of SB79 this letter provides some additional information and comments.  We are providing this in advance of the upcoming staff report for the council study session scheduled for Tuesday, January 27, 2026, during which there will be options for an SB79 local alternative plan for the council to review.

(1) Although SB79 allows a local alternative plan to designate 10% of a transit-oriented development zone as eligible for a historic exception, the area that we are asking is less than 3% of the downtown Caltrain transit-oriented development zone.  This means that more than 97% of the downtown Caltrain transit-oriented development would be available for 6-9 story buildings provided by the SB79 default regulations. 

(2) If we transfer the density to the East Whisman Precise Plan in the Light Rail Station transit-oriented development zones, no city upzoning of the precise plan area will be needed. This is because the East Whisman Precise Plan already contains zoning for 6-9 story buildings. As was said often in the SB79 hearings, “cities get credit for the upzoning that they have already done”. By our measurements, there is enough capacity in just the area south of Middlefield Road between North Whisman Road and SR 237 to accommodate the SB79 zoning transfer to preserve the downtown commercial retail district. This area contains no neighborhood with single-family or duplex buildings \hat would be impacted by having high-density residential built nearby.

(3) Finally, there are good reasons for councilmembers, even those who want some projects to proceed within our proposed historic district, to support an SB79 local alternative plan.  With an SB79 local alternative plan in place, the COUNCIL can (a) make the decision about whether to take such projects as GATEKEEPER projects and thereby get community benefits, and (b) retain existing zoning and rules that require ground-floor retail and height transitions to historic buildings. These benefits of the existing zoning will be lost without an SB79 local alternative plan as will the ability of our elected representatives to exercise local control. 

Thanks in advance for considering this additional information.

As always, if there is anything we have written that requires clarification, please reach out to us. We will be happy to answer questions before the upcoming study session.

Robert Cox, Louise Katz, Leslie Friedman, Nancy Stuhr, Maureen Blando, Peter Spitzer, Muriel Sivyer-Lee, Lorrie Wormald, Hala Alshahwany, Chuck Muir, Julie Muir

For the Steering Committee of Livable Mountain View