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

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Item 4.2 “Adoption of Legislative Platform for 2026.”

Livable Mountain View thanks council and staff for putting together these items, and supports their adoption at this council meeting.

In particular, we thank you for the inclusion of:

• Prohousing City flexibility (Regional and State Legislative Platform – C. 33 and C. 35)
• SB 70 (should be SB 79) Alternative Plan Timelines (Regional and State Legislative Platform – C. 42)

for which we advocated at the study session at the council meeting on February 10, 2026.

With regard to SB 79, we would also appreciate clarification from the state legislature on what is precisely meant by the term “substantial compliance” in the text of the bill.

Robert Cox, Louise Katz, Chuck Muir, Julie Muir, Nancy Stuhr, Maureen Blando, Leslie Freeman, David Lewis, Carol Lewis, Muriel Sivyer-Lee, Hala Alshahwany, Sean O’Malley, Jerry Steach, Nazanin Dashtara, and Peter Spitzer

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

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Item 7.1: R3 Zoning District Update – Development Standards and Strategies.

We support the staff recommendation for this item. We appreciate that these zoning changes and related items are necessary to meet the city’s obligations under current Housing Element. However, we urge the council NOT to go beyond what staff has recommended as that will add to our city’s already stressed traffic and parking situation.

Thank you for considering our view on this important topic.

Robert Cox, Louise Katz, Chuck Muir, Julie Muir, Nancy Stuhr, Maureen Blando, Leslie Freeman, David Lewis, Carol Lewis, Muriel Sivyer-Lee, Hala Alshahwany, Sean O’Malley, Jerry Steach, and Nazanin Dashtara

For the Steering Committee of Livable Mountain View

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

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Item 3.1 “Legislative Program Priorities for 2026.”

We appreciate that the city has prioritized many items for federal and state legislation that align with our city values, particularly of being a “Community for All.”

However, we recommend that the city prioritize lobbying for state legislation in areas which affect Mountain View most urgently.

In particular, we recommend that the city council:

1. Support the introduction of legislation to clear up and extend the timelines for SB79 local alternative plans. As we pointed out to the council and city staff in previous presentations, much of the language around when plans need to be submitted is not clearly spelled out in the text of SB79. Since the council has given direction to not start work on an SB79 local alternative plan until 2027, having clarity in this matter is of utmost importance.
2. Support legislation that would give cities like Mountain View that have a pro-housing designation more flexibility in determining where new housing will be built.  Mountain View is one of the few cities in Santa Clara County to receive this designation, which represents a willingness to build more housing within our city limits. If the state were willing to reciprocate by giving cities with this designation more local control over where the housing would be built, more city residents would support the state’s housing legislative agenda.

Thank you for considering our view on this important topic.

Robert Cox, Louise Katz, Chuck Muir, Julie Muir, Nancy Stuhr, Maureen Blando, Leslie Freeman, David Lewis, Carol Lewis, Muriel Sivyer-Lee, Hala Alshahwany, Sean O’Malley, Jerry Steach, and Nazanin Dashtara

For the Steering Committee of Livable Mountain View

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

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

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Item 6.1 “Historic Preservation Ordinance and Historic Register Update.”

We appreciate the years of effort staff and consultants Page and Turnbull have put forth to get us to this point. However, Senate Bill 79 (SB79) has altered how we must plan our city to fulfill density mandates and created conditions and deadlines for doing so which impact our historic downtown.

Urgent Need for Action. For Livable Mountain View and our city, the key urgent need is the establishment of a historic district including the downtown commercial retail district in and around the 100-300 blocks of Castro Street due to the SB79 mandate rezoning the area for 6-9 stories of housing by right unless we implement an SB79 local alternative plan to exempt our historic commercial retail district. This requires submission of a completed plan by the July 1, 2026 deadline which is when the law takes effect.  Getting a state-validated SB79 local alternative plan assures there is no loss of housing density potential provided by SB79. 

We are fortunate to have the ability to implement such a plan which requires only 10 percent of the downtown commercial retail district to be included in a historic district exemption.  We recommend that the density be transferred to the three transit-oriented development zones within Mountain View which are centered on the VTA Light Rail stations.

Why save the downtown commercial retail district (Area H and commercial parts of areas A, B, F, and G)?

Without an official historic district and instead saving only a few designated buildings based on age and architecture, under SB79, not only some buildings but also the visible history of Mountain View as a pioneer-founded city could be lost.

“The personality of any city is not just dependent on its great buildings and great places but is created by the total complex of large and small, important and minor, individual and the mass…Minor buildings, in the aggregate, create the major urban scene. They are the body of any city. The body is being rapidly carved up bit by bit and sometimes in whole chunks…History is dead in such a city just as though it never existed.”  (Carl Feiss, Our Lost Inheritance)

Our downtown commercial retail district is the historic core of our city. It stands almost exactly as it was set out in the 1860’s with the same continuous use and purpose. There is no other place in our small city that is like it. That unique history plays a big role in drawing locals and people from other cities to the downtown, generating business for local businesses and tax revenue for Mountain View.

We have the following comments with regard what is in the staff report regarding historic districts:

1. The key requirement for SB79 exemption is that the exemption area be added to the city’s local historic register. The city is granted discretion as to what sites it will add. State and federal guidelines for historic districts help inform regarding eligibility but are not requirements. Our city has the final say.

2. The staff report raises the issue of integrity of buildings and whether they appear significantly different from when originally built. Yet, a historic district is not a matter of a particular number or age of buildings, nor architecture. In a historic district some buildings contribute to the historic merit of the district and others do not.  And because history is ongoing, buildings need not be of a certain age to merit consideration.  There is no need to set a numerical limit to buildings contributing to historic merit or disqualify a district because it contains those that do not.

“A historic district is a formally designated group of buildings, structures, site and spaces that relate to one another historically, architecturally, and/or culturally.

A district can span part or all of a neighborhood. It can be large or small, can represent any architectural style(s), and can include streetscape and landscape elements.

Individual buildings within a district don’t need to be highly significant on their own. The area’s overall cohesiveness, uniqueness, and architectural integrity are what matters.“  See

“ https://www.smheritage.org/about-historic-districts#:~:text=What%20Are%20Historic%20Districts?,Designation%20by%20the%20city/municipality”

The National Park Service defines a historic district as a “significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of sites, buildings, structures, or objects, unified by past events or aesthetically by plan or physical developments.”  See https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/4781/Historic-Resources-and-Districts/FAQs

3. The staff report suggests that a percentage of property owners within the proposed historic district approve the nomination process. Not only is this NOT a requirement, due to the urgency of SB79 we believe this is too restrictive of an approach and is not supported by law. While we agree property owners should be able to nominate a historic district, by law individuals, citizen organizations and city officials including city council and staff can nominate one as well and move the process forward.  It should be noted that if owners object to property being nominated and deemed eligible for state and/or federal historic registers that means the property is not listed on the official registers and the owners cannot display an identifying plaque. But the buildings retain their eligible historic status. 

4. We also acknowledge the demands on staff to complete other projects that have been calendared prior to the exigency of SB 79. We ask council to provide staff direction on land use items on the council work plan that can be delayed six months so that urgent work on an SB79 local alternative plan can be completed on time.

Robert Cox, Louise Katz, Peter Spitzer, Leslie Friedman, Nazanin Dashtara, Maureen Blando, Muriel Sivyer-Lee, Nancy Stuhr, and Jerry Steach

For the Steering Committee of Livable Mountain View