It’s 2006.
A high tech mogul purchases and donates to the City of Palo Alto a four-acre plot of commercial land, specifying that it can only be used for affordable housing. The mogul’s husband, a big-time developer, offers to engineer, design and build this housing at cost.
City council members and planning commissioners are ecstatic because this will fulfill a longstanding community need. They unanimously approve needed zoning changes. State Sen. Joe Simitian rushes to the proposed site with a folding chair and holds office hours. Congresswoman Anna Eshoo seeks a federal law to amend. Assemblyman Ira Ruskin creates a blue-ribbon task force to study the feasibility of reviewing needed alterations of state regulations and laws.
The North of East of Wherever Neighborhood Association expands its boundaries over the proposed development and argues the city must preserve the character of the area, which is dominated by tilt-up concrete office buildings.
Three retired HP employees from Barron Park issue a 120-page analysis of who should be allowed to live in the development. It excludes city employees, who, based on news reports, all earn more than $100,000 annually. Fire fighters are banned because all of them have second jobs or side businesses. Police officers are scored on pending lawsuits and criminal charges, but most make it into the pool. Because of tenure and marital status (read that household income) few public school teachers make the cut.
Environmentalists check off because the land isn’t soaked with PCBs and such, but insist parking lots be striped to exclude SUVs.
The school board, stung by serial parcel tax defeats, demands that only people with no children or committed to a childless life, be eligible for residency. Otherwise, it contends, elementary schools will become overcrowded and will have to drop advanced placement genome analysis classes.
Then things cool off. Simitian gets cranky about poor turnout during his office hours. Eshoo gets bored and re-focuses on finding Homeland Security money for the Atherton Police Department. Ruskin holds meetings.
Beaten to a pulp by conflicting demands, the city manager, planning commissioners and city council members escape to an Easalen nude encounter session. Newly bonded, they return to set public hearings at which anyone can talk, but not more than once. They pay a consultant $200,000 to enforce the rule.
It’s 2012.
The developer bails out, angry that his commitment to the project prevented him from bidding on the fabulously profitable new hotel at Sand Hill Road and Interstate 280.
Eshoo retires to a fortified compound in Atherton. Simitian replaces her in Congress and vows to never again waste time sitting on a folding chair on a vacant lot. Ruskin is a state senator and remains willing to champion a coalition to build affordable housing - but only after a new study.
The school district finally gets its parcel tax, then declares that accounting errors caused it to underestimate actual revenue. It uses the windfall to extend advanced placement classes to kindergarten students.
The city council is entirely populated by former presidents of homeowner associations, all of whom ran on a pledge to maintain the character of their own neighborhoods. It deadlocks on building affordable housing because the proposed site lies within the boundaries of an association run by someone who is rude.
The tech mogul has used up all the tax benefits that came from the land donation. She buys the site from the city for pennies on the dollar and builds lavish new corporate headquarters. Her husband’s company gets the construction contract.
Which was the plan all along.
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