Portola Valley is in a pickle.
For years the state encouraged cities to provide affordable housing. The Portola Valley Town Council on which we served, like the councils before us, made good faith efforts to take modest actions within our strong design and planning guidelines, dictated by our general plan, but the residents shot down every project.
We weren’t alone; few cities came through to address the ever worsening housing and homeless crisis, particularly after redevelopment funds were discontinued under former Gov. Jerry Brown. Facing a catastrophe of epic proportions, the state had no choice but to act. Hence the exponentially increased Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) numbers for every jurisdiction in the state, enhanced penalties for cities that do not comply, the creation of a new state department to enforce the mandate, and dozens of new housing laws making it easier to build.
Final housing elements were due at the state Department of Housing and Community Development by Jan. 31, to be reviewed and either certified or sent back for changes. When the Town Council did not adopt our element by the deadline, they created a timeline to approve it by March 31.
At the March 29 council meeting, after more than 140 hours of public meetings leveraging the input of hundreds of community volunteers, including a 15-member Ad Hoc Housing Element Committee, the fire department and geological and wildfire experts, an expenditure to date of over $500,000 in public tax dollars and a staggering number of town staff hours, the three new council members pulled a dark rabbit out of the hat at 12:30 a.m.
They declared that they could not support the housing element, objecting to the inclusion of Glen Oaks on the site plan. Glen Oaks has been on the plan for eight months, a fact they could not have missed given the many meetings since they were elected that featured the housing element. Never once in those meetings did the council members who opposed the approval — Judith Hasko, Mary Hufty and Craig Taylor — object to Glen Oaks. Consequently, Portola Valley does not have a compliant housing element and under the builder’s remedy, a developer can exceed our density limits if 20% of the units are designated as low-income housing.
One of the hardest parts of serving on a city council is making unpopular decisions, particularly in a small town where you cannot escape running into unhappy constituents at the market, the library, the schools or on trails. We sympathize with the newest council members, especially since they were supported by the very people who encourage them to delay this critical vote. But this is what they signed up for, and there is no hiding from taking unpopular votes.
Developing a housing element is a daunting, contentious process. Portola Valley has been blessed with a dedicated and talented staff who have successfully navigated the complexities and produced, with the help of the Ad Hoc Housing Element Committee, a draft housing element widely recognized as one of the best in the county, meeting the demands of the state while maintaining critical elements of local control.
Besides wasting tax dollars and time by pushing back blindly against the new state mandates, we risk losing additional staff members. Already our town manager and town clerk have resigned, preceded by the resignation of the assistant town manager. Under constant attack from a small coterie of disaffected residents and an impossible workload, several others are likely to follow suit.
There is still time to fix this. Portola Valley has almost 60 years of history showing that we know how to accommodate change within our guidelines while cooperating with the state, resulting in hundreds of homes developed since incorporation in 1964. To the new council members, please, do what you were elected to do: approve the housing element and send it to the state before we hemorrhage more staff members and face the prospect of a big fat builder’s remedy project. As former Congresswoman Jackie Speier always said, “If you aren’t making half of the people unhappy, if they aren’t calling you names, you aren’t doing your job.”
Please do your job. Free the housing element.
John Richards and Maryann Moise Derwin are both former Portola Valley Town Council members and served a term a mayor.
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