Cupertino Matters
- UPCOMING – State of City Address, Wed., Feb. 26, 2025
- UPCOMING – City Council , Mon., Mar. 3, 2025
- UPCOMING – Planning Commission, Tues., Feb. 25, 2025
- RECAP – City Council, Wed., Feb. 19, 2025, 6:45 p.m.
The major city event this week is Mayor Liang Chao’s State of the City address, on Wednesday, Feb. 26 at Quinlan Community Center, 10185 North Stelling Road. There will be a reception at 6:30 p.m. followed by the address at 7:00 p.m. Admission is free, and everyone is welcome. More information and courtesy registration available at cupertino.gov/stateofthecity. For readers unable to attend in person, the event will be available at www.Cupertino.org/youtube and www.Cupertino.org/webcast. The event is not being televised this year. This year’s event makes no use of volunteer or partnership assistance from the Chamber of Commerce or Cupertino Rotary.
Dysfunction at the city council level has returned. Council spent nearly 2 hours hashing over an authorization to proceed with a previously approved initiative to solicit vendor responses to replace the current outdated enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system, which exposes the city to cybersecurity risks. An already excellent needs assessment had been completed; this should have been a straight forward approval to reduce exposure and improve city processes that are currently siloed. The matter was further complicated by Councilmember Wang’s remote appearance from India–he lost his connection early in the item’s consideration forcing the entire meeting to come to a halt under the Brown Act. This is Councilmember Wang’s third remote appearance on account of personal travel. He was absent from the January meeting entirely on account of personal travel.
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UPCOMING – CITY COUNCIL, Mon., Mar. 3, 5:00 p.m., Special Meeting (Council Goals and Work Program)
Item No. 1 FY 2025-2027 City Work Program Prioritization and Goal Setting Workshop. Approximately 10% of city staff time is available for council-initiated work projects; 90% of their time is the day-to-day business of running the city and providing resident services. This means the council has to prioritize and limit the number of council specific projects. Readers are urged to look at the list of projects and provide feedback to council on resident priorities. How important is business revitalization? City hall seismic safety issues? A working group to address senior housing, transportation, medical facilities? Reviving the Leadership Academy? Current work projects can be viewed on this dashboard.
UPCOMING – Planning Commission, Tues. Feb. 25; 6:45 p.m., Regular Meeting
Other than approval of previous meeting minutes, the sole item on the agenda is Item No. 2: 2024 General Plan Report. The city is required by state law to provide an annual report by April 1 of each year, to the City Council regarding the status of the General Plan and progress in its implementation, including meeting its share of regional housing needs, and local efforts to remove governmental constraints to the maintenance, improvement, and development of housing. This report must also be sent to the California Office of Planning and Research and Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). This year’s 89-page report modifications relate primarily to adoption of the Housing Element and current work on Objective Design Standards, as well as other updates to strategies, including completed projects.
The major challenge for the Planning Department in 2024 was adoption and state certification of the Housing Element while managing ongoing work for residents. Staff responded to over 1,470 public counter inquiries in person, over 124 virtual appointments inquiries and over 1,320 email inquiries from members of the public.
RECAP – CITY COUNCIL, Wed., Feb. 19, 6:45 p.m., Special Meeting (due to Presidents’ Day holiday)
YouTube: 3 hr. 59 min.
Agenda and Presentations
As previously noticed, Councilmember Wang participated from India and complications with his connection forced the meeting to stop temporarily during the consideration of Item 10. Mayor Chao participated remotely due to a contagious illness. Vice Mayor Kitty Moore presided.
Closed Session Report for Feb. 12: City attorney Chris Jensen reported that council authorized a subcommittee composed of Vice Mayor Moore and Councilmember Fruen to negotiate a contract for the interim city attorney with firm Aleshire and Wynder on split 3-2 vote, with Mohan and Fruen voting nay.
Item No. 9: Zoning Map Amendment to correct zoning for Priority Housing Site No. 24 in the 6th Cycle Housing Element (Application No.(s): Z-2024-001, EA-2024-001; Applicant: City of Cupertino; APN: 359 13 019; Location: 20865 McClellan Road) Despite grandstanding by Councilmember Wang in opposition to the public process for the Housing Element site inventory–a process during which he proposed authorizing townhouse level density across all of Cupertino west of De Anza Boulevard–the rest of the council acknowledged that failure to approve this correction would expose the city to serious litigation risk. Council approved 4-1 with Wang voting nay.
Item No. 10: Tyler New World Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) replacement (Continued from February 4, 2025 City Council meeting). Councilmember Ray Wang’s remote connection failed, forcing the meeting to come to a halt during the staff presentation and council questions. Funding for the RFP and vendor selection process was previously approved, but paused due to budget uncertainties related to the CDTFA audit of city sales tax revenues. However, the city is currently operating on legacy software, Tyler New World, which is in maintenance mode, with no enhancements. Vendor resources are directed toward the next generation product, Tyler Enterprise, rather than the older product which lacks adequate data security and system integration. Implementing ERP systems is expensive, and requires backfilling to keep the current systems running the business while new software is implemented. Council generally agreed on the need for the ERP replacement but dithered on allocating an adequate budget to encourage a broader vendor response. The final motion was to approve the staff recommendation, but reduce the budget modification to $2.5 million from $3.7 million with council check-ins during the process. Council ultimately approved 4-1 with Mohan voting nay, noting her dissatisfaction with the reduction.
Item No. 11: Amendments to the Cupertino City Council Procedures Manual. This item was continued to a future meeting due to lack of time.
Item No. 12: Appointment of Floy Andrews as City Attorney and approval of contract for City Attorney legal services with Aleshire & Wynder, LLP. Since City Attorney Chris Jensen’s last day was set at Feb. 22, this appointment needed timely approval. Councilmembers Fruen and Mohan explained their nay votes from the closed session and expressed concerns over the firm’s prior work for the city, especially the nearly half a million dollars in expenses accrued over a little over a year’s worth of service on discrete legal issues while the city still had separate city attorney services. Council then approved the contract previously authorized for negotiation.
CUPERTINO COURIER: February 21 2025
The front page picture and community brief on page 5 is entitled ’Gadgets Galore!’; Exhibit explores home life via evolution of household tools. This is a new exhibit at the Cupertino Historical Society and Museum in Quinlan Community Center. An additional community brief on page 5 is entitled A brainy idea about Cupertino High School winners in a national STEM competition. There are no legal notices.
Warm regards,
Jean Bedord
Cupertino Matters
Publisher and Editor
