Cupertino Matters
Did you know that Cupertino was incorporated 70 years ago on October 10, 1955? In celebration, Cupertino is holding its first-ever Restaurant Week In celebration from Monday, October 6 to Sunday, October 12. Local dining spots will offer exclusive promotions and specials. Participating restaurants will offer limited-time deals and dishes created especially for the occasion, with exclusive promotions. Support your local businesses – go to cupertino.gov/taste70 for the full list of participating restaurants and their specials
For many residents, the big news this week is Cupertino Whole Foods reopens after months-long rodent closure as covered by KRON4. In addition there was a very successful Bike Fest sponsored by the city on Saturday, with free helmets and activities for all ages, though the primary focus was school age children.
Mail-in ballots for the November 4 election will be posted out on October 6; in-person voting centers open October 7. Accordingly, the League of Women Voters of Cupertino-Sunnyvale will be holding an in-person (1) Candidate Forum for County Assessor, and (2) a Pros and Cons Discussion of the Santa Clara County Ballot Measures on Tuesday, October 7, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Quinlan Center, located at 10185 N. Stelling Road in Cupertino. Register here. It will be recorded for viewing at a later time, but not live-streamed.
Have you had difficulty getting timely responses from city staff? About 90% of staff time is generally programmed to be spent on operations and services to residents per the City Work Program. A city response to a Public Records Act (PRA) request reveals why–councilmembers, particularly Mayor Liang Chao, have usurped staff time for extensive, often intrusive, and personalized demands. PRA-195 provides a log of all councilmember email requests from January to July, 2025, totaling 3,524 emails to the city manager and other city staff, including the contract city attorney. Mayor Liang Chao is by far the biggest offender, with 66% of total emails, many of which tread deep into the realm of operational micromanagement at odds with the council-manager form of government.
Total emails Chao Moore Fruen Mohan Wang January 362 292 13 10 27 20 February 314 230 24 10 30 20 March 402 282 51 12 37 20 April 559 381 82 15 30 51 May 766 561 66 27 53 59 June 578 306 129 12 30 101 July 543 269 185 9 47 33 7 months 3,524 2,321 550 95 254 304 Percentage 66% 16% 3% 7% 9%
Why is this abuse important? A report by the city’s own internal auditor Moss Adams, Enterprise Leadership Assessment Report, specifically addresses abuse of email beginning bottom of pg.12, extending to pg. 13 (ppg. 14-15 in PDF format):
“In terms of communication, one of the most frequently cited ongoing challenges is related to email requests from Council members. As documented in the 2023 Internal Review and reported by interviewed staff, several Council members have continued the practice of sending a high volume of emails, averaging 50-70 initial emails per week, not counting any follow-up emails. This practice is ineffective for communication purposes, creates significant workload for staff, and is widely perceived to be an obstruction tactic. Council members at times request responses to questions posed by the public as if they were the Council members’ own. This pass-through of information requests without vetting creates work efforts where it may not be effective or even considered in the decision-making process.
The City’s Municipal Code provision § 2.17.043 clarifies that the City Manager may determine when individual council member requests are overly onerous (and thus should be directed to staff through a collective instruction from the entire City Council). The code states that the following guidelines should be considered when making this judgement:
- Is the request specific and limited in scope so that staff can respond without altering other priorities and with only minimal delay to other assignments?
- Is the request a “one time” work requirement, as opposed to an on-going work requirement?
- Does the response to a request require a significant allocation of staff resources (generally defined as consisting of more than one staff person, or a single staff person working on the request in excess of two hours)?
However, staff report that it has been challenging to exercise these guidelines in a practical, consistent, and productive way. Several interviewed staff noted that it has been extremely challenging to accomplish operational work given the number of staff hours required to respond to these requests, in addition to preparing staff reports and materials for regular Council meetings. As noted in the Meeting Cadence and Processes section, the City management team has expanded the practice of offering 1:1 preparation meetings to City Council members as an option for more efficient and direct communication.“
Given these options, why does Mayor Chao not set regular one-on-one meetings with the City Manager instead of bombarding her and staff with a deluge of demanding emails? This practice of “governance by email” was specifically called out in the Civil Grand Jury Report (pg. 7)and the follow-on Independent Investigator’s Fact Finding Report. (pg.14-15). Based on this PRA response, Councilmembers appear to have returned to the habit of intruding into the City Manager’s domain in violation of the Municipal Code.
For research, past issues back to January 2020 of Cupertino Matters are posted on the website. Encourage your friends who would like to become better informed about our community to subscribe to our email newsletter at CupertinoMatters.org.
RECAP – Planning Commission, Tues., Sept. 23 , 2025, 6:45 p.m., Regular meeting
YouTube: 1 hr. 22 min.
The sole agenda was Item No. 2: Presentation on the Arts & Culture Commission’s recommendation to the City Council on an Art-in-lieu fee policy. This should have been a pro forma review of a presentation of a thoughtfully developed recommendation brought before the Planning Commission solely because it involved changes in the Municipal Code tangential to project approvals. Regardless, the city council makes the final decision.
Instead, the Planning Commission spent over an hour, under the direction of Chair Santosh Rao, asserting the purported authority of the Planning Commission, denigrating the work of the Arts & Culture Commission, criticizing staff and implying they initiated the changes. Chair Rao ignored the Council Work Program item for this fiscal year to revisit the City’s Municipal Code standards for art in public and private development, including standards in the Municipal Code and developing an art‐in‐lieu fee policy.
The recommendations from the Arts & Culture Commission were:
- Allow the Arts & Culture Commission to approve the in-lieu payment option, collaborating with applicants to determine whether a project is located in an appropriate location or should consider an in-lieu payment. This issue is outside the scope of the Planning Commission’s charter and the City Council set the Arts & Culture Commission up to provide advice directly to Council on such subjects.
- Equalize both in-lieu payment and private development consistently at 1%, instead of the current 1.25% for in-lieu payments. This would encourage infill projects to pool the in-lieu payments for a larger piece in a higher traffic location where such art can have a greater, more widely felt impact. The current Municipal Code explicitly discourages in-lieu payments, resulting in difficult siting for art. This has had real-world consequences for expansion at The Forum at San Antonio, for instance, because the nonprofit/HOA couldn’t afford the additional assessment for in-lieu payment and its location (in the hills near Rancho San Antonio) far away from substantial traffic make new public art there much less meaningful.
- City Council would continue to be the decision-making body, upon recommendation by the Arts and Culture Commission, for the actual allocation of funds.
Instead of simply accepting the presentation, Chair Santosh Rao made the motion to ignore the recommendations of the Arts and Culture Commission. Approved 3-2 with Fung and Lindskog voting nay.
CUPERTINO COURIER: September 26, 2025
The front page photo and article on page 5 is entitled Facing a financial crisis: Town hall explores impact of ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ on Santa Clara County. Additional community briefs include (1) Education town hall, (2) Mid-autumn Festival at Cupertino Village, and (3) Land Survey. Page 8 is a previously published Mercury News article entitled Whole Foods cleared after rodent infestation. Page 10 is a previously published Mercury News article entitled RV parking faces new restrictions: New ordinance makes illegal all overnight stationing for oversized vehicles without proper permit. Legal notices include a Public Hearing for Municipal Code Amendments, previously approved by the Planning Commission, scheduled for city council on Oct. 7, 2025.
Warm regards,
Jean Bedord
Cupertino Matters
Publisher and Editor
