Cupertino Matters
- In the News
- UPCOMING – City Council, Thurs., Feb. 19, 2026, 5:30 Special; 6:45 Regular
- RECAP – Planning Commission, Tues., Feb. 10, 2026, 6:45 p.m.
I hope readers enjoyed the Presidents Day and Lunar New Year holidays. Both CUSD and FUHSD schools are closed the entire week for their mid-year recess.
Progress on The Rise (Vallco) is in the news with an announcement of the first phase of housing, according to a press release Promise Kept: First Homes at The Rise to Be Affordable – February 2026 in partnership with Eden Housing, a well respected affordable housing developer. A construction permit application has been submitted for The Rise’s first building, which will be 100% dedicated to deed-restricted affordable housing. With this milestone, 232 affordable homes—half of them family-sized two- and three-bedroom units—are expected to begin construction before the end of this year. The homes will be located in Town Square West and integrated with planned public parks and community amenities. A Cupertino Today covered the matter in Sand Hill and Eden Housing will deliver 232 affordable homes at The Rise.
Another positive note is an art installation at the Cupertino library highlighted in The Construction Specifier, Library’s donor wall turns gratitude into art, as additional art is added to our civic buildings.
Wrapping up the final legal steps for the Mary Avenue Villas project continues to drag on. This 40 unit low-income housing development was approved at the February 3, 2026, city council meeting, so the Planning Commission agenda item should have been a brief pro forma approval of findings of consistency with the General Plan as fully vetted by planning and legal. Instead, Commissioner Santosh Rao dominated the discussion for over an hour, numerous times repeating the same questions in different verbiage, and demonstrating a refusal to accept the narrow factual and legal question before the Commission. Projects must be broadly consistent with the General Plan and its policies, like the Housing Element. They need not be consistent with every policy in the General Plan. Here, the project and the parcel in question are explicitly called out in the Housing Element. Newly-elected Chair Tracy Kosolcharoen’s comments displayed a similar failure of understanding. The other commissioners (Fung and Lindskog) as well as Vice-Chair Scharf were very brief, and voted to approve the item on a 3-2 vote, with Rao and Kosolcharoen voting nay. Rao and Kosolcharoen’s votes are not legally defensible and raise serious questions about the nature of their service.
Ensuring that Commissioners have adequate training to perform their function for the city is critical as revisions to city planning documents continue. The State requires cities to update Safety Elements upon the revision of the Housing Element or Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, both of which were recently updated. The Health and Safety Element of the General Plan: Community Vision for 2015-2040, was last amended in 2005, with minor edits in 2015. The Element identifies natural hazards and outlines policies to protect the community from earthquakes, flooding, wildfires, extreme heat, hazardous materials, and other climate-related risks. The update reflects current science and includes strategies to strengthen community resilience, emergency preparedness, and climate adaptation. The public review period is now through Friday, Mar. 13 at Health and Safety Element Update.
UPCOMING – City Council, Thurs., Feb.19, 5:30 p.m., Special Meeting; 6:45 Regular Meeting, Council Chamber, and Teleconference Location Omni Barton Creek Hotel, 8212 Barton Club Dr., Austin, Texas 78735 (Moved for the holidays).
Special Meeting
Item No. 1: Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office Contract Renewal. The city does not have its own police department. Instead, it contracts with the County of Santa Clara for the sheriff’s services. This contract is up for renewal for Fiscal Year 2026-27. The city was expecting an approximately 5% increase, which would be normal. Rather than the expected 5% increase, the proposed contract is for a 36% increase based on changes in cost recovery from the county, which is financially strapped. This presentation will explain the services provided and calculation of cost increases.
In response, according to the City Manager’s Feb. 12, 2026, Newsletter, Local Cities Form Committee to Negotiate County Sheriff’s Contract. Earlier this year, the City of Cupertino, together with Saratoga and Los Altos Hills, formed an ad hoc committee to address negotiations surrounding the County Sheriff’s contract. All three cities independently contract with the Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement services. For Cupertino, the proposed 36% increase in contract costs represents a disproportionate rise—far exceeding both historical trends and the expected 5–20% range. All three cities deeply value the service and partnership of law enforcement and remain committed to ensuring a fair, transparent, and fiscally responsible contract moving forward.
Regular Meeting
There are no Ceremonial Items. Oral Communications from the public on off-agenda items precede the Consent Calendar, which contains five routine items.
Item No. 6: Consider (1) adopting Resolution No. 26-022 to repeal and replace Resolution No. 23-026 regarding the Legislative Review Committee (LRC), (2) adopting the 2026 Legislative Platform, and (3), amending the 2026 Council Committee Assignments to designate Vice Mayor Liang Chao and Councilmember R “Ray” Wang to the LRC, with Mayor Kitty Moore as an alternate. The LRC was resurrected by the current council majority. These modifications would authorize the committee to support legislative measures without the approval of council, provided that a bill fits within a broad scope. It’s a costly committee to maintain with little accountability for effectiveness.
Item No. 7: Consider Potential November 2026 Revenue Ballot Measure. The city has a structural deficit plus increased sheriff’s costs, so the council is considering options to increase city revenue: (1) Transaction and Use Tax (TUT) increase, (2) Business License Tax, (3) Vacancy Tax, (4) Parcel Tax, and (5) Utility Users Tax (UUT). Each of these would require a ballot measure with an estimated cost of $300,000, plus campaign costs. There is no guarantee any of these taxes would pass. Among them, the Utility Users Tax already exists and is set to sunset in a few years and contribute to the structural deficit in outlying years. Renewals of existing taxes such as this are generally more likely to pass.
Item No. 8: Parkland Ballot Measure – Mapping, Zoning, Legal Review, and Election Considerations. This measure has questionable benefits for Cupertino. There are already extensive protections in place to preserve parkland, so is an additional layer of protection needed? Any ballot measure incurs costs, here projected at at least $150,000.
Item No. 9: An update on the development of the Active Transportation Plan, including a summary of Phase 2, explanations of plan edits, revised scoring criteria, and next steps. The council is being asked to provide feedback on this plan, which was reviewed by the Planning Commission (and subsequently by the Bicycle Pedestrian Commission just last night). This is a new, comprehensive Active Transportation Plan (ATP), which combines recommended projects from the 2016 Bicycle Transportation Plan and the 2018 Pedestrian Transportation Plan to meet evolving community needs. This unified, citywide plan will align bicycle and pedestrian initiatives while accounting for the needs of drivers of motorized vehicles. This coordinated approach ensures consistency across policies and projects, avoids duplication, and addresses overlapping concerns. The City Council approved the FY 24/25 City Work Program on April 3, 2024, with the ATP included as an approved project. City staff then identified Transportation Development Act Article 3 (TDA3) funds as an external funding source to wholly fund the Plan’s development. On December 3, 2024, the City Council authorized the City Manager to award a contract to Alta Planning + Design, Inc., for development of an ATP. The plan has remained funded throughout the 2025-2026 budget process.
Item No.10: City Manager Report, (now submitted in written form).
Item No. 11: Council Reports (now submitted in written form) are provided by Mayor Moore, Councilmembers Fruen and Mohan. Vice Mayor Chao and Councilmember Wang did not submit reports.
Item No. 12 :Upcoming Draft Agenda Items Report
RECAP – Planning Commission, Tues., Feb. 10, 2026 2025, 6:45 p.m., Regular Meeting
YouTube: 3 hr. 17 min.
Agenda and Presentations
Item No. 1: Election of Planning Commission Chair and Vice Chair and make the following appointments to other Commission and Committees: a Housing Commission Non-Voting Representative and an Economic Development Committee Representative. Tracy Kosolcharoen was elected Chair, and Steven Scharf was elected Vice Chair. Steven Scharf continues as a non-voting representative to the Housing Commission. Tracy Kosolcharoen continues as representative to the Economic Development Committee.
Item No. 2: Approval of the December 9, 2025 Planning Commission Minutes. The Commission approved 5-0.
Item No. 3: 2026 Planning Commission meeting schedule. After discussion, the commission voted 3-2 with Vice Chair Scharf and Commissioner Rao voting nay to follow the council calendar cancelling meetings during August, Thanksgiving, and Christmas meetings.
Item No. 4: Review of the proposed Mary Avenue public right-of-way vacation and determination of the location, purpose, and extent of property disposition for consistency with the General Plan. Since this project for a 40 unit low income housing development was approved at the February 3, 2026, city council meeting, the consistency with the General Plan was already established by legal and planning staff so this should have been a straight forward approval. Instead, Commissioner Rao dominated the overly long discussion with a series of irrelevant questions with newly elected chair Kosolcharoen failing to control the meeting. The Commission approved 3-2 with Kosolcharoen and Rao voting nay.
Item No. 5: An update on the development of the Active Transportation Plan, including a summary of Phase 2, explanations of plan edits, revised scoring criteria, and next steps. In contrast to the previous agenda item, the commission spent only 21 minutes providing feedback on this important plan to align bicycle and pedestrian initiatives while accounting for the needs of drivers of motorized vehicles. Commissioners familiar with the evolution of the plan over the last two years, suggested adjustments in the weighting factors to surface particularly problematic intersections. Commissioner Rao expressed his opposition by stating that the staff should ignore public input and start over since public input is heavily biased. No vote was taken since this was not an action item.
CUPERTINO COURIER: February 13, 2026
The front page photo and community brief on page 5 is entitled Cooking for a cause: Tickets are on sale for the 15th Chefs of Compassion. Page 5 is a previously published Mercury News article entitled Housing project for disabled OK’d: It would offer 40 affordable units but also would remove 89-95 parking spaces. Additional community briefs on page 5 are (1) ‘Unlikely’ Book Talk and (2) Grand Jury. Legal notices are (1) Public hearing for a Summerhill Homes project at 10857, 10867, 10877 and 10867 Linda Vista Drive scheduled for the Feb. 24, 2026 Planning Commission meeting, and (2) Public hearing, Vacation of a portion of right of way located along the westerly edge of Mary Avenue scheduled for the March 3, 2026, City Council meeting.
Warm regards,
Jean Bedord
Cupertino Matters
Publisher and Editor
