Google's demands of the City Council read as if Google is in charge of the City and that the Council is just another one of their departments! They gave the Council a deadline of May 1 to respond to Google's request for a checklist to be filled out in order to even be considered for this project.
Google also expects the City to turn over restricted utility information, fast-track the process, issue a single permit for the entire project, and respond to Google's permit request withing 10 days!
In exchange, Google will NOT provide information about how they intend to notify residents of changes, they have not informed the City about where the conduits will be installed and wants the City to agree to a 20 year lease to place the conduits before the sites have been selected(this will all be done AFTER the project has been approved)!
There also has not even been an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) done yet, but I suppose that will be done after the project has been approved also!
I am no fan of Comcast and on paper the Google proposal sounds good, but it reminds me of HSR (High Speed Rail) where we will get to see all the ugly little and not so little negative impacts only after all the wheels have been set in motion.
I also have to wonder, what's the big hurry? Google wants everything to be in place before the end of the year, which coincidentally happens to be before four new Council Members will be in place.
I read about what happened in Kansas City when they put this project through, lots of trees were reduced to stumps and they punctured a gas line resulting in people having to evacuate from their homes!
I have worked in the high tech industry for over 30 years and I know that whenever a new technology comes along, it is never perfect the first time through. I think it would make more sense to wait and see how it goes in other cities and benefit from lessons learned rather than being an early adopter of bleeding edge tech and suffering all the hiccups that are guaranteed to arise, not to mention the disruptions caused by the hundreds or thousands of not so little boxes, road construction, and tree cutting that will occur all over Mountain View.
The VTA is cutting trees for BRT Lanes, Caltrain will likely cut a few hundred for electrification, and no one knows how many will be butchered for Google's project! The Council always talks about how badly they want a tree canopy around the city, but after all this maybe we can rename the city "Stumpsville".
On the plus side, Google has promised the city 5% of gross revenues from the project so maybe that will make up for all the inconveniences that the residents will suffer. Follow the money.
Jim Neal
Candidate, Mountain View City Council
http://electneal.org
info@electneal.org
