So, in total we'll have 25,000 (give or take) additional housing units added to Mountain View over the next 10 years? Am I reading this correctly? With an average of 2 people per unit, that's at least 50,000 new MV residents? This is insane. Absolutely insane. I'm in favor of new housing, but this is off the charts nuts. I have no idea what our council is thinking agreeing to all of this. There is NO WAY services can keep up with population growth of this magnitude. Mountain View residents current and future, your city council has screwed you over big time. Get used to a much lower quality of life in more ways than you can count, and likely at a higher cost to boot.

During the years after the 60's the area had an overly anti growth policy. Now in a flash the same people who fought growth like it was evil want to turn suburban cities into San Francisco. And the voters docilely follow along.

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Future housing in North Bayshore isn't intended to look like traditional suburban life, nor should future schools seek traditional setups.

As suggested by the city reports, the school district should explore microschools that can be deployed incrementally along with demand. No developer can donate land for a full traditional school, but donated space within in their buildings for microschools is doable.

The traditional model of 450 student K-8 schools leaves the K-8 district with an expensive all-up-front option that risks being both underenrolled and overly expensive.

There's also innovative possibilities within existing district properties. The Whisman education campus is directly on the Stevens Creek Trail, not hard to reach by North Bayshore. There is enough land there to build a future international campus that partners with the existing German and Chinese school tenants (who are an invaluable source of district revenue, and also a potential future instructional partner in expanding 21st-century global learning into public schools).

Just the property taxes for these new units alone should be more than enough to pay for schools to be built there. Did the counsel not negotiate with developers to pay for infrastructure type of stuff?

No. The developers will not be paying for new schools, nor infrastructure. They will be contributing a relative pittance towards the huge sums that will be required to purchase land and construct schools (four or five of them). And there are ongoing costs of teacher salaries and overhead that have to be considered as well. Then we have strained city services deal with, including police and fire protection, water, park space, libraries. Roads? Haaahaha. Good luck with that one. Mountain View is projected to experience 85% population growth, compared to today's population, by 2024. Do the math, and ask yourself if what is coming is what you want to be a part of, because it's coming regardless.

I hedged my bets a few years ago a purchased some property just over the state line. It was a good bet.

@Focus

And those new property owners will be paying the lion's share of the property taxes to fund those infrastructure improvements.

1. New property owners pay near zero to the schools, thanks to the Shoreline special district that eats most of the property tax revenue.

2. I'll send my kids to a "microschools" right after you do... that will be never. All kids deserve a good education and a REAL school, not a "microschool".

Another element to consider is that North Bayshore is currently zoned for Monta Loma (a wonderful school that is under enrolled), and Theuerkauf isn't that far away (another wonderful school that is under enrolled). The district already offers North Bayshore school bus service to Monta Loma.

Growing demand for schools need to be anticipated, but some in our community use the need for a new North Bayshore traditional school is a "brake" on housing growth, no different from past concerns that cats were a cause to stop housing in North Bayshore.

Lets plan for school growth, but lets not restrict new housing before the ink is even dry. It will be hard to predict how many children North Bayshore housing will add. Look at how few schools exist in Downtown/NW Portland, who knows what type of housing will commercial development actually create (these housing plans are not on public land). Certainly, in-filling nearby existing schools can be a start, adding other innovative measures like a new campus on the existing Whisman campus and microschools for families that seek those can also be incrementally added.

When people say, make sure there's a new traditional (450 student spec) school in North Bayshore, it can be too easily used as an anti-housing growth strategy.

@ YIMBY

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As others have stated, it isn't just schools. 50,000 more people will need a new library, post office fire station, police station, community center, lots of parks since presumably most of these residents won't have backyards, and some type of transportation of which no one has any great ideas. It is irresponsible to propose something of this magnitude to happen so quickly in Mountain View, especially when other high job producing cities like Palo Alto are doing NOTHING to help.

To Chris and NIMBY - Just because people raise concerns about adding 50,000 people to Mountain View in a short period of time doesn't make them anti-growth. I agree more housing should have been built up and down the Peninsula much sooner (not just in Mountain View). But it wasn't, and recklessly swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction, cramming in a bunch of housing all at once with little thought given to how the people will live isn't the right answer either. Mountain View residents have a right to be concerned. That doesn't make them "anti-growth".

Another example of why new housing construction should halt. Until adequate resources can be identified, all of us suffer. We have had additional spare the air days, there is not enough water to sustain those of us already here, horrendous traffic is an absolute nightmare as is the lack of parking. There is not enough space in the landfill for garbage that is generated by us even while recycling.
The more you build, the less space each of us can enjoy. Tenements now exist where a single family home once was.
Office buildings cause the sun to set an hour earlier and the lights shine into our homes at night. The list of things that diminish our quality of life goes on.
We are at or near the saturation point.
And there is no economy of scale with taxes on new construction. Everyone's taxes go up every year with no commensurate benefit.

@Robyn

Renters and aspiring property owners shouldn't have to suffer high housing costs just because you don't want to have tall buildings.

I prefer not to live in a sardine can surrounded by other packed sardine cans, aka small condos/apartments with a 6ft cement backyard stacked on top of each other, with no privacy and views of other occupants of similar glass cages.
I am not opposed to helping people improve as long as they do not bring us all down. That is what is happening. We are being dragged down to the lesser expectations of people who are accustomed to a lower quality of life.
I will fight to maintain a comfortable quality of life.
High density offices and tenements should be in concentrated areas and leave the established single family homes alone. Those who have lived here for decades and paid their taxes and government fees deserve the peace and quiet they have created. Denigrating their contributions accomplishes nothing.
Renters and aspiring property owners can live elsewhere. Do not bring us all down.

You're the one bringing everyone else down. You've paid subsidized property taxes for however long, which don't reflect the actual price of the property you own and which has been kept artificially scarce. It's upon the backs of everyone else that you're going to maintain your suburbia, because we're the ones who are going to have to pay the cost for it.

A wonderful school that is under enrolled is an oxymoron, at least in the MV context.
People will not magically want to attend ML or TH or Castro until their typical population moves elsewhere. This is why we need to end the crazy grandfathering and check people’s residency papers every year, and check whether they actually reside where they say they do.
It is mind boggling how a city with one of the highest costs of living in the country cannot have good schools. People pay for housing and then also for private school!

YIMBY who exactly is this “we” you’re referring to? And explain exactly what it is this “we” is ‘having’ to pay for?

Renters and anyone who might want the opportunity to own property in the Bay Area someday, mvresident. Those of us who actually have to pay the monetary cost of home owner groups fighting to keep high-density housing from happening.

Buying land for elementary schools is not needed. There are 2 schools at Theuerkauf/Stevenson site. Soon there will be 2 schools at the Slater site (new Slater and one leased out to Google). There is the Whisman school on Easy Street currently leased out to 2 private schools. So on these 2 sites including one set to open next year, that's a total of space for 4 new elementary schools, already lined up. Then, there's another elementary site at Cooper Park--10 acres currently only used as park expansion (6 acre park nextdoor) and leased space to a private preschool. So, there you go, sites for 2 more public elementary schools.

"You're the one bringing everyone else down. You've paid subsidized property taxes for however long," Wrong!!!

When the older folks paid for their homes they paid the same rate as those purchasing a home today. How much more fairer can it get? The rate back then is the same as now, which is 1% of cost and 2%/yr increases, thanks to prop 13 locking these rates in. You have to remember people back then did not have to the luxury of the salaries people make today, whereby there savings are not worth as much as it was back then. These are the older folks you hate so much. I guess your hate blinds your ability to reason. Before prop 13 people were losing their homes because they could not pay, that was one of the reasons for Prop 13. Because of Prop 13 people could finally calculate how much their taxes will be without worrying of massive increases.

The silicon valley is no longer a middle class destination. SV is the brains of the computer industry, and being such, these industries have moved their middle classnon essential worker to other states. Leaving upper management here, the ones that can afford these high prices. If you can afford a 3 million dollar house, then I don't thing property taxes will be much of an issue.

Cheers

Oh hey, it's that old trope of Prop 13 keeping Grandma in her home. Except that Prop 13 applied to everyone, not just Grandma, and that means it completely removed home owners from the effects of increasing housing costs and practically incentives them to support restricting supply in order to raise their own property values from the resulting scarcity. Now renters and anyone trying to buy a house now are the ones who suffer the results since entrenched home owner groups who don't feel the impacts of the housing crisis are the first to scream "character of the neighborhood!" when someone wants to build dense multi-family housing somewhere instead of yet another detached single-family home.

If you wanted to just keep Grandma in her home you could have accomplished that with a financial hardship tax deferment.

I believe that Robyn (and others), having bought and paid a very specific commodity (the character that she refers to), have the right to dictate what they do and don’t want their community to be. They have a vested interest and again, PAID FOR, a very specific commodity.

Moderator, care to explain what happened to the rest of the discussion thread? This "censoring" of discussion is scarily 'communistic'.

I'm sorry, mvresident2003, but unless you can point to something on your deed listing that "very specific commodity," you did not, in fact, buy "character." What you actually bought was just your tiny plot of land and the structure on top of it, and no more votes or power than those filthy renters you so despise. Sorry if that's painful for you, but those are just the facts, ma'am.

Wow. Just wow. Randy, what makes you say I despise renters? I was a renter for many years! Here in MV no less! Who is calling them "filthy" but YOU!

Wow. I have no problem with renters. I do however have a problem with over-population, over-building, over-use.

Carry on.

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This thread is being managed by the moderator to the extreme. My post was removed and there was nothing offensive in it. YIMBY must be buddies with the moderator, as he is allowed to be as outrageous and rude as he wants, as are some others who are slamming homeowners.

I see homeowners trying to defend their quality of life and investment in this town, but the moderator seems to throw that aside for unchecked growth being a plus. It is not a plus for anyone. If you think building until anyone and everyone can afford the housing they want in a specific city, you don't understand economics. That will never happen because it is economically and physically impossible.

When you buy into a city, you are buying more than just your lot. You are buying the entire feel and atmosphere of that city. You have every right to defend that. To overbuild to the point of shutting out the sky, covering parks and openspace, and bringing complete gridlock with traffic is definitely a concern of homeowners who have invested here - and they have every right to defend their quality of life.

I am sorry if you cannot live where you want, for the price you want. I wish you well, but that is not reality.