No love for glove law WEEKEND | 21 MARCH 14, 2014 VOLUME 22, NO. 7
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MOVIES | 25
Council quiet on North Bayshore housing WITH NEW OFFICE SPACE, JOBS-HOUSING IMBALANCE MORE EXTREME By Daniel DeBolt
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Rosa Lutz and Jay Gubbi attend a lunchtime session at the College and Career Center at Mountain View High School on March 11.
College Board taps Khan Academy in SAT overhaul LOCAL STUDENTS, EDUCATORS SAY PLANNED CHANGES TO COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM ARE WELCOME By Nick Veronin
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local web-based education company is at the center of number of major changes planned for the SAT. The College Board, the organization responsible for the
SAT, revealed plans earlier this month to overhaul the college entrance exam — with the aim of ensuring students are assessed on actual knowledge, rather than their ability to memorize and regurgitate information, and that students from low-income families have
access to the same kind of SAT tutoring as their wealthier peers. Starting in 2016, the SAT will be returning to its former 1,600-point scale, the test’s essay will become optional, and stuSee SAT, page 8
ountain View City Council members are paving the way for a boom in office development, but they have been oddly silent on the relative scarcity of housing development in the city’s future. As the city’s precise plan for the future of the North Bayshore area winds its way toward approval, the addition of several million square feet of office space is highlighting the increasing strain on Mountain View’s housing supply and rapidly escalating rents. Council member Jac Siegel didn’t get support from his colleagues for putting such a discussion on the agenda for the March 4 meeting. “The fact is that in North Bayshore we are proposing 3.4 million square feet of office in the same city a lot of working people are being displaced in large numbers, rapidly,” Siegel said to his colleagues. “I’d like some discussion with council about what this is doing to the housing market in our city.”
In phone interviews with the Voice, council members had plenty of opinions on the issue. Several expressed the feeling of being in a bind. “There is an imbalance, there has been one, and it’s fascinating to me, frankly,” said council member Margaret Abe-Koga. “I try to listen to the community. What’s been interesting to me is I hear the community saying that job growth is good. But with job growth comes the pressure to build more housing. Yet the public doesn’t want us to be higher density — so I don’t know how to reconcile that.” “I’m trying to understand better what people really want,” she said. Resident Lenny Siegel (no relation to Jac Siegel) says there is growing interest in his campaign calling for housing in a new planned community in North Bayshore, mixed in with those 3.4 million square feet of See N BAYSHORE, page 12
City needs more housing, says ‘balanced’ growth campaign leader By Daniel DeBolt
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t’s a City Council election year, but one of the more active political campaigns might not be run by a council candidate. Longtime resident and veteran organizer Lenny Siegel is organizing residents in a campaign that would at least highlight the connection between explosive job growth and housing prices.
INSIDE
In recent years there have been numerous protests of housing developments around the city by neighbors concerned with towering buildings, parking and traffic congestion. Meanwhile, the City Council has added to the pressure for such housing development by approving a slew of new office projects and zoning for more than 15,000 office jobs in North Bayshore. Siegel said he aims to highlight “the linkage
between the (North Bayshore) plan and the things residents have been complaining about” when it comes to housing development. A key issue for the campaign is the council’s opposition to housing in North Bayshore while approving so many new offices, which Siegel says puts additional pressure to develop housing in See SIEGEL, page 14
VIEWPOINT 18 | GOINGS ON 26 | MARKETPLACE 27 | REAL ESTATE 29
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Lenny Siegel, shown in his office in April of last year, is launching a campaign to balance jobs and housing in the city.