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JANUARY 8, 2016 VOLUME 23, NO. 50
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MOVIES | 18
Mayor Showalter takes the gavel NEW MAYOR’S PRIORITIES: HOUSING, HOUSING AND MORE HOUSING By Mark Noack
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sked about the big issues facing Mountain View, the city’s new mayor, Pat Showalter, doesn’t need to ponder for long. It’s “housing, housing and more housing.” The city needs to build more residences, plan it out better and find ways to keep families and households living here without mortgaging their future, she says. Trying to tackle those goals, she expects, will dominate the coming year as she occupies the city’s top seat. Having just completed her first year on the council, Showalter on Tuesday night was picked by her colleagues to take the Pat Showalter city’s helm at a tense time in local politics. Mountain View is experiencing a building boom like never before, with records amounts of office and residential development being proposed. But while some see a robust economy on the rise, others see the scourge of gentrification. A growing segment of the community is complaining the city could be changing for the worse, forcing low-wage earners to go elsewhere. At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Showalter won the honorary position in a unanimous vote, making her the city’s point-
person for 2016. At the same meeting, the council picked Ken Rosenberg to serve as vice mayor. As she takes Ken Rosenberg t he gavel, Showalter says she is cognizant that these polarizing housing issues aren’t exactly new, nor can they be reasonably expected to be resolved in her limited term. Nevertheless, the city’s new mayor says she intends to be a steady hand on the tiller as the city implements and fine-tunes a slate of new housing policies. Showalter speaks highly of the collaborative and courteous relationship between council members. But that doesn’t mean she always marches in lockstep — and housing is one area where she sometimes parts ways with her colleagues. Last year, as a groundswell of tenants urged the city to do something to curb rising rents, Showalter was one of the few council members who wanted to take immediate action to freeze rents while a formal rent-control program could be studied. She still believes such a “cooling-off period” would have provided the time and flexibility needed for thoughtful policies. But her plan never gained traction, and the council instead See NEW MAYOR, page 8
MICHELLE LE
GIMME SHELTER The New Year is off to a soggy start, as the much anticipated El Niño brought a series of storms to Mountain View this week. On Wednesday, heavy rain put the entire Bay Area under a flash flood watch issued by the National Weather Service. In downtown Mountain View, residents dusted off their umbrellas and went about their day despite the inconvenient-yet-welcome wet weather. More rain is forecast to arrive this weekend and early next week.
School board slammed in scathing audit REPORT: MV WHISMAN MEETINGS ARE A “CIRCUS,” BOARD DOESN’T FOCUS ON SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS By Kevin Forestieri
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ountain View Whisman School District officials plan to take a long, hard look at their own performance, following the release of a $275,000 district audit that detailed a myriad of problems plaguing the district.
INSIDE
The initial findings, released in November, found a series of systemic problems that are holding back students throughout the district, particularly English-language learners and students with disabilities. The initial findings neglected to mention the performance of the elected school board.
The full report, now available on the district’s website, reveals that the dysfunctional school board is also to blame for poor student achievement in the district, with a misguided focus that puts student learning on the backburner. The board is set to discuss the report at its Jan. 7 meeting. The report had nothing but good things to say about Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph, who proposed the audit by Cambridge Education, a company he’s worked with previously. The report commends him for his frequent meetings with school community members, as well See AUDIT, page 11
Indian favorite keeps delivering WEEKEND | 15
GOINGS ON 19 | MARKETPLACE 20 | REAL ESTATE 22