Reaching new heights WEEKEND | 17 OCTOBER 13, 2017 VOLUME 25, NO. 38
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MOVIES | 21
$2.5M budget for rental committee’s first year $160 FEE ON APARTMENTS TO FUND RENT CONTROL PROGRAM By Mark Noack
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MICHELLE LE
A portion of Cooper Park that is owned by the Mountain View Whisman School district is being considered as a site for a teacher housing development.
Teacher housing at Cooper Park? SCHOOL DISTRICT TO STUDY BUILDING AFFORDABLE APARTMENT COMPLEX FOR SCHOOL STAFF By Kevin Forestieri
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he Mountain View Whisman School District is taking a close look at building workforce housing at Cooper Park, giving teachers and other school staff an affordable place to live on salaries that haven’t kept up with the high cost of living. The move comes amid high teacher turnover and multiple surveys showing district staff commute long distances and struggle to pay the rent. At the Oct. 5 board meeting, Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph said the district is launching a “feasibility” study to build an apartment complex on 9.5 acres of district-owned
INSIDE
land at Cooper Park, located in the center of the Waverly Park neighborhood. The sizable portion of the park includes field space as well as a privatelyoperated preschool. District staff first floated the idea last year following a survey that found resounding support among its staff members for an affordable housing option that allows them to live in the city, close to work. Among the 159 respondents, 76 percent said they would be interested in living in district-run belowmarket-rate housing. The results also revealed a majority of teachers, who make $60,000 a year on the low end of the salary scale, are largely unsatisfied with their current
housing situation, and deal with long daily commutes and rental costs that eat up anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of their monthly paycheck. Many simply can’t afford what costs to live on the Peninsula, Rudolph said. “When all of the housing units are above what our staff can afford, they’re forced to move further away, and after a while they start making decisions about, ‘Well, is it worth driving past seven or eight school districts to come here?’” The district will hire an outside firm to study, among other things, how many units could be included in a housing See TEACHER HOUSING, page 8
VIEWPOINT 16 | GOINGS ON 22 | MARKETPLACE 23 | REAL ESTATE 24
he costs of Mountain View’s experiment with rent control now has a clear price tag — about $160 annually for almost every apartment in town. At a Monday, Oct. 9, meeting the city’s Rental Housing Committee unanimously approved a proposed $2.5 million budget for launching the citywide drive to regulate apartment rents. This budget will be brought back to the committee for final approval on Oct. 23. Mountain View’s new rent control program is at its most labor-intensive stage. The city’s five-member Rental Housing Committee is dealing with a
series of complex and consequential decisions as it establishes the policy groundwork for citywide rent control. Given the stakes, routine committee meetings have featured a panel of three attorneys and a team of housing staff, none of whom are working for free. Designed to run independently of city government, the rent control program eventually must pay for its own staffing, office equipment and material costs. For the upcoming year, city officials are budgeting for four new fulltime office positions, including a program manager, a clerical assistant and two analysts. Taken altogether, these new positions See RENTAL HOUSING, page 9
Polls find support for high school bond measure ENROLLMENT GROWTH AND AGING FACILITIES ARE TOP CONCERNS AMONG LIKELY VOTERS By Kevin Forestieri
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he Mountain View-Los Altos High School District is gearing up for a potential bond measure next year aimed at accommodating hundreds of additional students and replacing crumbling buildings long past their prime. Polls conducted last month found that support among voters throughout the district, which includes Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, easily exceeds the 55 percent required to pass a facilities bond, with close to two-thirds of respondents saying they would vote to approve either a $198 million or a
$268 million bond. District residents polled were asked if they would support a bond measure to pay for more classrooms, library and cafeteria space for a growing number of students at both Mountain View and Los Altos high schools, and modernized facilities aimed at supporting science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM). If the board approves a bond measure next year, bond revenue would go toward fixing two major problems. Enrollment at the two high schools is expected to increase by 500 students by the 2021-22 school year, and both See BOND MEASURE, page 11