CITY OF FOSTER CITY/
FOSTER CITY PLANNING COMMISSION
SPECIAL MEETING OF MAY 17, 2022
MINUTES
CALL TO ORDER OF CITY COUNCIL AND FOSTER CITY PLANNING COMMISSION
The duly called and noticed special meeting of the City Council and Planning Commission of the City of Foster City (City), sitting as said Council and Planning Commission of May 17, 2022 was called to order at 6:30 p.m. by Mayor Awasthi.
Pursuant to Governor Newsom’s Executive Order N-29-20, as amended through Order N-08-21, the meeting was held as a hybrid meeting.
ROLL CALL
The Communications Director/City Clerk called the roll:
PRESENT: Councilmembers Jon Froomin, Sanjay Gehani, Sam Hindi, Patrick Sullivan and Mayor Richa Awasthi.
Planning Commissioners Evan Adams, Charlie Bronitsky, Nicolas Haddad and Ravi Jagtiani.
ABSENT: Chair Rick Wykoff.
STAFF PRESENT: Edmund Suen, Interim City Manager, Denise Bazzano, Assistant Attorney; Jenn Phan; Interim Deputy City Manager; Marlene Subhashini, Community Development Director; Tracy Avelar, Police Chief; Mark Lee, Police Lieutenant; Leslie Carmichael, Planning Consultant; Rob Lasky; IT Manager; Shuli Chen, Video Technician; and Priscilla Schaus, Communications Director/City Clerk.
PUBLIC
Policy Manager Jeremy Levine, representing Housing Leadership Council, addressed the City Council and Planning Commission via email and teleconference.
STUDY SESSION
Mayor Awasthi recessed the meeting into study session for Joint City Council & Planning Commission study session for Public Review Draft of the Housing Element Update for the 2023-2031 Planning Period.
Community Development Director Subhashini and Consulting Planner Carmichael presented the staff report and facilitated the discussion.
Discussion ensued.
RECESS. The meeting recessed at 9:05 p.m. and reconvened at 9:14 p.m.
Meeting recessed into study session at 6:38 p.m. and reconvened at 9:35 p.m.
ADJOURNMENT
Hearing no objection from the City Council and Planning Commission, Mayor Awasthi adjourned the meeting. Meeting adjourned at 9:35 p.m.
From: Jeremy Levine
To: Foster City Public Comment
Cc: Evelyn Stivers; Richa Awasthi-Mayor; Jon Froomin-Vice Mayor; Sanjay Gehani-Councilmember; Sam Hindi- Councilmember; Patrick Sullivan-Councilmember; [email protected]; Yelena Cappello; Priscilla Schaus; Laurie Rith; Rob Lasky; Aaron Siu; Austin Walsh Subject: Public Comment for 5.17.22 Joint Planning Commission/City Council Meeting Date: Tuesday, May 17, 2022 3:57:55 PM
Attachments: 5.17.22 Foster City HE Comment Letter to City Council & Planning Comm (Draft I).pdf Good afternoon,
I am submitting the attached comment on behalf of the Housing Leadership Council in regards to Foster City's draft housing element.
If any member of the Foster City community would like to connect to discuss this letter, they can arrange a meeting with me at calendly.com/jlevine97 .
Thank you for your consideration,
Jeremy
--
Jeremy Levine (he • him)
Policy Manager
Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County
2905 El Camino Real
San Mateo, CA 94403
www.hlcsmc.org
650.242.1764
Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Instagram • Become A Member! May 17, 2022
City Council and Planning Commission
City of Foster City
610 Foster City Blvd.
Foster City, CA 94404
RE: Comments on the Draft Housing Element
Thank you to Foster City for sharing a draft of your housing element with the public. Since 2001, the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County (HLC) has worked with communities and their leaders to create and preserve quality affordable homes. Over the past several months, city staff, elected and appointed officials, and the entire Foster City community have worked hard to create a plan for new housing in the 6th RHNA cycle. We appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback on your current draft housing element.
In this letter, the Housing Leadership Council will provide feedback for the entirety of the City of San Mateo’s draft housing element. HLC considers housing elements to be holistic documents, so we weight each component of the element with equal importance. Community outreach informs the needs, constraints, and affirmatively furthering fair housing analyses; these analyses inform the site inventory and the goals and actions. We will consider each of these sections independently, as well as how they interact with each other.
Housing elements are legal documents, contracts with the state to implement policies that will promote housing production; and they are also visionary documents, a synthesis of the community’s hopes and dreams for the future. At times, the Housing Leadership Council will cite state statute to justify our recommendations to the city, but this letter is primarily a vision document. We are committed to creating inclusive communities, places where housing is available at all levels of affordability to meet the needs of a diverse range of residents, present and future.
HLC approaches housing elements as an opportunity to plan for diversity, to plan for sustainability, to plan for stronger community. We are excited to partner with Foster City on realizing this vision in the city’s housing element. Some of the Housing Leadership Council’s primary recommendations to improve the city’s housing element include:
1. Remove all opportunity sites from the Sites Inventory Analysis that do not have written evidence from the property owner expressing interest to redevelop and add an analysis of historic redevelopment of parking lots into housing, which will
likely require the city to decrease its realistic capacity estimates and identify new opportunity sites as needed.
2. Explicitly recognize Foster City’s jobs-housing imbalance of 1.76 as a factor that causes housing prices to rise and causes displacement. Explicitly recognize zoning and development standards as a constraint on housing to meet this need.
3. Comply with AFFH requirements by expanding the area in Foster City that allows multi-family housing and promoting deeply affordable projects on city-, nonprofit-, and church-owned land throughout the city.
4. Implement stronger renter protections, expand the area in the city that allows multi-family housing, dedicate city-owned land to affordable housing, and raise revenue to subsidize deeply affordable housing (among other policies recommended in Section III of this letter).
Thank you for your consideration,
Jeremy Levine
Policy Manager
Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County
I. Needs, Constraints, and Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Analyses
Primary recommendations
● Identify the housing need created by Foster City’s jobs-housing ratio of 1.76. ● Explicitly recognize Foster City’s zoning regulations and development standards as a constraint to housing development, especially affordable housing development. ● Explicitly recognize the .
The needs, constraints, and AFFH analyses are supposed to inform the site inventory analysis, which then informs the goals, policies, and programs. Cities are required to recognize housing need, identify the constraints to meeting that need, and then remove those constraints in order to promote new housing development.
In general, Foster City’s draft needs and constraints analyses analyze general trends but do not identify how those trends impact the city’s needs or what the city could do to meet those needs.
For example, in its draft needs assessment, Foster City recognizes that it had a jobs-housing ratio of 1.76 in 2018, up from 1.37 in 2002.1 However, the needs analysis fails to recognize the extreme upward pressure this massive jobs-housing imbalance places on housing prices. HLC notes that in its original Master Plan, Foster City planned for a population of approximately 35,000 residents and a jobs-housing ratio of 0.9. According to the 2020 census, Foster City’s population is approximately 34,000 people, well in line with the city’s master plan, but the jobs-housing ratio is 1.76, nearly double the city’s original plans. Clearly, Foster City’s original master plan failed to adequately predict local housing needs and should not be considered when evaluating policies and programs to meet current demand.
The failure to identify the dramatic housing needs created by Foster City’s jobs-housing imbalance leads the constraints analysis to overlook ways the city could remove barriers to housing production. In its constraints analysis, the city describes its zoning regulations but does not identify how those regulations limit housing production or propose plans to actually reduce those barriers. In a presentation to the 21 Elements consortium, HCD staffer Melinda Coy explicitly described several errors currently present in Foster City’s draft. • Describes but does not analyze as a constraint (think impact on cost, supply, timing, certainty, transparency).
• Puts off analysis to a “study.”
• Seeks to justify rather [sic] determine if there is a constraint.2 These shortcomings in the needs and constraints analyses filter down into the Fair Housing Assessment, though Foster City does deserve credit for including comprehensive mapping data in its analysis, which paints a more complete picture of fair housing issues in the city than most other jurisdictions in San Mateo County. Changes to state law in 2018 implemented new 2 Housing Elements in the 6th Cycle: Common Shortfalls, slide 8 1 Housing Needs Assessment, p. 25
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rules, a mandate for cities to foster integrated communities and reverse historic patterns of segregation through concrete policy change. Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) guidelines are supposed to be woven throughout the housing element, influencing every component from the recognition of a city’s needs to the planning of concrete actions a city will take to address those needs.
Foster City’s draft Fair Housing Analysis narrative outlines many of the core components of AFFH, but it does not consistently identify barriers to AFFH or make concrete commitments to remove them. First and foremost, Foster City plans to concentrate all new affordable housing in areas that already have multi-family housing, leaving its single-family neighborhoods untouched.
In its draft Fair Housing Assessment, the city accurately identifies that the entire city is a high income (Greater than $125,000 household income across all census tracts), high opportunity, and low segregation. However, in its analysis of local and regional racial segregation, the city does not consider how high housing prices predominately exclude prospective Black and Latino residents, who reside in Foster City at lower rates than nearby communities of San Mateo and Redwood City.
Though Foster City does not have a history of redlining or housing covenants, for which the city deserves credit, housing prices in Foster City have historically been higher than the surrounding area. Racial wealth gaps largely in place before Foster City incorporated mean that the absence of explicit discrimination still has not led Foster City to be accessible to California’s most historically marginalized communities. In order to realize the potential for AFFH, Foster City should recognize the ongoing inequity of outcomes created by some current policies and commit to removing barriers to affirmatively furthering fair housing.
Yet, in several places, the city makes loose commitments without clear deadlines or measurable metrics in its AFFH goals and actions. According to HCD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Guidebook, “Programs in the element must have specific commitment to deliverables, measurable metrics or objectives, definitive deadlines, dates, or benchmarks for implementation.”3 These standards work well for all policies.
II. Site Inventory Analysis
Primary Recommendations
● Remove sites from the site inventory that have low probability of development over the next RHNA cycle.
● Analyze history of redevelopment of parking lots for housing in Foster City and reduce realistic site capacity accordingly. Identify new opportunity sites and remove constraints as necessary to compensate for the shortfall in units.
Foster City deserves credit for providing a site-by-site analysis of some of the primary sites in the inventory–this is significantly more analysis than any other city in San Mateo County has yet provided, and it makes Foster City’s inventory much stronger. Other components of the site 3 Housing and Community Development’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Guidebook, p. 54 inventory analysis, such as its reasonable estimates of ADU production and commitments to upzone sites from prior RHNA cycles, make this site inventory analysis exemplary for San Mateo County jurisdictions.
Nonetheless, room for improvement remains. The current site inventory relies entirely on opportunity sites that already have pre-existing multi-family housing. Because its site inventory relies entirely on non-vacant sites, Foster City must meet a higher standard of proof that each site will be developed.4
In order to justify this reliance, the city argues new housing will be built above podium parking on nearly all of its opportunity sites. However, the city provides no analysis of past development trends of housing on parking lots. Absent credible evidence of consistent redevelopment of parking lots, the city should remove all sites that do not have written interest for redevelopment from the property owner–or produce stronger justification for those sites’ inclusion in the housing element. The following opportunity sites require stronger analysis to justify their inclusion at current densities:
● Harbor Cove: No letter from property owner, housing on parking ● Eaves apartments: No letter from property owner, housing on parking ● Franciscan: No letter from property owner, assuming redevelopment without demonstrating similar development patterns at current densities in other parts of the city. “Owner interest at similar properties” does not qualify as substantial evidence; rather, the city must provide concrete proof that actual development has occurred at similar sites, with similar pre-existing uses, at similar densities.
● The Lagoons: No letter from property owner, assuming redevelopment without demonstrating similar development patterns at current densities in other parts of the city. ●
Lastly, the site inventory seems to assume 100% site capacity without presenting adequate evidence of historic development trends. Especially for units projected to be built on parking lots, HCD recommends that Foster City adjust its realistic site capacity estimates downward, which will require upzoning elsewhere or identification of new opportunity sites.
III. Goals and Actions Implementation Plan
With their goals and actions, cities make concrete commitments to change their policies in ways that will promote housing production. More than any other portion of the housing element, this section represents a contract between the city, the state, and the people of California. By identifying specific ways they can encourage affordable housing production, cities demonstrate that they prioritize meeting the housing needs of all residents, present and future. 4 Housing Element Sites Inventory Guidebook, p. 27
Many of the goals and actions laid out in the current implementation plan have been essential for San Mateo’s successes in past housing elements. We appreciate the city’s commitment to keeping boomerang funds, providing rental assistance, updating the linkage fee, implementing a fee reduction program, streamlining approvals, and providing an overlay on commercial properties. We have followed the city’s format and condensed our feedback into the following tables:
Proposals HLC Supports with Minimal Changes
Policy Proposed Measure(s) Comments
H-A-4-a Commercial Linkage Fee HLC support commercial linkage fees as a strategy to raise funds for affordable housing development.
Make a commitment to issuing a Notice of Funding
Availability (NOFA) every year, which will ensure
that funds are consistently allocated to affordable
developers through a fair process.
H-B-2-a Lower-Income Homeowner
Rehabilitation Loans
This is an exemplary policy with a great actionable,
measurable goal on a realistic timeline.
H-D-4
and all
associat
ed
policies
Accessory Dwelling Units HLC applauds the city’s ambitious policies and programs to support ADU production.
H-D-6 Reduce Regulatory
Constraints
This is a great policy, HLC would recommend only
a small adjustment: “Reduce governmental and
regulatory constraints to the production of housing,
especially affordable housing.”
H-D-6-a Minimize Governmental
Constraints
Another great policy, but one that would benefit
from more specificity at points. In particular, this
policy should make clear commitments to
streamline preliminary approval, ensure rapid
post-entitlement processing, and expand
ministerial approval to a broad range of projects,
especially projects with affordable units.
H-D-6-c Reevaluate Parking
Requirements
HLC supports the initiation of an impact study to
investigate how parking requirements could be
reduced. We would support the implementation of
an additional program that would automatically
implement reductions to city parking minimums in
areas within 0.75 miles of transit and all other
areas where deemed safe to do so by an impact
study, which is described later in this document
under proposal H-G-3-a.
H-D-6-d Development Fee Waivers Excellent program.
H-E-2-b Affordable Housing Overlay
Inclusionary 15%
Requirement Including
Extremely Low-Income
HLC supports offering flexible inclusionary
programs in order to incentivize very low-income
units.
H-F-1-b Facilities and Services for
Special Needs
Expedited permit review is one of the strongest
incentives cities can offer to produce more housing
for special needs populations. HLC only
recommends that the city add specific goals for
permit processing expedition: How much faster will
permits be processed for housing catering to
special needs populations?
H-G-2-e Rental Registry HLC supports the implementation of a rental registry. We only recommend that the city make a
firm commitment to implement the registry.
This is a non-exhaustive list of the policies HLC supports in Foster City’s draft housing element.
While HLC approves of many of the city’s current draft programs, there are specific steps the city could take to better meet the housing needs of the community.
Changes to Existing Proposals
Policy Proposed Measure(s) Comments
H-A-4-C Expand Sources of Funds for
the City Affordable Housing
Fund.
HLC supports the city’s efforts to solicit grants and
donations for affordable housing. In order to raise
reliable revenue, however, the city will likely need
an internal revenue-raising proposal, such as:
1) Vacancy Tax - Parcel taxes in the
form of a vacant property tax have
been used by cities (VPT, Oakland)
to fund affordable housing and
homeless services; as well as to
entice owners of undeveloped sites
to either sell or build homes on their
parcels.
2) Transfer Tax - A one-time tax
payment that is levied by a
government on the transfer of
ownership to property (i.e. sale of a
home) from one individual or entity
H-A-4-d Budgeting for Housing
Programs
This program would be most effective if it were
broken into pieces corresponding to each of the
housing needs identified in the housing element.
The program should also specify precisely where
the funds will come from and expected revenue to
be dedicated to each housing need.
H-B Protect Existing Housing,
Community Character, and
Resources
Protecting “existing housing” and “community
character” directly contradicts the AFFH mandate
to reverse historic patterns of segregation and
foster integrated living patterns. This program
should be removed entirely.
H-B-1
and
H-B-1-a
Encourage Maintenance of
Existing Housing & Continue
Code Enforcement
Neither the policy or program are related to
“Maintenance of Existing Housing,” they are
related to preserving community character. Policy
H-B-1 and Program H-B-1-a should be removed
entirely, as code enforcement and mandatory code
inspections are fundamental functions of a city, not
novel policies meriting inclusion in the housing
element.
H-C-3-b Anti-Displacement Strategy HLC applauds the city’s plans to consider anti-displacement provisions on a discrete timeline.
We recommend the city add measurable
displacement reduction goals, such as a 20% of
reduction to displacement rates over the next 10
years.
H-C-3-d Facilitate Tenant Protection
Act of 2019 (AB 1482)
Foster city could do significantly more to protect
tenants beyond the requirements of state law,
including:
- Require just cause for eviction from day
one of occupancy
- Allow compensated relocation option for all
“no-fault” evictions
H-D Consider Potential Public and
Private Redevelopment
Opportunities to Increase the
Supply of Housing
HLC recommends the city amend this goal to read
“Pursue Potential Public and Private
Redevelopment Opportunities to Increase the
Supply of Housing.”
HCD specifically argues that cities should make
their goals, policies, and programs actionable,
without language like “study” or “consider.”
H-D-1-a Selection of Housing
Opportunity Areas
As written, this list makes it seem as if Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing were the city’s very last
concern regarding the placement of opportunity
sites. In fact, several of the criteria, such as criteria (7) and (8), seem directly in contradiction of AFFH
requirements to reverse patterns of segregation
and foster integrated communities. This list should
be modified to reflect AFFH as a priority and
remove contradictions.
*H-D-5-
a/H-D-5
b
School Sites/Religious and
Nonprofit-Owned Sites
HLC supports the strengthening of these policies
to commit to implementing an overlay zone
allowing higher densities, parking minimum
waivers, and looser objective standards for
affordable housing on school-, religious-, and
nonprofit-owned sites regardless of other zoning
standards. Allowing denser affordable housing on
these types of sites can often help these
organizations better fulfill their missions by
providing more housing to those they serve.
H-D-6-b Minimize Zoning Constraints This city should make a concrete commitment to gradually loosen zoning restrictions and expand
the area allowing denser multi-family housing into
new parts of the city.
*H-E-3 Incentives for Affordable
Housing
In order to ensure consistency across the housing
element, this policy should make specific
commitment to implement all of the described
incentives, particularly waived fees for very
low-income units, as described in program
H-D-6-d. HLC recommends several other specific
programs the city can implement in the next table.
H-E-3-b Financing and Subsidy
Programs
Local funding sources for affordable housing are
often necessary for affordable housing developers
to get federal tax credits. Therefore, HLC
recommends the city amend this program to
commit to studying opportunities for local funding
sources.
H-E-5 Rent and Income Restrictions
on Rental BMR Units
Requiring rent and income restrictions on rental
BMR units to extend 99 years often interferes with
affordable housing developers’ ability to get federal
tax credits, which typically get refinanced at 30-45
years to extend the life of a project independently
of regulatory intervention.
H-F-2-e Low Barrier Navigation
Centers
Specify what zones will allow low barrier navigation
centers pursuant to AB 101. Expand zoning to
allow this type of development to all
high-opportunity areas within the city.
The preceding table outlines several of the most significant improvements Foster City could make to its goals and actions. In particular, we urge the city to commit to implementing actionable goals with measurable metrics and discrete timelines for completion, as required by the state department of Housing and Community Development.5 Melinda Coy, the Land Use and Planning Manager that oversees housing element revisions at HCD, recently delivered a presentation to the 21 Elements consortium in which she explained one of the primary reasons for housing element rejection in the 6th cycle was because programs “do not have specific actions and timelines to demonstrate a beneficial impact in the planning period. Lack of clear commitments (e.g., ‘uses Explore, Consider, Evaluate the feasibility, study….’) or objectives.”6 Foster City should also pursue robust renter protections, as all of its opportunity sites are on lots with pre-existing multi-family residential uses. Though the city anticipates development to occur on the parking lots of those sites, realistically, some displacement is likely to occur. Without enacting stronger renter protections (as described in policies H-G-2-e, H-C-3-b, H-C-3-d, and others above), the city will be putting many of its most vulnerable residents at risk of displacement.
HLC also has several novel recommendations for the city’s consideration. Some of these policies are drawn from HLC’s housing element policy platform, while others were gathered from our stakeholders–a coalition of service providers, nonprofit and for-profit developers, and activists. We elaborate on new policies the city could add to its housing element below:
New Policies to Promote Housing Opportunity
New
Policy
Proposed Measure(s) Policy Text and Justification
H-D-6-H Provide extra density bonus
incentives for very low- and
extremely low-income units.
Cities will be more likely to facilitate the
state-mandated ELI units required by RHNA if they
provide extra incentives for developers to build
those units.
H-E-7-b Incentivizing Housing in
Commercial Developments
Create an overlay zone that reduces zoning
regulations and objective standards for workforce
housing built in mixed-use developments.
H-F-1-j Eliminate Parking Minimums
for Special Needs
Populations
Eliminate parking minimums for housing geared
toward the elderly or developmentally disabled
populations throughout the town. Allow parking
reductions or waivers for all very low- and
extremely low-income housing within 1 mile of a
regional transit stop or transit corridor.
These communities do not drive, so requiring
parking for their dwellings increases cost with no
additional benefit to the residents.
H-G-3 Expand Production of Fair
Housing in New
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing requires
specific commitment to remove segregated living
6 Housing Elements in the 6th Cycle: Common Shortfalls, slide 5 5 Housing and Community Development’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Guidebook, p. 54 Neighborhoods patterns and foster integrated communities.
Currently, Foster City’s draft housing element does
not adequately meet AFFH requirements because
the city has no plan to actually promote AFFH
goals.
In order to comply with AFFH requirements, HLC
recommends that the city make firmer
commitments to expand the area in which Foster
City facilitates affordable housing to new
neighborhoods.
H-G-3-a Fair Housing Throughout the
Community
Commission an EIR to study the environmental
impacts of upzoning to allow the mullin density (30
du/ac in Foster City) in all neighborhoods located
within 0.75 miles of transit.
H-G-3-b Missing Middle Housing Upzone all R-1 zones to R-2 zones and upzone all R-2 zones to R-3 zones. Pursuing this type of
gentle density will facilitate housing production at a
mix of income levels throughout the city.
San Bruno already has committed to implementing
a similar program in their draft housing element,
with a commitment to “Amend the R-2 zoning
district to … allow two dwellings per lot regardless
of lot size.”
All of the above policies will be most effective if they are implemented to the standards of HCD’s AFFH requirements: “Programs in the element must have specific commitment to deliverables, measurable metrics or objectives, definitive deadlines, dates, or benchmarks for implementation.”
From: William Fried
To: Foster City Planning Department
Subject: RHNA Numbers
Date: Thursday, May 5, 2022 3:19:29 PM
This city was designed for a maximum of 35,000 people, and the RHNA mandates would take us north of 40,000 if we comply. The plan for Foster City did not include 5,500 new neighbors. The state is bleeding population (and has already lost one seat in the House because of reduced population), and we are asked to over-crowd our city with a 15% increase in population?
Foster City is built out. There is no more
room for development in our city, unless we tear down present structures and start building skyscrapers.
And that is not the dream that Jack Foster had for this city.
And before we start gutting our city to fill it with affordable housing, let's take a look at the vacancy rates in our apartment housing.
Of course, RHNA doesn't care about
vacancy rates, and it also does not give a tinker's damn about Foster City.
The solution is simple. Rather than laying down and spreading our city's legs so that wackos in Sacramento can feel good about their stupid super-majority decisions, we need to push back. I recommended to all the council members that we conduct an outreach program and contact all the city councils in California for feedback on RHNA.
If enough of us are unhappy with the mandates, we can band together, declare our cities to be sanctuary cities, and refuse (1) to comply with the mandates, and (2) pay any fines levied.
Unfortunately, no one on the council had the courage to act.
What the hell do we need a city council for, if their only task is to comply with state legal requirements? Hell, we can hire trained monkeys to do that. If council members merely rubber-stamp whatever staff suggests, who needs a council at all? Our council lacks the courage to act for the benefit of the citizenry. Instead, it works diligently to accede to the dictates of the county, state, and federal government.
And, may I ask, why are we getting ready to spend $50 million on a new recreation center?
The country is headed for a hyper-inflationary depression, and we can't wait to waste our savings on an unnecessary re-build. When the depression hits us, wouldn't it be nice to have some emergency funds in our piggy bank, rather than having to scrape for cash?
The actions of our council and our city toward RHNA mandates shows why trust in government is at an all time low.
You are not serving us. I'm sending you my tax
dollars, and, like the federal government, you are frittering them away. I am unrepresented by my government.
Bill Fried
1031 Monterey Avenue
Item 4.1 May 17, 2022 City Council and Planning Commission Special Meeting From: Alec
To: Foster City Planning Department
Subject: More housing units
Date: Friday, May 6, 2022 1:33:43 PM
Hello Marlene,
We have lived in Foster City for over 20 years.
Lately, the traffic
has become unbearable and the air quality has worsened substantially.
We all understand that there is a need for new housing.
Still, it should be done in the way that makes sense.
Is there a plan to update the infrastructure, like building another entry to Foster City, or widen the roads to accommodate
another 1,896 new housing
units? If not, why are we even talking
about building more?
Warm regards,
Alec Budman
From: [email protected]
To: Foster City Planning Department
Subject: Public Review Draft Housing Element
Date: Friday, May 13, 2022 2:21:42 PM
Here is my feedback, for what it's worth:
Stop this insane Foster City construction!
You are ruining the very town many of us loved when we moved here (for me, 1978).
The fact that the State of California has "told" California cities what they have to build in their municipalities is, on the face of it, wrong on so many levels.
Why cities and towns across California, and here on the Peninsula, haven't banded together to file a lawsuit against the state to stop this unfair encroachment is beyond me.
Yes, housing is an issue. But for the State of California to demand it's cities to, in essence, "destroy" their communities or suffer the consequences is patently unfair, a notion of "Big Brotherhood," and causing our cities (especially Foster City) to drown in more bottleneck traffic, limited resources, and
crime.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if our city fathers, and those of other cities, banded together and stood up to the state and said "NO," you're not going to tell us what we can and can't do in our own backyards.
Greg Sweatt
Foster City resident since 1978 (and I vote)