Critical Issues For Our Community
Maintain Our Revenue Base
Achieving the goals of maintaining our basic services and reinvesting in our infrastructure depends upon a steady increase in city revenue. But, over the last nine years, inflation-adjusted per capita city revenue has declined. We must be strategic in how we build our revenue base. By far, the fastest growing element of our budget is the sustained double-digit growth of our property tax revenue. Continuing to sustain that growth depends on our ability to attract new young families who buy existing homes that are for sale. Effective land use and strategic planning strategies will enable us to keep Palo Alto a magnet for those young families.
Explore Viable Commercial Options
Commercial activities play three key roles in a community: they generate sales tax revenue to support local government services; they provide easy and convenient access to items and services we need for daily life; and they offer places for leisure and socializing for members of the community. We need a more aggressive economic development office that understands these complementary needs to help design and implement a range of community-friendly commercial options for the city.
Plan Before Change Overwhelms Us
Our planning process worked well as long as we had a steady state population. But the large scale developments we are now experiencing have turned that process into a series of local contentious disagreements. We need to build a new process that will shift the focus of change back to a neighborhood and community perspective. Now is the time to act. Over the next year we will debate the impact of the Stanford Hospital and Shopping Center expansion, deliver a new Housing Plan to the state, look at the Baylands Master Plan, and begin Area Plans for the neighborhoods undergoing change. All of these must be coordinated through a fresh look at our increasingly outdated Comprehensive Plan.
Schools Are Our Key To The Future
Schools are the magnets that draw young families to Palo Alto. Council decisions on housing, business development, and land use will be critical to the future of our schools. They will determine how many children will be added to our school population and the flow of future revenue that the School District will have. It is essential that the City and the School District work together to share information and planning assumptions before major land use decisions. We must cooperate in aggressively exploring areas of common interest.
Enhance Our Public Places, Spaces, and Services
Our population has grown in recent years and we have not kept pace with the growth of those community amenities that are important to us and define our city. We must maintain and enhance the wide spectrum of parks, open space, libraries, playing fields, and other special attributes like the Children's Theater, Foothill Park, the Junior Museum, and the Arts Center. As we grow, even small enhancements to our community and neighborhoods should be essential features of development. We must find ways to enhance our public assets in places where our population has expanded.
Palo Alto: Local, Regional and Global
Palo Alto is an important center of activity in the region, the state and the global economy. It has long been at the heart of Silicon Valley, the center of innovation in communications and information technology that has changed the way people work, communicate, and play. Silicon Valley succeeds because of the talent it continually draws from around the world, which is clearly reflected in Palo Alto's population. Everyone benefits if Palo Alto continues to play this unique leadership role in the future.
