The Parks at Monta Vista?

The title is misleading. It's not about parks and affordable housing. It's about multimillion-dollar business. It's real pure greed and money. Nothing to do with helping the community and school district. So will the $2 million donation to the school by the developers help Monta Vista build new facilities and hire new teachers for the new students? What can be done with that money?

OK this is about the proposed plan to demolish 175,000 square feet of industrial buildings and construct 94 single-family residential units and recreational areas on Bubb Road and Imperial (a portion of Results Way Corporate Park).

The hearing date will be on February 27, 2006 at 5PM at the Council Chamber, Community Hall, 10350 Torre Ave.

Don't say that there won't be new students enrolling at Lincoln, Kennedy and Monta Vista. The people, who are willing to buy a small house for a million dollar, are not coming just for the sake of living in Cupertino. They want to move here for the schools. If they don't have children, they can buy a big mansion somewhere else. So the argument that there's no impact on the schools is without merit.

Look at today. Monta Vista has no room for intratransfer of students for the coming 2006-2007 school year. In 5 years from now, how do we know if Monta Vista is still overcrowded unless the district gets more funding to build more classrooms?

The question is not residential vs industrial. The question is not about more parks and no parks. The question is not about more affordable housing. Those, who are pro, want to use the sensitive issue of affordable housing to hide the real issue, which is traffic and overcrowded classrooms. Taylor Woodrow Homes don't care about that. They come, make their money and go. They don't live and go to school here. For sure we want nice parks and affordable housing for teachers, librarians, firefighters, etc., but address the real issue first. There's no need to rush to keep developing when there's some available land.

At least the residents of Cupertino have some input in this issue. Look at what the city of San Jose is planning to do with the mall on De Anza Blvd and Hwy 85. The location is in Cupertino but the address is part of San Jose. So Cupertino residents have no say in the city of San Jose's plan to allow the developers to build condominiums. Again we come back to the same issue. The kids, who'll live in these condos, will go to Monta Vista. And we can't do anything about it.

I hope that the Cupertino council members will make the right choice for all residents of Cupertino.

Free Wi-Fi?

It looks like Metrofi's business model to get people to pay $20/mo has
failed. So by switching to a new model of free access but with banner
ads on the browser, it hopes to get enough customers to be profitable.
It doesn't have to spend money on marketing any more trying to get
customers. Also it doesn't need to do any billing thus saving money
right there. Will it survive? It depends on how local businesses agree
to spend ads money on this new model.

How about for consumers? FreeWiFi has been in existence for a long time
in Seattle, Spokane, New York, etc. In those cities, it's really free
without ads. Here in Cupertino, there's no free lunch with MetroFi. The
consumers will have to see if the ads are not annoying or if they're
not spywares. Also we need to ask if MetroFi is going to collect any
information from the users so that it can specifically target its ads.
So although it's tempting to have free WiFi access, I still believe
that it should not belong to residential areas. It should stay in
commercial areas only.