A Candidate for Common Sense, Local Control, and Accountability

I am a professional engineer in California with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from UC Davis and a Master of Science degree in civil engineering and engineering mechanics from San Jose State University.  I bring over 50 years of engineering design experience for the benefit of Cupertino, its businesses and its residents.  My years of experience includes providing engineering design of commercial and residential developments throughout the Bay Area.  I am running for Cupertino City Council because I believe our city government has lost sight of common-sense solutions to issues facing Cupertino.  Our elected officials and civil servants have forgotten that government authority is held in trust for the people. The purpose of government is to secure the natural rights of the people—life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.  Government, federal, state and local, is there to provide for general welfare of its citizens. Citizens possess a liberty interest in meaningful local self-government.

 

After attending planning and council hearings, I have observed residents being dismissed as incapable of making informed decisions about development in their own neighborhoods.  I believe state housing mandates are steadily reducing local control and weakening zoning protections that residents have relied upon for decades.  At its core, the effort pushes adding more housing to combat hot-button issues like social justice and equitable distribution, progressive terms that simply mean neighborhoods don’t matter unless they fit some template, and building is more important than protecting lives and property. 

 

Residents purchased homes and invested their lives in reliance on a locally adopted zoning scheme.  Through public hearings, elections, planning commissions, and city councils, the community established rules governing density, traffic, neighborhood character, schools, open space, and infrastructure. When the state overrides those rules, it frustrates settled expectations and diminishes the ability of citizens to govern their own communities. Government holds zoning authority in trust for the people who relied upon it.  Therefore, the state breaches that trust when it retroactively changes land-use rules in a manner that substantially impairs settled community expectations.

 

The state is forcing or incentivizing residential development in areas officially designated as Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ), despite known wildfire risks, evacuation constraints, and infrastructure limitations. Therefore, the law is arbitrary and irrational as applied. By forcing higher-density development into known hazard zones, the state is exposing existing property owners to increased risk and reducing property values. In fact, after major California fires such as Paradise (Camp Fire), planning experts, fire scientists, and insurers have increasingly questioned whether continued growth should occur in the highest-risk wildland-urban interface areas.

 

California's housing mandates may pursue legitimate goals, but they become constitutionally problematic when they override local health-and-safety regulations, ignore objectively documented wildfire and evacuation risks, or impair settled property and reliance interests without sufficient justification. The government's chosen definition of equity ignores relevant facts, treats unlike situations alike, or creates foreseeable harm that undermines the stated objective. This policy is irrational as applied here.

 

Residents do have a liberty and property interest in being protected from arbitrary governmental decisions that knowingly increase foreseeable risks to life and property. When a state overrides local hazard-based zoning restrictions and mandates substantial residential density in a recognized Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone with inadequate evacuation capacity, the issue shifts from local preference to public safety. The government is knowingly increasing exposure to foreseeable loss of life.

 

It’s important to understand how we got here.  We are told that California needs to build more houses to make housing more affordable and meet demand.  We are being told this by the same party, who for years sided with environmental groups, blocking development.  Now the same party eviscerates the same protections used by them in the past to challenge developments.  Residents are powerless to assess impacts to their neighborhoods when housing is forced on them without due process.  This is being done by placing development ahead of neighborhood protections, public safety, and property rights.

 

The State of California is not merely overriding local preferences. It is overriding locally adopted health, safety, environmental, and infrastructure protections. The state assumes that increased housing supply will solve affordability problems, but in many communities, there is substantial evidence that affordability is driven by factors independent of zoning. Therefore, blanket housing mandates impose significant local harms without demonstrating a sufficient connection to the state's stated objectives.

 

It is my belief that the state housing policy will not make housing more affordable in California.  When you consider that California has the highest income tax, the highest energy costs, the highest fuel cost, the highest sales tax and burdensome regulations, you are not going to reduce the cost of owning a home.  These high costs drive up the cost of living and the cost of goods and services.  Adding more housing will not change the underlying cause of high costs.  Government policy is driving the high cost of goods and services in California not availability. 

 

The state created the affordability crisis through taxes, regulations, energy policy, labor mandates, environmental restrictions, permitting delays, or other policies that raise construction and living costs.  The state can’t then claim a housing shortage to justify overriding local zoning. The state's chosen remedy cannot reasonably achieve its stated objective and imposes substantial burdens on public safety and property owners.

 

As a city councilman, I will strive to work with other cities being impacted by state policies that impact our communities to build a coalition to come up with common sense solutions to issues affecting our cities.  There is strength in numbers.  We need to build a coalition of neighborhoods and communities to work together to come up with sensible solutions.  Building high density housing in very high fire hazard safety zones is not sensible. Building high-rise condos in 60 year old single family neighborhoods makes no sense.   I believe working together we can create conditions where we can provide housing by establishing common sense solutions such as:

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• Creation of additional safety exemptions,

• Wildfire-zone carve-outs,

• Infrastructure-capacity exceptions,

• Water-supply conditions assessments

• Promoting legislation allowing more local discretion in implementation,

• Pushing for legislative amendments to housing mandates.

 

The state may pursue housing goals, but it cannot apply uniform housing mandates without regard to documented wildfire hazards, evacuation constraints, water limitations, insurance availability, and infrastructure capacity. Local governments have an independent duty to protect public health and safety, and blanket preemption of those protections exceed the state's justification where objective evidence demonstrates unacceptable risk.

 

Every officer of the state must take the oath of office: …I solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California…Our constitutions is founded on the principle of individual rights. Therefore, individual rights and safety are constraints that government may not sacrifice merely because doing so advances a collective policy objective.  “Social justice" and "equity" are vague concepts with no objective constitutional definition.  Therefore, we need to support a rights first policy of governing. There is a rising tide of socialism building in our country.  Today it’s dictating how we build our communities, tomorrow it is seizing property to suit a socialist ideology.  This is not a conspiracy theory.  It is happening right now in New York.  We have to be forever vigilant of our rights and freedoms.

 

A policy ceases to be just when it achieves benefits for one group by infringing the rights, safety, property, or liberty of another group.  While property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.

 

I am running for office because I believe local government should be guided by common sense, transparency, and respect for the people who live and invest in our community. . I believe cities have an obligation to ask questions on policy choices by the state that affect the cost of living and then place growth ahead of neighborhood protections, public safety, and property rights in the name of affordability.

 

Too often, decisions that dramatically affect our neighborhoods, quality of life, and property rights are made far from the communities that must live with the consequences. I believe residents deserve a meaningful voice in shaping their city's future. Local control matters because those closest to a problem are often best equipped to find practical solutions.