"The greatest making of the future will be from a small piece of land." Abraham Lincoln

Santa Clara City Council Meeting
April 26, 2005
BAREC was on the Agenda

BAREC was placed on the agenda by request of Kirk Vartan. Many people spoke and a lot of perspectives, suggestions, and information were shared with the Council.

We have made the entire 36 minute section of the meeting available via video below. Additionally, we have broken-up the video into multiple segments, allowing you to easily see specific testimony from citizens and Council members, making it easier to hear the information you are interested in. We listed some highlight quotes from the video in the right column; however, in case there are any questions about the context of the statements, we are also providing the entire video for viewing. Simply click on a quote on the right, and the video of the person saying those words will start. The hand-outs given at the meeting are linked at the bottom of this column.

City Introduction:
> City Manager Introduction (3 minutes - 800KB)
> Planning Director Introduction (4 minutes - 1MB)
> City Manager Introduction (1 minute - 400KB)
Citizen comments:
> Kirk Vartan/Marguerite Lee (6 minutes - 1.8MB)
> Master Gardener Sharon McCray (3 minutes - 1MB)
> Lauren McCutcheon (2 minutes - 600KB)
> Suzie Keels (1 minute - 300KB)
> Andy Grammet (2 minutes - 700KB)
> Bill Romano (2 minutes - 500KB)
City Staff/Council responses and comments:
> City Staff response - Goodfellow (2 minutes - 400KB)
> Councilmember Caserta (2 minutes - 500KB)
> Councilmember Mathews (2 minutes - 600KB)
> Councilmember Moore (2 minutes - 700KB)
> Mayor Mahan (3 minutes - 800KB)

Four documents were shared with the City Council and the audience. Click on any one of them:
1. Kirk Vartan's Introduction, 2. Pre-meeting notes and information, 3. BAREC's supporter list, and
4. The San Jose Park's Committee letter, showing complete support for keeping BAREC as open space.

The following quotes can be clicked on to hear and see the actual video from the following people:

Planning Director Goodfellow:
"Those decisions [current development discussions] are merely preliminary, and the project will have to go through the full Environmental Impact [Report] review, General Plan amendment re-zoning, and probably sub-division maps before any final decisions can be made on the site."
"Closing on that [sales agreement] is contingent on the approval of the plans, just as it would be for the senior portion."
"Yes, the property is contaminated...the worst [soil] contamination will be physically removed."
Councilmember Caserta states:

"I just cannot stand here and say let's just have it [BAREC] all open space."
"Where's the money to do this?"
Councilmember Mathews states:
"I'm a fifth generation, native Santa Claran. My great, great, great, grandfather went out and fought; he's one of those Civil War people."
"The history that I'm going to make is going to be made today...to get this site developed..."
"We're not going to resolve Santana Row's issues of traffic or Valley Fair's traffic by not developing this site..."
Councilmember Moore states:
"I know there's a park; I'd like to see it be a little bit bigger. But, I think that neighborhood needs a park."
Mayor Mahan states:
"The reality is, the property is going to be developed... and there's nothing we can do to stop it. We can't withhold zoning arbitrarily, unless you want to subject this City to a lawsuit that will bankrupt it...and, it's just not going to happen, and I'm sorry to say, that's just the reality of it."

Entire video of the Council meeting:
Complete video (36 minutes - 9MB)

Videos require: Microsoft Window Media

For comments or questions, please email us at: info@savebarec.org or call 888-BAREC-80 (888-227-3280).
This is a project of VIVA (Valley Initiative for Values in Urban Agriculture and Horticulture) and SaveBAREC