How much money can we extract from this developer?

Mountain View City Hall // photo by Victor Grigas

I attended a city council meeting over Zoom recently for a hearing on a condos and apartments project in Mountain View.

It was completely dominated by talk about how much money they can extract from the developer. The developer impact fees were tens of thousands of dollars per unit in a development of over 450 units, totaling upwards of $25 million in funds to the city. Certain members of the city council responded by trying to find ways the developer gained an "advantage" so they can demand more fees.

One member argued that the developer was able to advance the project while the East Whisman Precise Plan, which the project would fall under, was still being written, which gave the developer "first dibs" advantage of developing under the new code. Let's examine the bizarre nature of this logic. The East Whisman Precise Plan is a 232 page document of guidelines and rules to develop a certain area of the city. The East Whisman Specific Plan was adopted on November 5 of 2019. The document was in progress for years, since at least 2016. The project start was before that. Meaning the design team had to guess and hope the precise plan wouldn't change too much with every iteration, which would change the design of the buildings. The project in question, as I understand it, had been in development for years, held up with city bureaucracy. So the council member's argument was that the developer was "fast tracked" through the process, saving them time and money, while in reality, the developer was held up with bureaucracy and a constantly changing precise plan? I don't know if he's ever been outside of California, but it's only California and maybe select other metropolitan cities that takes years to process a proposed building design with the city. It's not a coincidence that rent and housing costs several times more in California than other regions in the country.

This would be like if you're driving down the road and a group of people throws rocks at your car while constantly changing the rules of the road. The people throwing rocks then demand you pay them money because they threw a few fewer rocks at you than at other cars and they let you continue to drive while they didn't let others drive. The difference is that the group of people may cause several thousands to a little over ten thousand dollars in body damage for the car, but for a developer and thereby, delays can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars, which affect the future homeowners and renters that proportionate amount to the number of dwelling units built.

Thankfully this demand for more money based on that convoluted logic never went beyond pontificating.

The developer also donated $1.5 million in funds toward local schools that were not required for the project approval. Normally, when someone gets $1.5 million in gifts, there is some kind of thank you involved. Hell, I get hand written thank you notes from charities from a $100 donation. The council members decided instead to incessantly ask if they could direct the funds to their liking, to which they were rebuffed several times by city staff. The developer, on the other hand, said they would defer to the city council and that their direction of their donation to the schools was just a recommendation.

The council also asked about a years old request to widen the street and why it wasn't implemented. The city staff and the developer said it would be financially infeasible. It would remove several dozen units from the site and the loss of revenue from those units would make the project a financial loser. Of course, the council member that asked the question was skeptical of the answer. Does he think developers just have an endless stash of money? Imagine if this was your house. The city council wants to widen the street in front of your house, which they would make you pay for, but you say that to do so, you would have to lop off your front porch  and a quarter of your garage. You say that would be devastating to you and the person on the dais is skeptical and wants to see proof of damages. Who needs a full depth garage and a porch, anyway?

To anyone that lives in the real world, the comments from the council members might seem bizarre. For politicians, it's totally normal. You wonder why housing prices are so expensive? What happens when city councils try to make things more expensive to build housing? House prices and rents go up, of course. City councils definitely don't help.