What is MVCSP asking for at the 5/16 EPC meeting (aka talking points)

Overall Comments on the General Plan

• Great job EPC (and staff and Council)! Through this process, MV officials and staff have thought creatively and with an eye toward toward our economic and environmental future, all while respecting the desires of the current community. We believe this General Plan will protect the things that we love about our city but give us the flexibility to grow and change in the right ways. Our city has the best officials and staff around!
  

Talking Points on Flexibility in the Focus Areas

• MVCSP fully supports Council's suggestion that increased heights and densities be allowed when developers offer significant community benefits. Some examples of community benefits we think would warrant increased densities include:

1. Park space
   
2. Affordable housing
3. Shuttles or other kinds of transit amenities
   

• Similarly, MVCSP would like to see developers who build near transit and offer their tenants permanent, free transit passes be granted a parking requirement reduction.
• As we have noted before, we encourage the EPC and Council to fold as many pieces of the Increased Housing Alternative that was studied into the EIR, into the Preferred Draft of the General Plan. This will allow the City to enjoy reduced the "vehicle miles traveled" rates that come when greater numbers of people live in close proximity to transit.
  

1. One way to do this without triggering a new Environmental Impact Report and going beyond the level of intensity that the community is comfortable with right now, is simply by stating that allowing housing at heights and densities beyond what is in the general plan may be a way to mitigate for traffic and other impacts at a future date.
   

Talking Points on North Bayshore

• We’d like to go on the record as saying that we still believe that North Bayshore can and should be a mixed use community in the future. More and more office parks are going to be going in this direction. We should take advantage of the General Plan update and move toward creating a model, mixed use employment center. We believe this could:

1. Help reduce traffic.
2. Create a neighborhood full of innovative people where ideas can incubate and flourish.
3. Put MV at the cutting edge of a burgeoning movement toward the revamping of traditional office parks. This will help MV stay at the forefront of innovation, which is good for our local economy.
4. Help support local business who need a customer base beyond 9am-5pm.

• Please put policies in the General Plan that recognize that housing as a variable when studying mitigations to traffic and other challenges, when developing the precise and transportation plan.
• Whether N. Bayshore remains office or becomes mixed use, transfer of development rights should be used to move development away from Shoreline Park and near the intersection of Shoreline and Charleston. This will do two things:

1. Create a greater and much needed buffer for wildlife, and
2. Create more of a neighborhood, which will make the neighborhood more pleasant for people, more walkable, which will reduce the need for driving and it will increase the likelihood that transit can be successfully run to and from the neighborhood. This is very important.
   

• Please figure out how to permanently protect Shoreline Park. This may require two things:

1. Change the zoning designation of the park from “Public Use”
2. Plan for ample parks in N. Bayshore, some of which can be flagged as long term “reserves” of land, should there be a need for a school, fire station, etc.