I will fix the potholes on the Lawrence Expressway exit of the southbound 101 Freeway. (You know what I'm talking about, District 6!) Yes, this is a CalTrans issue, but somebody needs call them until it gets fixed.
Every City Council meeting, contracts get rubber-stamped to allocate funds to various city projects. I want to ask some questions to make sure we're spending our money judiciously.
Following the loss of COVID subsidies, many child care facilities have had to close. Daycare centers have waitlists that are months long. The city can help entrepreneurs to open home-based day cares, which have much smaller startup costs.
With inflation making groceries and gas more expensive, we need to make sure people can afford a place to live.
Building more housing should make rents go down, but we shouldn't create a food desert to do so. Instead of tearing down our local grocery store, we can look into converting empty offices into high-density housing. A lot of tech companies have gone fully remote or hybrid, so perhaps we can re-claim some of that office space land for housing. We also need to establish fair practices for mobile home space rentals.
Regulations also drive up housing costs because they prohibit parts to be pre-built in factories. Using pre-fab parts can drive down costs and speed up construction. In Sweden, housing costs are much lower because modular homes are a reality. See NY Times article (gift link). Sunnyvale could lead the way by changing the way we build.
Did you know that clamshells for berries can't be recycled? Nor can any black plastic. Have you seen the Sunnyvale pamphlet about Recycling's "Dirty Dozen"? I'm amazed that we let companies sell one-time-use materials that cannot be recycled. The environmental price should be reflected in the cost of these plastics, so businesses will think twice before using them. And if that doesn't stop companies from trashing our planet, we should ban those materials from being sold in our city.
Did you change your name when you got married? Maybe you didn't. When you had a baby, whose last name did the baby take? Does your family have three people with three different last names? The county makes it easy to change your name when you get married --- there's a checkbox. There should be an easy way to change your whole family's last name when you create a new household. And it should be normal to do this. The world needs a refresh on old traditions, and Sunnyvale could lead the way.
Public schools need our support, so we can raise the next generation of citizens. I'd love to help here, but I don't know what problems need to be solved. I'd love to hear your input on this.
Let me know! I'd love to hear what you think, especially if you have better ideas! Email me at: bev@bev4sunnyvale.com