VISION CAMPBELL: What Do City Council Members See for the Future?

Campbell Patch continues its survey of council members and their visions for the future of Campbell. 

Yesterday, we heard from Jeff Cristina. Today, Vice Mayor Rich Waterman is up. 

Post your questions for local officials and Patch will get them answered, either in the comments below or email to brad.kava@patch.com

1. What would you ideally like to see in the way of improvement at the Civic Center? What is your vision for it? Why would it benefit the people of Campbell?

·           We need to think big and long-term and develop an overall plan that will put Campbell in the spotlight as an example of a modern city’s civic center that serves, to the best of our ability, our community and our employees.

2. Even though it's old, the buildings seem well designed, with good light and office space. Why do you think we need to improve it and how much do you think we should spend, and from where would the money come?

·         Yes, physically the buildings can stand for a few more years and we can continue to band aid things in order to meet the immediate needs of our community.   But, like many of us homeowners with older homes, it makes sense to develop an overall plan that encompasses where we as a community want to go long term and then we can build in smaller increments as budget allows.    The first phase, which we are going through now, is focused on defining these long term design goals.

·         If you look at our library, for example, it was designed before the Internet/Computer/IPADs.   People use the library these days, not only for checking out books, but also for collaboration with colleagues, after school and elderly assistance, community meetings, reading programs, internet access, etc.   We need a library that meets these needs with respect to layout, technology and overall space.

·         We are hearing from many of our city employees that they need more efficient use of office space.  We have limited space currently for extra employees, meeting rooms, modern communication infrastructure, police, residential needs, etc.    

·         Other specific example of civic center issues:

o   Our police department is working out of trailers to support their operations.  

o   The first floor is in a basement with little to no natural light

o   The buildings are not energy efficient.  

o   We need to address the future parking needs of downtown, museums, the new library and the city hall/police.

3. If you could make the Dell Ave Area into anything, what would it look like?

·         I would like to see us become friendlier to technology parks in the area while protecting the business base we have currently of light industrial, medical offices, technology, etc.    We need to do this without negatively affecting our overall quality of life in Campbell.

·         Eventually, as we move forward on the plan, we need to build up nearby portions of the City to support these technology parks including city specific support services, restaurants, housing, hotels, and access to light rail for the added technology employees.  This will take time.

·         Therefore, we need to go slow and be very careful about issues such as added traffic, demands on our city services and neighborhood aesthetics as we add more of these high density/bigger/taller office buildings.