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San Jose Mercury News In a
striking challenge to networking giant Cisco Systems Inc., environmentalists and homeless advocates have banded together to put a referendum on the ballot asking voters to kill the firm's $1.3 billion campus in semi-rural Coyote
Valley. The group has to collect 27,732 signatures to bring the campus to a vote of the people-a hurdle it says will be overcome easily using volunteers and paid signature-gatherers. The campaign is set to start Monday at
San Jose supermarkets and malls and end 30 days later, on Dec. 12. "This is a huge project, and citizens should have a right to vote on it," said Ernest Goitein, an environmentalist who owns a ranch near Mount
Hamilton. "It shouldn't be left to politicians, who are vulnerable to pressure." A spokesman for Mayor Ron Gonzales, who strongly advocates the project, said Friday that Gonzales is confident the campus would
survive at the ballot box, partly because residents realize it would generate $6 million annually in tax revenues for city services. The city council last month set in motion long-term plans to bring high-tech to Coyote Valley when
it unanimously approved Cisco's plan to transform the 688-acre site into a 20,000-worker campus. And officials at Cisco, San Jose's largest private employer, said the threat of the referendum will not alter plans for the
campus. "We plan to begin construction as soon as we can, which will be some time this winter," Cisco spokesman Steve Langdon said. What an election would mean If People for Liveable and Affordable
Neighborhoods, or PLAN, succeeds in collecting the signatures of 10 percent of registered voters in the city, Cisco would have to stop construction until the election is held. The city council would decide when to hold the election
and likely would put it on the ballot this spring. To collect 27,732 valid signatures, the group needs an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people to sign, PLAN leaders said. If voters reject the project at the ballot
box, the city's approval would be nullified. "Hopefully, there won't be enough signatures, so that won't be an issue," said developer Steve Speno, one of Cisco's partners. Cisco plans to create a "city" in
the northern third of Coyote Valley, complete with a main street, parks, cafes and a dry cleaner, but no housing. The campus would be within walking distance of the Caltrain commuter line running from Gilroy to San Francisco and
even nearer to a future extension of San Jose's light-rail line. Environmentalists said the project should be located near the BART line voters approved this week, but Cisco said it could not build the campus-style
development downtown. Land-use referendums have had mixed success. Last year, Salinas City Council members repealed a preliminary zoning change that would have allowed development of Mountain Valley, a proposed 853-home
tract on 200 acres of agricultural land on the far eastern edge of town. That action came after opponents collected 7,000 signatures on a petition to force the council to put the development proposal on the ballot. Members of PLAN
include the Community Homeless Alliance Ministry and individual environmentalists such as well-known activist Barry Boulton, retired Stanford professor Robert Girard and former San Jose planning commissioner Brian Grayson. The
Sierra Club and the Audubon Society have endorsed the effort but have not formally joined the group. PLAN contends the campus would have a devastating impact on traffic and housing prices throughout San Jose and its southern
neighbors, arguments the city dismisses. The group already has flexed some muscle. This week, PLAN sued San Jose on the grounds that the city was obstructing the petition drive by refusing to give the group public
documents necessary to start collecting signatures. The city settled the case by handing over the documents and agreeing to extend the deadline to turn in the petitions to the city clerk by about two weeks. However, the
Nov. 24 deadline to file lawsuits challenging the city's environmental report on the project still stands. David Vossbrink, Gonzales' spokesman, said no one in the mayor's office was aware of the request for the documents.
"If we were aware of it in the mayor's office, we would have made sure the information was provided," he said. PLAN has raised enough money to pay the signature-gathering firm Pacific Petitions $3 a signature.
That is more than usual because of the short period of time workers have to collect them. Backers for PLAN PLAN will have to file campaign finance statements soon. Friday, it released a partial list of donors,
including $5,000 from the Committee for Green Foothills, $1,000 from the Sierra Club, $5,000 from Goitein and $8,000 from an anonymous contributor. Goitein, who lives in Atherton, was a long-time opponent of the
now-defunct plans by former Gov. Pete Wilson to build a low-level nuclear waste dump in the Mojave Desert at Ward Valley. He was awarded the "Conservationist of the Year" award a few years back by the Peninsula
Conservation Center Foundation. PLAN is likely to come under fire for having members, including Goitein, who do not live in San Jose. But the group said the campus will have widespread impacts. "You don't have to
live in San Jose to be affected," said Zoe Kersteen-Tucker, president of the Committee for Green Foothills. "The Cisco project has far-reaching regional consequences. It will exacerbate the almost-gridlock situation we
already have and open the flood gates to sprawl to the south." |
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