Comment by palakchokshi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by palakchokshi | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know why you're getting down voted either. will the down voters please address the following concerns?

1. Considering that some of the apartment dwellers will become homeowners and their place will be taken by new apartment dwellers, how will the overcrowded schools support the influx?

2. Considering people will take public transit to go to work, they still would use cars to move around locally in the area on evenings and weekends. How will the current streets support the greater density of cars? e.g. Central Expressway used to be an expressway now it is a parking lot.

3. Overburdened police and firemen will be exposed to further strain.

4. Parking is a nightmare not just on residential streets but even at local establishments. Space needed for parking is used to build more housing.

Unless you live here and face these issues it's easy to downvote rather than come up with solutions that are at pace with the housing construction boom.

If I paid over a million dollars to buy a house in a school district that has a good score what would you suggest I do when suddenly the student to teacher ratio is so skewed that the education of my children suffers?

There are a couple of things at play of course. Apartment ownership pays parcel taxes just like single family home owners. However 1/3 of the budget is tax revenue. Of the taxes, the two big heavy hitters are property tax (16%) and sales tax (9%) of the total revenue[1]. More people, more business transacted, more revenue.

As revenue increases, city services can be expanded. Schools on the other hands are basically crooks as far as I can tell. The reason being that I have yet to get the Fremont Union Highschool District to offer up actual budget numbers and actual spend. They will argue all sorts of things about "confidentiality of teacher salaries" or "we're not a government so we don't have to give you that information." but generally I have not been impressed with the way they operate. [2]

Traffic and parking is a legitimate concern. Traffic has gotten worse again (after getting better after the dot com crash). But many programs are targeted at making the city more bike accessible for easier access.

[1] Page 12 -- http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/Portals/0/Sunnyvale/FIN/FY%2015-16%2...

[2] I had an administrator at the district tell me that it was "illegal" to be home schooling my children.

Fremont isn't the only town/city in SV and not all school districts in SV are crooked. Also, you didn't really address one of the big concerns the parent commented pointed out, that is new dwellings would be a DoS on current infrastructure for most places. It's not like you can get that infrastructure in time for it.

Oddly enough the "Fremont Union High School District"[1] is only high schools in the Sunnyvale/Cupertino area. The town of Fremont has a different school district. That said, I realize that new housing would impact schools, especially if people have kids. So far the number of new families who actually have kids that have been moving in seems to be a relatively small ratio (lots of couples who are both working and don't have kids). Its a good question to ask the city manager though. They probably have a handle on what the numbers look like.

[1] http://www.fuhsd.org/

Well the increased tax base will help pay for expanded services. Yes there will be a lag time of a few years (if you had a real proactive city council you could be hiring as early as the following year each be property comes online with increased parcel tax revenue), but the schools should have some room to breathe as most of the people moving to these new high density downtown apartments will be empty nesters (freeing up current single family housing) and young mostly childless professionals.

For police, I honestly don't get the sense that they're really overburdened. Sunnyvale rates as one of the safest cities in the US.

For parking, Sunnyvale is indeed surprisingly bad. For a sleepy town with nothing to do you often can't get parking downtown.

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