By Robert Haugh
The Stadium Authority looks like it wants to move forward and build a new community room at Levi’s Stadium. Here’s the good part. It would have windows. The 49ers’ so-called community room is windowless dungeon.
Here’s the bad part: the 1,800-square foot location is apparently used for storage by the Bourbon Steak and Pub restaurant.
The cost to build out the room with restrooms is estimated to be $400,000 to $800,000. Wow. This should be charged to the 49ers, some Santa Clara residents said during public testimony. Stay tuned. This could be another financial battle with the team.
During the study session, we learned that there’s a very robust community engagement plan for issues related to Levi’ Stadium. Among the issues to be tackled include noise, traffic, flyovers, public safety, loitering, pyrotechnics, post-event litter and curfews. Using surveys, focus groups, and other outreach, about 1,000 residents will get a chance to have their say. The plan includes specific surveys for people near the stadium who have to deal with the impacts. That’s likely to be the information the council considers most seriously.
Pilot Residential Food Scraps Recycling Program
Many Santa Clarans have found the pilot food scraps recycling program inefficient and frustrating. Residents and council members suggested other options to comply with new state laws that require food scrap recycling programs. Only about 30 percent of those in the pilot areas responded to the surveys. Of those, over 53 percent of residential customers claimed they had “capacity issues” with the new split-bin garbage containers. It sounds like the first step is to get bigger bins.
Charter Amendment for Council District Elections
The Council unanimously adopted resolutions calling for a Special Municipal Election to be held on Tuesday, June 5, 2018 for new district elections and method of electing city officers. This was the unanimous recommendation of the Charter Review Committee.
City staff recommended a a five member Ad-Hoc Advisory Districting Committee who will be chosen from existing city commissioners who haven’t been involved in Santa Clara political elections — and pledge not to for the next five years. The council and the public seemed confident that this would keep political agendas out of the district-drawing process. The meetings will be public so we’ll be writing more about this in the coming months.
That windowless dugeon would be great as a “holding tank” if it could be reinforced to the standards of a county jail.
It could be used for all of the drunks that are picked up in the parking lot and for those arrested in the DUI check points awaiting processing down to the County Jail.
Oh, but after 75+ major events of over 20k people and over 100 total medium to large events, has there EVER been any DUI check points for drivers? Or to get those that are publicly intoxicated outside the stadium?
No, the goal is to get people out of the parking lots and onto our freeways as quickly as possible because that’s what the SF 49ers want.
But if you just assume that 1% of the drivers may be potentially Driving Under the Influence… that’s a pretty scary proposition. So you would have 10-20k drivers? Which means up to 100-200 may have been driving recklessly. Some of these may have been potentially caught by the police So if we have 100+ drunk/impaired drivers on the road at 75-100 events, we are talking about instances of at least 7,500 times that drunks have been on our roads and highways.
Isn’t this a dereliction of duty by the Santa Clara Police Department and the California Highway Patrol?!?
What can be done to force the SCPD to create DUI check points?!?
[…] joint City Council and Stadium Authority meeting, we learned that the City Council wants to build a new community room at the stadium to replace the so-called community room and dungeon that the 49ers have given Santa Clara. That’s a good thing but it’s a little […]