LOS ALTOS HILLS — A plan to expand the city’s town hall to add more office and community space has come to halt, continuing a politically charged debate that was at the center of the 2020 council election.
During a recent city council meeting, the Los Altos Hills City Council in a narrow 3-2 voted rejected a plan for a new expansion at its aging town hall on Fremont Road and unanimously agreed to redesign its current space and purchase new furniture for staff.
A majority of council members said they weren’t ready to spend the nearly $3 million necessary to expand town hall. In 2018, the had asked the original architect for the existing town hall to develop a concept to expand the city’s footprint on the site at Fremont Road.
The plan would have included the removal of the Parks and Recreation building to construct an attached multi-purpose room for recreational uses along with restrooms, new offices for Parks and Recreation staff and a new lunchroom and copy room.
Preservationists became enthusiastic when the potential removal of the Heritage House to the north of city hall was considered to create a town green space, allowing the 1909 wood bungalow to be repurposed and even renovated in the future. The bungalow is thought to be among the oldest buildings in Los Altos, and was moved to its current location in Los Altos Hills in 1985.
It’s currently used as a storage space, and preservationists are hoping it can be returned to its former glory as a historically significant structure.
The plan also included the enclosing of the covered patio area at the rear of the council chambers to create a 480 square-foot meeting space, reconfiguring existing office space to accommodate four additional workstations new meeting rooms, and additional driveway access onto Fremont Road.
Mayor George Tyson and councilmember Lisa Schmidt supported the expansion plan, but Vice Mayor Linda Swan and council members Kavita Tankha and Stanley Mok voted against it. Mok and Swan were strong advocates for more resident oversight on the town hall construction and opposed the proposed expansion during their campaigns.
The idea of expanding city hall started in 2018, when council members asked city staff to begin planning for an expansion. As the state seeks to press elite communities like Los Altos Hills to build more housing to alleviate the exacerbating affordable housing crisis, the city council is keenly aware of the need for more staffing and working space to process the potential permits that may come in the future.
In a 3 to 1 vote in a September 2018 meeting, the city council agreed to move forward with the site development and review process. That is a sharp reversal from this month’s decision to scrap those plans after four years.
Councilmember Kavita Tankha said the council this month also passed a motion to establish a steering committee that will look at the expansion.
“We established a steering committee to look into the needs of our residents, looking at projections for today and 10 years out,” Tankha said.
Expanding town hall became a key issue during the 2020 election when seven candidates ran for three open seats. Unlike the old city council, new members aren’t as keen to go along with studying a town hall expansion.
Mayor Tyson, who supports the expansion, said in an interview that there have been recent staff increases at town hall that have made the lack of space obvious. Tyson agreed that housing regulations set up by the state to foment housing construction in communities like Los Altos Hills have created a greater need for staff and consultants. Ten years from now “I’m pretty darn sure we’re going to need that space,” Tyson said.
Tyson also added that the goal is to create a more attractive place to work.
“People are sharing cubicles, and we even have a cubicle in a conference room without proper resources,” Tyson said. “But it’s more than the staffing, it’s really about adding community space and a place to gather. We see other communities that have spaces like that, and we’re not trying to recreate them but I feel that there’s a need for more space.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com