CUPERTINO FACTS

Category: Housing & Development

  • EVULICH COURT INVESTIGATION — PART 3 OF 3

    EVULICH COURT INVESTIGATION — PART 3 OF 3

    The Architecture of Approval: How Summerhill’s Lawyers Built a Compliance Narrative That Didn’t Exist

    The developer’s legal team stretched a limited fire safety review into claims of comprehensive compliance that went far beyond what the Fire Department had actually evaluated. City staff echoed those claims without verification, the state relied on the staff report to instruct the city to assume compliance, and the same attorneys then cited the state’s letter to threaten the City Council — even after quietly shifting their own claims once residents identified the misrepresentation.

    Cupertino Facts • April 2026

    This is Part 3 of a three-part investigation into the Evulich Court project approval.

    • Part 1: The Paper Trail — The full story of how incomplete information flowed from city staff to HCD to the developer’s lawyers, and how the Fire Chief’s straightforward testimony exposed the gap.
    • Part 2: The Risks Residents Face — Evacuation gridlock, flawed studies, and what the city’s own data says about the danger to Linda Vista families.
    • Part 3: The Architecture of Approval — The developer’s legal strategy to stretch the record, the staff omissions that enabled it, and the circular argument that silenced safety concerns. (You are here)

    The Strategy: Build the Narrative, Then Weaponize It

    The approval of 51 townhomes in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone with reduced wildfire setbacks did not happen because the City Council determined the project was safe. It happened because the developer’s legal team at Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP built a self-reinforcing chain of compliance claims that no one in city government bothered to check:

    The strategy unfolded in stages, each building on the last, each taking the Fire Department’s limited but professionally rendered review and stretching it further than the underlying work supported. It succeeded because city staff chose not to verify the attorney’s claims before passing them to the Planning Commission — and because HCD accepted the staff report at face value.

    The Rules That Were Supposed to Apply

    The regulatory framework governing the Evulich Court project is detailed in Part 1. The key point for understanding the developer’s strategy: AB 130 allows qualifying projects to bypass CEQA environmental review, but draws a hard line at wildfire zones.

    Under AB 130, projects in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone are excluded from the CEQA exemption unless the developer demonstrates compliance with the state’s fire safety regulations. This is not a discretionary judgment call — it is a statutory prerequisite. Those regulations have two distinct components, each addressing a different aspect of wildfire protection:

    PRC § 4290 — State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations. These govern the structural and site design standards for new construction in fire hazard areas: road widths, water supply, signage, and critically, a mandatory 30-foot defensible space setback between new structures and adjacent property lines. The 30-foot setback is designed to prevent structure-to-structure fire spread — to ensure that if a new building ignites, the radiant heat does not reach neighboring homes, and vice versa. The regulations do allow for exceptions through an Alternative Means and Methods Request (AMMR), where a developer can propose alternative mitigations — such as enhanced sprinklers, fire-rated walls, or non-combustible materials — that provide the “same practical effect” as the standard setback. Such exceptions require approval from the fire authority and the Building Official.

    PRC § 4291 and Government Code § 51182 — Defensible Space. These statutes require up to 100 feet of defensible space clearance around structures in fire hazard areas. PRC § 4291 applies in State Responsibility Areas (SRAs — typically unincorporated wildland). Government Code § 51182 is its equivalent for Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones in Local Responsibility Areas (LRAs — cities and counties). Since Cupertino is a city, § 51182 is the directly applicable statute for the Evulich Court site. Both statutes establish the same framework of graduated defensible space zones:

    • Zone 0 (0–5 feet): The ember-resistant zone. All materials within 5 feet of the structure must be non-combustible or ember-resistant — hardscape, gravel, concrete. This is the last line of defense against ember showers.
    • Zone 1 (5–30 feet): The lean, clean, and green zone. Flammable materials are minimized, vegetation is maintained and spaced to slow fire spread. In urban infill settings near the wildland-urban interface, this 30-foot buffer is the recommended on-property defensible space perimeter — and it aligns directly with the 30-foot safe setback required under PRC § 4290.
    • Zone 2 (30–100 feet): The reduced fuel zone. Vegetation is thinned and managed to reduce the volume of combustible material that could carry a wildfire toward structures.

    The alignment between the § 4290 setback and the Zone 1 defensible space boundary is not a coincidence — both are designed to create the same 30-foot protective buffer. This is why reducing the setback to 10 feet has consequences beyond § 4290 alone: if the setback is reduced to 10 feet at the planning stage, there is no physical way to maintain 30 feet of Zone 1 defensible space on the property.

    AB 130 specifically requires that measures under § 4291 (and by extension § 51182 in LRAs) have been “adopted” for the CEQA exemption to apply. This is not a post-approval checklist item — it is a condition precedent. The defensible space evaluation must exist at the time the exemption is claimed.

    The Evulich Court site sits in the VHFHSZ, just a few hundred feet from the Monta Vista-Shannon Fault (magnitude 6.5–7.1) — close enough that a seismic event could rupture gas and water lines serving the neighborhood.

    To qualify for the AB 130 CEQA exemption and bypass environmental review, Summerhill needed to demonstrate compliance with both the setback requirements and the defensible space requirements.

    What the developer actually obtained was something far narrower: an AMMR exception to § 4290 that reduced the 30-foot setback to 10 feet. This was not compliance with § 4290 — it was a regulatory exception to it, approved based on the Fire Department’s professional judgment that alternative mitigations provided the “same practical effect.” And the defensible space requirements — whether under § 4291 or § 51182 — were never evaluated at all.

    The developer then took this single, narrow exception and represented it as the comprehensive fire safety compliance that AB 130 requires — using it as the basis to bypass the very environmental review that would have examined evacuation capacity, seismic compound risk, neighbor impact, and every other safety concern that residents raised and that the Fire Department confirmed it had never been asked to evaluate.

    Stage 1: The Limited Review Gets a Broad Label

    The foundation of everything that followed was the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s AMMR approval, issued January 5–7, 2026. The AMMR allowed the project to reduce the mandatory 30-foot wildfire setback to 10 feet, based on alternative fire mitigations including sprinklers and fire-rated walls.

    As Assistant Fire Chief Estrada testified on April 1: the AMMR was narrow in scope. It evaluated PRC § 4290 only — the state minimum fire safe regulations related to setbacks. It did not evaluate PRC § 4291 (defensible space), did not assess impacts on neighboring homes, did not assess evacuation, and the “same practical effect” finding was based on professional judgment rather than objective quantitative standards. As Estrada put it: “The exception request application was for 4290, not 4291.”

    The AMMR form itself reflected this limited scope — the Building Official signature line, required by the regulations, was left blank.

    City staff, in the February 24 Planning Commission staff report, summarized this review by stating the Fire Department “has demonstrated consistency with these requirements.” Staff had consistently deferred to the Fire Department on fire safety questions — a reasonable practice in general.

    This imprecise characterization became the seed from which the developer’s lawyers grew a much larger claim.

    Stage 2: The Developer’s Lawyers Stretch the Record

    Summerhill’s legal team took the staff report’s characterization and built an aggressive legal argument on top of it. In their February 12, 2026, letter to planning staff, and again in their April 1 letter to the City Council, Cox, Castle & Nicholson made a series of claims that went well beyond what the Fire Department had actually reviewed.

    Lawyer’s claim: “The Project is eligible for the AB 130 CEQA statutory exemption for infill housing projects.”

    The record: AB 130 requires that fire hazard mitigation measures under PRC § 4291 have been “adopted.” Estrada confirmed the Fire Department was never asked to evaluate § 4291 and did not sign off on it.

    When Council Member Wang pressed on this point, Estrada confirmed plainly that the Fire Department did not evaluate the project for purposes of the CEQA exemption the developer was claiming: “The exception request application was for 4290, not 4291.” Without a § 4291 evaluation, the statutory basis for the CEQA exemption does not exist. (See Part 1 for the full exchange.)

    Lawyer’s claim: The Fire Department found the Alternative Means provide “appropriate alternative methods to reduce the risk of structure-to-structure ignition.”

    The record: Estrada confirmed that the impact on existing neighboring homes was “outside of scope” for the evaluation. The Fire Department assessed the new structures; it did not assess whether the mitigations protected the 1950s-era homes next door.

    Lawyer’s claim: “Neither the City nor the Fire Department have identified any applicable, objective standards related to evacuation routes.”

    The record: The city’s own Fehr & Peers study, received in September–October 2025, contained detailed, quantitative evacuation capacity data showing routes at 360–420% of capacity. This data was in city files at the time the lawyer wrote these words.

    Lawyer’s claim: The project “is consistent with applicable, objective public health and safety standards” under the Housing Accountability Act.

    The record: Estrada confirmed the “same practical effect” finding was based on “professional judgment” and “experience” — not objective, quantitative standards. The HAA defines “objective” as “involving no personal or subjective judgment.” A finding based on professional judgment is, by the HAA’s own definition, subjective.

    Lawyer’s claim: The reduced setback is justified by “practical reasons” including “development density requirements.”

    The record: Estrada agreed with Vice Mayor Chao that the reduced setback is “a design choice” — not a site constraint: “I don’t disagree with anything you said. This is a design choice. This is for the applicant and the builder to answer.” Comparable projects — Vida in Sunnyvale (50 units, 53–65 ft setbacks) and Westport in Cupertino (88 units, code-compliant setbacks) — demonstrate the density can be achieved without reducing the safety buffer. The Evulich units average 2,369 sq ft with 4-bedroom luxury floor plans. The setback was reduced to accommodate unit size, not to meet density. The AMMR exception was used to backfill a safety gap created by the developer’s own design choices — not a site constraint necessitating a regulatory workaround. (See Part 1 for the full Chao-Estrada exchange.)

    A detailed analysis submitted by Linda Vista residents further documents that 30-foot setbacks are achievable on this site. The Evulich units average 2,369 sq ft, with some reaching 2,779 sq ft with 4 bedrooms and 2-car garages. The setback was reduced to accommodate luxury unit sizes, not to meet density.

    Stage 3: Obtaining the HCD Letter

    On March 30, 2026 — two days before the Council vote — HCD issued a “Letter of Support and Technical Assistance” to Community Development Director Ben Fu. (For the full context of this letter, see Part 1.) The letter’s factual basis and its enforcement implications are what matter for understanding the strategy.

    The letter’s factual foundation is traceable. Footnote 2 cites the Planning Commission staff report. Footnote 4, the critical fire safety reference, cites page 9 of that same staff report — the passage claiming the Fire Department “has demonstrated consistency with these requirements.”

    HCD’s letter advised the city to “assume compliance with local building codes” and defer verification to the “post-entitlement phase.” But this advice was predicated on the assumption that the project was undergoing a standard ministerial approval.

    The developer was actually seeking a CEQA exemption under AB 130 — which requires that fire safety compliance exist at the time of the exemption, not at some future date. HCD’s advice to defer was legally incompatible with the specific approval pathway the developer had chosen.

    Most critically, the letter informed the city that AB 712 had taken effect, creating financial penalties for jurisdictions that denied housing after being “advised in writing” of a potential violation. The letter itself was that written advice — a trigger mechanism that made denial financially punishable.

    The question HCD should be asked: Was HCD aware, at the time it issued its letter, that the Fire Department had not evaluated PRC § 4291? That neighbor impact and evacuation were “outside of scope”? That the fire safety finding rested on subjective professional judgment? That the city possessed a Fehr & Peers evacuation study showing routes at four times capacity?

    The Tell: How the Attorney’s Own Claims Built — Then Undermined — the Approval Chain

    Diagram showing how Cox Castle attorney claims traveled from their February letter to the staff report to HCD letter and back to their April letter, creating a circular dependency
    How the developer attorney’s compliance claims became self-reinforcing: their February assertions were echoed by city staff, cited by HCD, then used by the same attorneys to threaten the city — after quietly shifting the claims themselves.

    A side-by-side reading of the developer’s two Cox, Castle & Nicholson letters reveals something more than a change in legal posture. It reveals the architecture of a circular argument — one where the attorney’s own claims became the foundation for the very authority they later cited to threaten the city.

    Here is how it worked. In their February 12 letter to the Planning Commission, Cox Castle stated that the Fire Department had “confirmed” the project’s compliance with PRC §§ 4290, 4291, and Chapter 7A of the Building Code. City staff then echoed these claims — without independent verification — in the Planning Commission staff report dated February 25. HCD, in turn, relied on that staff report when it wrote its March 30 letter instructing the city to “assume compliance” with local safety codes. The attorney’s unverified assertion had traveled from letter to staff report to state agency directive — gaining authority at each step while never being checked against reality.

    Then residents of the Linda Vista neighborhood identified the misrepresentation: the Fire Department had never evaluated PRC § 4290 compliance and could not have “confirmed” it. Faced with this challenge, Cox Castle’s April 1 letter to the City Council quietly abandoned the original claim. Compliance was no longer “confirmed” — it “will be verified” at the post-entitlement phase. But the letter did not retract the February claim that had already been laundered through the staff report and into HCD’s directive. Instead, it cited that very HCD letter — built on the now-abandoned claim — as the basis for threatening the city with litigation under AB 712.

    The claim changed, but the chain it built did not. The February assertion created a paper trail of apparent compliance. When residents forced the claim to shift, the attorney simply pointed to the end of the chain — HCD’s letter — as independent authority, even though HCD had relied on the very assertion the attorney had now walked back. This is the circular logic at the heart of the Evulich Court approval.

    Stage 4: The Letter Becomes a Weapon

    The final stage was the most transparent. On the morning of April 1, Cox, Castle & Nicholson submitted their 10-page letter to the City Council with the HCD letter attached as “Exhibit A.” The developer’s own claims had traveled a full circle: from the developer’s representations, into the staff report, to HCD, and back to the Council chamber, now wearing the imprimatur of an independent state agency.

    The letter warned of “$10,000 per unit” fines and payment of the developer’s attorney fees. It framed approval as a legal obligation, not a policy choice. The developer’s attorneys had successfully transformed a public safety hearing into a legal compliance exercise where the outcome was predetermined.

    The coercive effect was evident in the Council’s own words: Mayor Moore called the project “not a good design at all” — and voted yes. Only Council Member Wang dissented. (For the full account of the April 1 hearing and the Council vote, see Part 1.)

    The Staff Omissions That Made It Possible

    The developer’s legal strategy could not have succeeded without gaps in how city staff managed the flow of information. Staff did not construct the compliance narrative — but four critical omissions allowed it to move through the system unchallenged. (The full timeline of these omissions is documented in Part 1.)

    The evacuation study. The city received the Fehr & Peers evacuation capacity study in the September–October 2025 timeframe. This study showed that evacuation routes serving the Linda Vista area were already at over four times their design capacity. It was not included in the Planning Commission’s agenda packet for the February 24 hearing. It was not shared with HCD. It was not presented to the Council. Meanwhile, the developer’s attorneys were repeatedly telling decision-makers that no applicable evacuation data existed. Staff had the data that refuted this claim and did not produce it.

    The staff report and the missing AMMR. The February 24 staff report stated the Fire Department “has demonstrated consistency with these requirements” — language that conveyed comprehensive fire safety compliance. Staff had deferred to the Fire Department, which is common practice. But the Fire Department’s review was limited to PRC § 4290 only, with the Building Official signature left blank and no evaluation of § 4291, neighbor impact, or evacuation. The staff report did not communicate these limitations. Critically, staff did not even include the AMMR form itself in the Planning Commission’s agenda packet — the foundational document that authorized the setback reduction. Commissioners voted to recommend approval without being able to see for themselves that the review covered only § 4290, that the Building Official had not signed it, or that its scope was far narrower than the staff report implied. When the developer’s lawyers subsequently used the staff report’s language to claim full compliance, staff did not correct the record.

    Planning Commissioner Tracy Kosolcharoen flagged this problem directly. In a March 17 letter to the City Council, she confirmed that the Planning Commission did not have the evacuation study during its February 24 vote. She also reported that a representative from the same environmental consulting firm that processed the Evulich AB 130 exemption had told over 100 planning commissioners at a professional academy that VHFHSZ developments “should NOT be exempt from CEQA via AB 130.” Kosolcharoen asked the Council:

    Who is the final arbiter of AB 130 applications? Is it the developer’s consultant, the fire department, or the city? She warned that the decision “sets a precedent for future decisions.”

    The failure to evaluate the setback justification. The AMMR regulations require “practical reasons” for a setback reduction, listing factors like parcel dimensions, topographic limitations, and other site constraints. The developer claimed the reduction from 30 feet to 10 feet was necessary for density. But a detailed analysis submitted by Linda Vista residents on March 13 demonstrated that 30-foot setbacks are achievable on this site, citing comparable projects at Vida and Westport that met density targets with code-compliant setbacks. Staff did not independently evaluate whether the developer’s justification met the regulatory standard — and the Fire Chief himself later confirmed it was “a design choice,” not a site constraint.

    The failure to flag the § 4291 gap. AB 130’s CEQA exemption requires compliance with PRC § 4291. The Fire Department had not evaluated § 4291 — a fact Estrada confirmed plainly when asked. This was not a technicality; it was a threshold requirement for the specific approval pathway the developer had chosen. City staff did not flag this gap to the Planning Commission, to HCD, or to the Council. The developer’s lawyers were allowed to assert AB 130 eligibility without the statutory predicate being met.

    To be clear: City staff did not create the developer’s compliance narrative. Summerhill’s attorneys did that. Staff’s role was one of omission rather than commission — they did not surface contradicting data, did not correct escalating mischaracterizations, and did not flag a missing statutory requirement.

    What the Record Now Shows

    The approval of the Evulich Court project was not the result of a finding that the project is safe. It was the result of a legal strategy that manufactured the appearance of compliance and used state enforcement mechanisms to ensure the City Council could not say no. The developer’s attorneys built a chain of claims that traveled from their letters to the staff report to HCD and back — gaining authority at each step while the underlying assertions were never verified and, when challenged, were quietly changed. City staff did not create this narrative, but their failure to verify the claims, surface their own contradicting data, or flag a missing statutory requirement allowed it to move through the system unchallenged. (For the full testimony of Assistant Fire Chief Estrada and the detailed timeline, see Part 1: The Paper Trail.)

    The record now contains everything a reviewing body would need to understand what happened: the developer’s claims, the Fire Chief’s actual testimony, the city’s hidden evacuation data, and the HCD letter built on incomplete information. Whether that record leads to accountability depends on whether anyone with authority is willing to look at it.

    Media Coverage

    This story has been covered by local and regional news outlets:

    Read the Full Series

    • Part 1: The Paper Trail — The full story, end to end.
    • Part 2: The Risks Residents Face — Evacuation fiction vs. fact on Linda Vista Drive.

    Previously: Who Is Responsible for Fire Safety at Evulich Court? Nobody, Apparently.

  • EVULICH COURT INVESTIGATION — PART 2 OF 3

    EVULICH COURT INVESTIGATION — PART 2 OF 3

    The Risks Residents Face: Evacuation Fiction vs. Fact on Linda Vista Drive

    The developer says the project adds two minutes to evacuation time. The city’s own data shows the roads are already at four times capacity. An independent engineer’s analysis says it’s even worse. Which version should families trust with their lives?

    Cupertino Facts • April 2026

    This is Part 2 of a three-part investigation into the Evulich Court project approval.

    • Part 1: The Paper Trail — The full story of how incomplete information flowed from city staff to HCD to the developer’s lawyers, and how the Fire Chief’s straightforward testimony exposed the gap.
    • Part 2: The Risks Residents Face — Evacuation gridlock, flawed studies, and what the city’s own data says about the danger to Linda Vista families. (You are here)
    • Part 3: The Architecture of Approval — The developer’s legal strategy to stretch the record, the staff omissions that enabled it, and the circular argument that silenced safety concerns.

    One Neighborhood, Two Completely Different Assessments

    When the Cupertino City Council voted on the Evulich Court project on April 1, 2026, two evacuation analyses existed for the Linda Vista corridor. They were produced using different methodologies, different assumptions about who would be evacuating, and different assumptions about road capacity. They reached conclusions so divergent that they describe what amount to two different neighborhoods.

    The developer’s analysis, produced by Hexagon Transportation Consultants at Summerhill’s request, concluded the project would add just 3.6 percent to evacuation traffic and approximately two minutes to evacuation time. It described the impact as one that “would not significantly affect traffic evacuation volumes or conditions.”

    The city’s own analysis, produced by Fehr & Peers — a nationally recognized transportation firm the city had commissioned — found something altogether different. It found that the evacuation routes serving the Linda Vista area were already operating at over four times their design capacity during a wildfire scenario. Not with the project — without it.

    How can two professional analyses of the same neighborhood reach such radically different conclusions? The answer lies in what each study chose to count — and what it chose to ignore.

    The Hexagon Study: What the Developer Didn’t Count

    The Hexagon Transportation analysis, dated February 26, 2026, was submitted by Summerhill’s own team. It was characterized by the developer’s attorneys, in their letter to city staff, as “a voluntary, non-CEQA, informational assessment prepared at the request of the applicant for internal purposes.” In other words, even the developer described it as an informal, voluntary exercise — not a regulatory analysis.

    The study’s methodology had two fundamental limitations that dramatically understated the evacuation challenge.

    First, it counted only project residents in its evacuation volume estimate. It did not account for the students at nearby Monta Vista High School or Kennedy Junior High, the hikers on the Linda Vista Trail, the commuters on local roads, or the existing residents of the broader Linda Vista neighborhood who would all be evacuating simultaneously. In a wildfire scenario, evacuation demand comes from everyone in the threat zone, not just the residents of a single development.

    Second, it assumed a road capacity of 2,700 vehicles per hour — a figure based on clear-sky, ideal driving conditions. It did not adjust for the conditions that actually accompany a wildfire evacuation: heavy smoke reducing visibility, panicked drivers, contraflow from emergency vehicles, or the well-documented breakdown in intersection efficiency that occurs during mass evacuations.

    Third, but perhaps most important:

    It ignored the capacity of Linda Vista Drive, where all the vehicles from the new development will be exiting into.

    Under these favorable assumptions, the study naturally concluded the project’s impact would be minimal — a two-minute delay on a 59-minute baseline.

    The Fehr & Peers Study: What the City Already Knew

    The Fehr & Peers study used a fundamentally different — and more realistic — methodology. It counted all evacuating populations in the area, including school populations, hikers, and commuters. And it used wildfire-adjusted road capacity of approximately 570 vehicles per hour — a figure that accounts for smoke, low visibility, and emergency panic conditions. This is less than a quarter of the capacity Hexagon assumed.

    The results were alarming.

    McClellan Road, a key evacuation route, showed a volume-to-capacity ratio of 4.2 — meaning 420 percent of the road’s realistic emergency capacity. Foothill Boulevard showed a ratio of 4.0. Stevens Creek Boulevard registered at 3.6.

    What these numbers mean in practice: A volume-to-capacity ratio above 1.0 means the road cannot handle the traffic being placed on it. At a ratio of 4.0, vehicles are not moving through the corridor — they are sitting in gridlock.

    This is the scenario that has turned fatal in wildfires from Paradise to Lahaina: not that people didn’t try to evacuate, but that the roads couldn’t carry them.

    The city received this study in the September–October 2025 timeframe. It was not included in the Planning Commission’s agenda packet for the February 24, 2026, hearing. It was not referenced in the staff report. Its unlikely to be shared with HCD before HCD issued its March 30 letter. The developer’s attorneys, in their April 1 letter, told the Council there were no “applicable, objective standards related to evacuation routes” — while this study sat in city files.

    One Neighborhood, Two Realities

    FactorHexagon (Developer)Fehr & Peers (City)
    Commissioned bySummerHill HomesCity of Cupertino
    Populations countedProject residents onlyAll residents, school populations, hikers, commuters
    Road capacity assumed2,700 vehicles/hour (clear sky, ideal conditions)~570 vehicles/hour (wildfire-adjusted: smoke, low visibility, panic)
    Conclusion3.6% increase; 2-minute delayRoutes already at 360–420% of capacity
    Study type“Voluntary, non-CEQA, internal review”City-commissioned expert analysis
    Shared with decision-makers?Yes — cited in developer’s legal letterNo — not included in Planning Commission packet, not shared with HCD

    DerChang Kau’s Independent Analysis: The Linda Vista Spine

    At the April 1 Council hearing, Cupertino resident and engineer DerChang Kau presented an independent evacuation analysis that added a critical dimension the other studies lacked: a focus on the Linda Vista corridor itself — the single-access spine that all Evulich Court traffic must use to reach the broader road network.

    Kau’s presentation, titled “Wildfire Evacuation in VHFHSZ on the Top of Active Fault,” documented the compound hazard facing the neighborhood. The site sits not only in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone but just a few hundred feet from the Monta Vista-Shannon Fault, capable of producing earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 to 7.1.

    A seismic event — even independent of a wildfire — could rupture gas and water lines in the corridor. During a wildfire, loss of water pressure would cripple firefighting capacity, and a gas line break could create secondary ignition sources, compounding an already catastrophic evacuation scenario.

    Kau traced the history of how evacuation concerns were handled. In October 2025, city planning staff acknowledged in writing the need for an evacuation route assessment. In January 2026, Kau himself met with Summerhill’s leadership team for over 90 minutes, sharing detailed evacuation risk data for the corridor. Summerhill proceeded without addressing the concerns.

    His analysis exposed the real-world conditions that Hexagon’s clear-sky model ignored. He documented Highway 85 traffic backed up during a normal Wednesday morning commute. He showed photographs of local streets overwhelmed during school afternoon pickup periods, with curbside parking further reducing effective road capacity. These are the baseline conditions — before a wildfire adds thousands of panicked evacuees to the same roads.

    The core of Kau’s argument was that adding 51 units — generating over 100 additional vehicles — to a cul-de-sac that empties into an evacuation corridor already failing at four times its design capacity is not a two-minute inconvenience. It is a compounding failure. Every additional vehicle in a gridlocked corridor doesn’t add seconds — it adds to the cascading breakdown of the entire system.

    Kau put it plainly to the Council: you cannot plan a community’s survival based on a developer’s spreadsheet that erases its children from the map.

    The Fire Safety Gaps: What Wasn’t Evaluated

    The evacuation problem is compounded by the gaps in the fire safety review that Assistant Fire Chief Estrada identified in his testimony.

    The Fire Department’s evaluation focused on the new structures — the 51 townhomes — and specifically on PRC § 4290 setback requirements. It did not extend to the impact on existing homes in the neighborhood.

    This matters because of the physics of the proposed design. The project calls for three-story townhomes with one-hour fire-rated walls built just 10 feet from existing single-story homes constructed in the 1950s. These older homes have standard wood-frame construction with no enhanced fire rating. At a 10-foot separation, radiant heat exposure increases dramatically (9x) compared to the code-standard 30-foot setback.

    Vice Mayor Chao raised this directly with Estrada, asking how the proposed measures could provide the “same practical effect” as a 30-foot setback when the neighboring homes lack modern fire-resistant features.

    Estrada was candid that his department’s enforcement authority stops at the property line — the condition of neighboring structures, their vulnerability to radiant heat, and the adequacy of their owners’ defensible space were not within the scope of the review he was asked to conduct.

    The developer’s own third-party fire plan reviewer acknowledged as much on March 17, 2026, stating clearly that being code-compliant does not imply eliminating all hazards and risks.

    The compound risk facing Linda Vista residents:

    • Evacuation routes that are already at four times their design capacity.
    • A fire safety review that excluded neighbor impact, evacuation, and defensible space under PRC § 4291.
    • Reduced setbacks that increase radiant heat exposure to unprotected 1950s-era homes.
    • A site that sits atop an active fault line.
    • And a developer-funded evacuation study that counted only its own residents and assumed perfect driving conditions.

    What Residents Are Left With

    The families along Linda Vista Drive, Evulich Court, and the surrounding streets are left with a project that was approved based on a version of the facts that doesn’t match the city’s own data. The developer’s evacuation study — voluntary, non-CEQA, and built on assumptions that excluded most of the evacuating population and inflated road capacity by nearly five times — was the only evacuation analysis placed before decision-makers. The city’s own Fehr & Peers study, which showed a catastrophically different picture, was never surfaced.

    When Council Member Wang asked the Fire Chief whether evacuation had been considered, Estrada confirmed it was out of scope.

    When Wang asked the City Attorney about the city’s liability if a fire caused harm, the answer was that the city would likely be shielded.

    The residents, of course, have no such shield.

    Resident Ying Sosic captured the human dimension of these numbers at the hearing:

    “Think about it as all of us humans, just trying to survive, just trying to get out.”

    The data exists to evaluate the risk. The city commissioned it. The question is why it was never placed in front of the people making the decision.

    Media Coverage

    This story has been covered by local and regional news outlets:

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    Previously: Who Is Responsible for Fire Safety at Evulich Court? Nobody, Apparently.

  • EVULICH COURT INVESTIGATION — PART 1 OF 3

    EVULICH COURT INVESTIGATION — PART 1 OF 3

    The Paper Trail: How a Developer Used State Power to Override Fire Safety in Cupertino’s Wildfire Zone

    On April 1, Assistant Fire Chief Hector Estrada, described, without embellishment, the limited scope of his department’s review — and in doing so, exposed how others had mischaracterized that review to force approval of 51 townhomes in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. How did the state get misled — and who controlled the information?

    Cupertino Facts • April 2026

    This is Part 1 of a three-part investigation into the Evulich Court project approval.

    • Part 1: The Paper Trail — The full story of how incomplete information flowed from city staff to HCD to the developer’s lawyers, and how the Fire Chief’s straightforward testimony exposed the gap. (You are here)
    • Part 2: The Risks Residents Face — Evacuation gridlock, flawed studies, and what the city’s own data says about the danger to Linda Vista families.
    • Part 3: The Architecture of Approval — Staff misdirection, the developer’s legal strategy, and the circular argument that silenced safety concerns.

    Previously: Who Is Responsible for Fire Safety at Evulich Court? Nobody, Apparently.

    The Vote

    On the evening of April 1, 2026, the Cupertino City Council voted 4-1 to approve a 51-unit luxury townhome development by Summerhill Homes at 10857 Linda Vista Drive — a 2.53-acre site in the city’s recently designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. The proposal asked to reduce the mandatory 30-foot wildfire setback to just 10 feet along property lines shared with existing 1950s-era homes.

    The sole dissenting vote came from Council Member R. “Ray” Wang, who posed a question that hung over the chamber: “What’s the consequences if we allow 800 residents to be in a severe fire with no evacuation routes?”

    Mayor Kitty Moore, who voted to approve, offered her own assessment before casting her vote: “My frank opinion of this is that this is not a good design at all.”

    If four of five council members had misgivings about safety, why did the project pass?

    The answer lies in a paper trail that runs from Cupertino City Hall to Sacramento and back — a chain of incomplete information, legal threats, and a state agency letter that, by the time the council voted, had made the outcome all but inevitable.

    Why This Site Is Different: The Regulatory Framework

    To understand what happened, it helps to understand the laws that are supposed to govern development in wildfire zones. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires environmental review before most development projects can be approved — an analysis of impacts including traffic, noise, air quality, and natural hazards like wildfire and seismic risk. That review is the public’s primary tool for ensuring that safety concerns are evaluated before a project breaks ground.

    AB 130, a housing streamlining law, allows certain infill projects to bypass CEQA review. But the Legislature recognized the danger of skipping environmental review in fire-prone areas: AB 130 specifically excludes projects in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ) — unless the developer can demonstrate compliance with the state’s fire safety regulations. Those regulations have two parts. PRC § 4290 sets structural standards including a mandatory 30-foot defensible space setback between new construction and adjacent properties. PRC § 4291 and its local equivalent, Government Code § 51182, require up to 100 feet of defensible space clearance around structures — vegetation management, fuel reduction, and maintenance of the buffer zone that gives firefighters room to work and residents time to evacuate. Critically, the most intensive defensible space zone extends 30 feet from the structure — the same distance as the § 4290 setback.

    Reduce the setback, and the defensible space becomes physically impossible to maintain.

    The Evulich Court project sits in the VHFHSZ. The law gave Summerhill a clear choice.

    • If the developer wanted to bypass CEQA under AB 130, it needed to maintain the 30-foot setbacks and demonstrate full compliance with fire safety regulations — the trade-off the Legislature struck for skipping environmental review in a wildfire zone.
    • Alternatively, if the developer wanted to reduce setbacks below 30 feet, it could seek an exception — but it would need to go through CEQA, the environmental review process designed to ensure that fire safety, evacuation capacity, and neighbor impacts are evaluated before the project is approved.

    What Summerhill got was neither path. It obtained an exception reducing the setback to as little as 10 feet and bypassed CEQA entirely.

    Reduced safety buffers with no environmental review — in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, a few hundred feet from an active fault line. The question this series examines is how.

    The Timeline: What Was Known, When, and By Whom

    March 2025 — CAL FIRE designates the Evulich Court area and the Linda Vista neighborhood as a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. The site lies just a few hundred feet from the Monta Vista-Shannon Fault (magnitude 6.5–7.1) — close enough that a seismic event could rupture gas and water lines serving the neighborhood. This compound hazard — wildfire and earthquake risk in the same corridor — is exactly what the California Environmental Quality Act is designed to evaluate.

    September–October 2025 — The city receives the Fehr & Peers evacuation capacity study it had commissioned. The findings are alarming: McClellan Road operates at a volume-to-capacity ratio of 4.2 and Foothill Boulevard at 4.0 during a wildfire scenario.

    Evacuation routes are already at over four times their design capacity.

    This study is not shared with the Planning Commission till March 2026

    October 10, 2025 — City planning staff acknowledges in an email the need for an evacuation route assessment for the Linda Vista corridor.

    January 5–7, 2026 — The Santa Clara County Fire Department issues an Alternative Means and Methods Request (AMMR) approval, allowing the setback reduction from 30 feet to 10 feet. The approval covers PRC § 4290 only. The Building Official signature line is left blank.

    February 24, 2026 — The Planning Commission votes 3-2 to recommend approval. The staff report states the Fire Department “has demonstrated consistency with these requirements.”

    Neither the Fehr & Peers evacuation study nor the AMMR form, the very document that authorized the setback reduction, are included in the Planning Commission’s agenda packet.

    The Commissioners vote without seeing the foundational fire safety document or the city’s own evacuation data.

    March 13, 2026 — Residents of the Linda Vista neighborhood submit a detailed analysis demonstrating that 30-foot setbacks can be achieved on the Evulich Court site — citing comparable projects at Vida (Sunnyvale) and Westport (Cupertino) that met density requirements with code-compliant setbacks and smaller unit sizes.

    March 17, 2026 — The City Council continues the hearing. That same day, Planning Commissioner Tracy Kosolcharoen sends a letter to the City Council warning of the information gaps. She confirms that the Planning Commission did not have the evacuation study during the February 24 hearing, and reports that a representative from the same environmental consulting firm that processed the Evulich AB 130 exemption request stated at a Planning Commissioners Academy that VHFHSZ developments “should NOT be exempt from CEQA via AB 130.” Kosolcharoen raises pointed questions: “Is there a discretionary element to AB 130?” and “Who is the final arbiter of AB 130 applications?” She warns the Council that the Evulich decision “sets a precedent for future decisions.”

    March 27, 2026 — Residents of the Linda Vista neighborhood submit a letter alleging factual discrepancies in the project’s CEQA compliance claims made by the developer’s lawyers.

    March 30, 2026 — The California Department of Housing and Community Development issues a “Letter of Support and Technical Assistance” to Community Development Director Ben Fu. The letter cites the Planning Commission staff report and the developer’s representations as its factual basis. It warns of AB 712 penalties and references Attorney General enforcement. It arrives two days before the Council vote.

    April 1, 2026 — Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP, Summerhill’s attorneys, submit a 10-page letter to the Council citing the HCD letter as “Exhibit A” and threatening fines of $10,000 per unit. That evening, Assistant Fire Chief Hector Estrada testifies under questioning and describes, without embellishment, the limited scope of his department’s review — answers that expose how both letters had mischaracterized the Fire Department’s findings.

    The Council votes 4-1 to approve.

    What the Fire Chief Actually Said

    The most consequential moments of the April 1 hearing came not during public comment, but during the testimony of Assistant Fire Chief Hector Estrada in response to questions by Council Member Wang and Vice Mayor Liang Chao.

    Under sustained questioning from the two council members, Estrada delivered a thoroughly professional testimony: direct, precise, and without embellishment, drawing clear lines around what his department had and had not been asked to evaluate.

    The problem was not his testimony, it was that his unvarnished answers revealed how others had been mischaracterizing the scope and conclusions of his department’s work for months.

    When Wang asked whether the Fire Department’s evaluation considered the fire safety impact on existing homes along the project’s southern and northern boundaries, Estrada was characteristically direct:

    Assistant Fire Chief Estrada:“Off-site improvements or off-site focus is one of those things that is outside of scope for that evaluation.”

    When Wang asked whether the Fire Department had signed off on PRC § 4291 — the defensible space requirements that AB 130 requires for a CEQA exemption — Estrada was clear about the boundaries of what his department had been asked to review:

    Assistant Fire Chief Estrada:“The exception request application was for 4290, not 4291.”

    Wang then pressed on the critical implication: under AB 130, a § 4291 evaluation is required to qualify for the CEQA exemption — so what happens without one? Estrada confirmed plainly that § 4291 compliance had not been evaluated and that the Fire Department would address it later, at the permit stage. He stated plainly that the Fire Department did not evaluate the project for purposes of the CEQA exemption the developer was claiming — a fact that went directly against the developer’s central legal argument.

    When Wang raised the city’s own Fehr & Peers data showing evacuation routes at over four times capacity, Estrada acknowledged that evacuation had never been part of the review he was asked to conduct:

    Assistant Fire Chief Estrada:“This was out of scope for this particular evaluation, and so evacuation routes were out of scope in this evaluation.”

    When Wang pressed on what analysis supported the conclusion that the mitigations would adequately protect unprotected neighboring structures, Estrada confirmed it was not based on quantitative modeling:

    Assistant Fire Chief Estrada:“This is based on… experience and our engineering staff’s credential and their experience as well.”

    And when Vice Mayor Chao asked how the reduced setback could be justified when the developer could build smaller units and maintain the 30-foot buffer, Estrada agreed it was not a site constraint:

    Assistant Fire Chief Estrada:“I don’t disagree with anything you said. This is a design choice. This is for the applicant and the builder to answer.”

    What Estrada’s testimony made clear: The Fire Department’s review was limited to PRC § 4290 setbacks. Defensible space, neighbor impact, evacuation, and the CEQA exemption the developer was claiming were all outside its scope — and the finding rested on professional judgment, not objective quantitative standards. None of this was hidden by the Fire Department. The problem is that others had characterized Estrada’s work as establishing something far broader than what he described.

    The HCD Letter: Built on Incomplete Information

    Two days before the vote, on March 30, 2026, the California Department of Housing and Community Development issued a three-page letter to Cupertino’s Community Development Director Ben Fu. Signed by Melinda Coy, Housing Accountability Unit Chief, the letter framed itself as “technical assistance” but carried unmistakable enforcement weight. It informed the city that AB 712 had taken effect, increasing penalties for local governments that had been “advised in writing” that their actions would violate housing laws. The letter itself was that written advice — a trigger mechanism that made denial financially punishable.

    But the letter’s factual foundation rested almost entirely on the Planning Commission staff report. Footnote 4 is revealing: HCD states that the project is consistent with VHFHSZ regulations, citing page 9 of the staff report, which claims the Fire Department “has demonstrated consistency with these requirements.” Estrada’s testimony two days later showed how much broader that characterization was than the limited review it described.

    The question is what HCD would have done with a complete picture — one that included the gaps Estrada identified and the evacuation data the city had but never surfaced. Part 3 of this series traces exactly how information flowed to HCD and where it broke down.

    The Developer’s Letter: Stretching the Record, Then Weaponizing It

    On the morning of April 1, hours before the hearing, Summerhill’s attorneys at Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP submitted a 10-page letter to the City Council. The letter attached the HCD letter as “Exhibit A” and warned that denial would expose the city to “fines of a minimum of $10,000 per unit (with enhanced penalties in the event of bad faith or prior noncompliance) and payment of Summerhill’s attorneys’ fees.”

    The letter was the culmination of a strategy that had been building for months: take the Fire Department’s limited PRC § 4290 review, represent it as comprehensive fire safety compliance, present that characterization to HCD, and then cite HCD’s resulting letter as independent state authority confirming the developer’s own claims. The “independent state review” was, in effect, the developer’s arguments reflected back through a state agency. Part 3 of this series examines each specific claim in the developer’s letter against what the Fire Chief actually testified.

    The False Choice: Liability vs. Safety

    Perhaps the most revealing exchange of the evening came when Council Member Wang asked the City Attorney a direct question: if the project is approved and a fire later causes harm to residents, what is the city’s liability?

    The City Attorney could not point to any safety finding that would protect residents. Instead, she fell back on the city’s legal immunity — the city would likely be shielded from tort liability. That was the best answer available: not that the project was safe, but that the city probably couldn’t be sued for approving it. Meanwhile, the city faced immediate, concrete enforcement exposure from HCD — the AB 712 penalties, the potential Attorney General action — if it denied the project in the face of the state letter.

    The Council was not evaluating whether the project was safe. It was calculating which legal risk was more tolerable: the distant possibility of fire liability (mitigated by the city’s tort immunity) versus the immediate certainty of state enforcement (guaranteed by the HCD letter sitting in front of them). The residents, of course, have no such immunity.

    Mayor Moore said the project was “not a good design at all” — and then voted yes.

    The HCD letter had done its work. The question before the Council should have been: is this project safe? Instead, it had become: which lawsuit can we better survive?

    Who Controls the Information?

    In March, this publication asked: “Who is responsible for fire safety at Evulich Court?” The Fire Department said its review “is not a determination that the fire code has been satisfied.” The City relied entirely on that review as proof of compliance. Nobody owned the gap.

    The April 1 testimony has clarified the picture. The Fire Department was never the problem — Estrada answered every question directly, acknowledging the gaps in his department’s review without embellishment or evasion. The primary driver of the mischaracterization was the developer’s legal team, which stretched the Fire Department’s limited review into claims of comprehensive compliance.

    City staff’s role was different but still consequential:

    • they did not initiate the mischaracterization, but they failed to correct it
    • did not surface the insufficient density for setback reduction,
    • failed to surface their own evacuation data
    • and failed to provide decision-makers with the foundational documents — including the AMMR form itself — that would have revealed the gaps.

    Planning Commissioner Tracy Kosolcharoen warned the Council of exactly these information gaps two weeks before the vote, but the warning went unheeded. Part 3 of this series examines these omissions in detail.

    What Happens Now

    The question for Cupertino is no longer just about one development on Linda Vista Drive. It is whether the coercive power of the state can be activated by a developer’s legal team stretching the record beyond what it supports, aided by a city staff that failed to correct those claims or surface its own contradicting data — and then used to silence the safety concerns of an entire neighborhood, even when the city’s own Fire Chief, answering plainly under direct questioning, confirms those concerns were never part of the review he was asked to conduct.

    Parts 2 and 3 of this series will examine the specific risks facing Linda Vista residents — including the hidden evacuation data and DerChang Kau’s independent modeling — and the detailed paper trail of staff decisions and legal strategy that brought the project to this point.

    Media Coverage

    This story has been covered by local and regional news outlets:

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    Featured image: Assistant Fire Chief Hector Estrada, Santa Clara County Fire Department. Photo courtesy of SCCFD.

  • Who Is Responsible for Fire Safety at Evulich Court? Nobody, Apparently.

    Who Is Responsible for Fire Safety at Evulich Court? Nobody, Apparently.

    The Evulich Court project proposes 51 townhomes in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. To fit the oversized units (~2700 sf) on the site, the developer requested — and received — a reduction of the mandatory 30-foot wildfire setback to just 10 feet along the boundaries facing existing single-family homes. Somebody had to take responsibility for that decision. As it turns out, nobody did.

    The Accountability Gap

    David Yan’s op-ed in the San Jose Spotlight (March 16, 2026) highlights the evacuation side of this problem: the City of Cupertino commissioned an evacuation capacity study that found roadways in this area already exceed 200% of capacity during a wildfire event — and then never entered that study into the record for the Planning Commission hearing that approved the project.

    This article examines the other side: the fire department’s own review of the setback reduction, and the gap in accountability between the Santa Clara County Fire Department (SCCFD) and the City of Cupertino.

    The SCCFD says its review is not an approval of a code violation. The City of Cupertino says fire safety review is SCCFD’s domain and relies entirely on the AMMR as evidence of fire safety compliance. Neither entity has produced a documented technical analysis demonstrating that the reduced setback provides equivalent protection for the surrounding neighborhood.

    The residents — and the firefighters who will respond to this address — are the ones left in the middle.

    What Was Approved

    The project at 10857 Linda Vista Drive is a 51-unit townhome development by SummerHill Homes. The site is designated as a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ).

    Under the Board of Forestry Fire Safe Regulations (California Code of Regulations, Title 14, §1276.01), all parcels in a VHFHSZ must provide a minimum 30-foot setback from property lines. This is not a building code technicality — it is a wildfire safety standard designed to protect the surrounding neighborhood or community from fire spreading between structures (14 CCR §1270.01).

    SummerHill filed an Alternative Means and Methods Request (AMMR) to reduce this setback:

    • Northern property line (facing single-family homes): reduced to 10 feet
    • Southern property line (facing single-family homes): reduced to 10 feet
    • Western property line (the wildland-urban interface): reduced to 20 feet

    Filed, Accepted, and Done: The One-Day Timeline

    The AMMR was filed on January 5, 2026. It was accepted by the Fire Official on January 6. The Fire Prevention Plan Review was completed on January 7.

    The administrative record contains no documentation of what technical analysis was performed during this one-day period to support the determination that a 10-foot setback provides the same practical fire-safety effect as the 30-foot standard.

    This matters because the standard is not trivial. Research by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST TN 2205) has found that intense radiant heat from a fully involved structure can ignite another structure at distances of approximately 30 feet, and that increasing spacing from 10 meters to 30 meters increases resistance to fire spread by a factor of ten. Post-disaster analysis of the 2023 Lahaina fire by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) identified structure spacing as the single most critical factor in structure-to-structure fire spread.

    The SCCFD plan review itself describes the reduced setbacks as “deficiencies to non-conforming 30′ setback requirements” to be mitigated. This is the language of a known shortfall — not a finding that the proposed alternative achieves equivalent protection.

    SCCFD Says It’s Not an Approval. The City Treats It as One.

    This is where the accountability gap becomes clear.

    The SCCFD’s own Fire Prevention Plan Review includes a bold-face disclaimer:

    The SCCFD disclaimer on the Evulich Court fire safety review
    The SCCFD disclaimer on the Evulich Court fire safety review — from their own approval document.

    Read that again. The fire department is explicitly saying: this document is not a determination that the fire code has been satisfied.

    Meanwhile, the City of Cupertino’s staff report and AB 130 qualification memo treat the AMMR as the definitive proof that fire safety has been addressed. The City has delegated fire-related review to SCCFD and has not conducted its own independent fire safety analysis.

    SCCFD says: “Our review is not an approval of compliance.”

    The City says: “Fire safety is SCCFD’s responsibility, and they approved it.”

    Result: No entity has taken ownership of the determination that the 10-foot setback is safe for the surrounding community.

    The Missing Signature

    The AMMR form requires dual review. Under the California Fire Code (CFC 104.10), the Fire Official must find that the proposed alternative is “not less than the equivalent” of the code standard. Under the California Building Code (CBC 104.11), the Building Official has the identical obligation. The SCCFD’s own AMMR form reflects this, with signature lines for both officials.

    The Fire Official — SCCFD — has signed.

    The Building Official line — which corresponds to the City of Cupertino’s building authority — is blank.

    AMMR signature lines
    The Fire Official signed. The Building Official signature line — the City of Cupertino’s building authority — remains blank.

    Without the Building Official’s evaluation and signature, the AMMR has not completed the dual review required by the fire department’s own approval form and by both the California Building Code and the California Fire Code.

    The AMMR Was Not in the Planning Commission Agenda

    The Planning Commission voted 3-2 on February 24, 2026 to recommend the project to City Council.

    The AMMR document — the entire basis for the project’s fire safety compliance claim — was not included in the Planning Commission agenda packet. The commissioners and the public were asked to evaluate the project’s fire safety without access to the fire safety determination itself.

    The document that the City relies on to demonstrate fire safety compliance was not available for public review at the hearing where fire safety was supposed to be evaluated.

    The Mitigations Protect the Developer’s Buildings — Not the Neighborhood

    The AMMR approval identifies several mitigation measures: 1-hour fire-rated exterior walls, sprinkler heads on covered patios, non-combustible landscaping extending 5 feet from structures, and code-compliant wall penetrations.

    Every one of these measures is designed to protect the new townhomes from fire. None of them address the impact on the surrounding neighborhood.

    Radiant heat exposure to existing homes. The neighboring single-family homes were built between 1947 and 1957 — decades before modern Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) building standards. They have combustible exterior materials, older window assemblies, and minimal ember-resistant features. Fire-hardening the new townhomes does not reduce the radiant heat those neighboring homes would receive from a fully involved structure across a 10-foot gap.

    Combustible fencing at the property line. Wooden fencing along the property boundary is standard in this neighborhood. At 10 feet, a burning fence would create extreme heat flux in the corridor. SCCFD has no authority to regulate fencing on neighboring parcels. The HOA has no authority over it either.

    ADU construction on adjacent parcels. State law allows Accessory Dwelling Units to be built with setbacks as small as 4 feet from the property line. Combined with the project’s 10-foot setback, actual structure-to-structure spacing could shrink to 14 feet — less than half the required 30 feet.

    Absent defensible space zones. The project’s own Defensible Space Fire Zone Plan (Sheet L7.1) shows Zone 2 — the 30-to-100-foot fuel management band — is effectively absent along the north and south boundaries where the setback reduction applies.

    The Fire Safe Regulations define defensible space as protection for the “neighborhood or community” — not just the developer’s buildings. The mitigations do not address this standard.

    The Window Openings Contradiction

    SummerHill’s AMMR narrative claims compliance with CRC R302.1(2), the fire separation distance requirements for residential construction at reduced setbacks.

    The same narrative explicitly states: “we are not proposing modifications to the Openings (Windows) in Walls.”

    R302.1(2) is the standard that governs protected openings at reduced separation distances. You cannot invoke the standard while exempting one of its central requirements. Unprotected glazing can fail early under radiant heat exposure, allowing flame and heat transmission across the reduced 10-foot separation — precisely the scenario the 30-foot standard is designed to prevent.

    The AMMR approval does not address this contradiction. SCCFD accepted it without comment.

    The Ladder Access Problem

    SCCFD’s own Fire Prevention Plan Review (Comment 7) requires ground ladder access at a 75-degree climbing angle for second and third-floor rescue operations.

    The geometry does not work in 10 feet. A 35-foot ladder at 75° requires approximately 9 feet of horizontal clearance. The firefighter at the base needs approximately 2.5 feet of standing room. That is approximately 11.5 feet minimum — before accounting for any fence or wall at the property boundary.

    The setback is 10 feet. The site plan shows bio-retention pads in these areas — not firm, level surfaces suitable for ladder placement.

    A burning wooden fence in the 10-foot corridor would make the space untenable for firefighters, negating any possibility of ground ladder rescue from the building faces that need it most — the longest sides of the perimeter, perpendicular to the wildland-urban interface.

    The CEQA Exemption Depends on This Gap

    The project claims a CEQA exemption under AB 130 (PRC §21080.66). This exemption is available in a VHFHSZ only if the project adopts fire hazard mitigation measures “pursuant to existing building standards.”

    The City’s AB 130 qualification memo points to the AMMR as proof of fire safety compliance.

    But the AMMR is an explicit departure from the existing standard — the 30-foot setback. A departure from a standard cannot simultaneously serve as proof of compliance with it.

    This circularity enabled the project to bypass the environmental review that would have surfaced the evacuation capacity data David Yan’s article calls attention to.

    What Residents Are Asking

    The residents of the Linda Vista neighborhood are not asking to stop housing. The site was part of Cupertino’s Housing Element and they support housing here.

    They are asking a simple question:

    Where is the documented technical analysis demonstrating that the 10-foot setback provides the same practical fire-safety effect as the 30-foot standard — not only for the new development, but for the surrounding neighborhood?

    The SCCFD’s own disclaimer says the review is not an approval of compliance. The City’s Building Official has not signed the form. The AMMR was not in the Planning Commission agenda packet. The mitigations address fire spread to the new buildings but not from them.

    Both entities are pointing at each other. Neither has produced the analysis.

    The City Council votes on March 17, 2026. Before finalizing this project, the Council should be able to identify a single document in the administrative record that answers the question above.

    The firefighters who will respond to Evulich Court deserve that answer. So do the neighbors.

  • Foothill-De Anza Community College to Evict McClellan Terrace Renters for Student Housing

    Foothill-De Anza Community College to Evict McClellan Terrace Renters for Student Housing

    For over two hours, the May 6, 2025 Cupertino City Council meeting was filled with heated debate. The point of contention: would Council issue a moratorium on the Foothill-De Anza Community College District (FHDA) Board decision to turn 94 homes at the McClellan Terrace apartments into student housing?

    Both sides presented their case during public comments. The FHDA Board, students, and staff argued that they needed student housing, and that McClellan Terrace was the right place for that housing. Meanwhile, the apartment’s existing tenants and Cupertino residents pointed out that student housing should be built on campus without evicting people, many of whom are families with school-aged children. They also felt that this was a misuse of bond funds. Three Bay Area community colleges are using state funds to build on-campus housing, rather than solely using bond funds that could be used to improve educational facilities.

    What is a Moratorium?

    According to Cupertino’s City Attorney Floy Andrews, under government code, an urgency moratorium allows a city to stop a change in land use that may conflict with its zoning or general plan. A moratorium requires a super-majority to pass, or 4 out of 5 votes. If passed, it would allow 45 days for Cupertino to study mechanisms to retain multifamily housing and encourage new student housing construction. The city can also extend an urgency ordinance for another 10 months and 15 days if it determines a need to change zoning. 

    “The college district’s board voted just yesterday to end due diligence on the purchase of McClellan Terrace apartments. They decided to proceed with the purchase of the apartments and they retained relocation services for the displacement of the current residents,” stated Attorney Andrews. “It’s an urgent issue for the city because this plan is happening, and the city has policies encouraging the retention of multifamily housing supported by its general plan.”

    Opposition to Evicting Local Families

    Cupertino residents, Mayor Liang Chao, Vice Mayor Kitty Moore, and Councilmember Ray Wang all spoke out strongly against the McClellan Terrace evictions. Wang asked, “Are we as a city saying it’s okay to ignore our 90 resident families and relocate them for students and staff housing? Are housing advocates really supporting the displacement of 67 kids in the district?”

    “Many of the kids at McClellan Terrace end up being De Anza students as well. I was one of them,” said Pranath, a 20-year McClellan Terrace resident, during public comments. “We should look at alternatives that don’t displace dozens of families and students.”

    Anisha, whose family moved to McClellan Terrace 20 years ago, stated, “I went to Lincoln, Kennedy, and Monta Vista walking from home for 13 years. My family wouldn’t have been able to afford to have us go to these exceptional schools if it weren’t for this apartment complex.”

    Even an editorial in the De Anza Community College newspaper, La Voz, expressed trepidations about the purchase, stating, “Buying out the apartment complex displaces existing residents, many of whom are children who attend nearby K-12 schools. McClellan Terrace offers affordable units in an area of skyrocketing housing costs, and many community members have voiced fears about being priced out of local options and being forced to move, uprooting their lives.”

    Student Housing Options Abound

    There are viable options to build student housing without evicting renters. “De Anza College sits on 112 acres in the heart of Cupertino. The district could carve out a portion of the campus for housing,” stated a San Jose Spotlight editorial published shortly after the meeting. “A number of school districts are considering this approach for teacher housing. Why not do it for student housing, a standard practice at four-year colleges?” 

    In addition to on-campus housing, the FHDA Board had the option of partnering with the Marina Plaza developers on student housing, but failed to do so. Cupertino hotels have also shown willingness to help provide student housing. “The Cupertino Hotel is offering extended stay for students that’s available immediately,” stated Chao. “The FHDA college district can also consider buying Aloft [Hotel], which was constructed in 2012.” In San JosĂ©, the under-utilized Signia by Hilton hotel (previously Fairmont Hotel) was recently converted into 700 units of undergraduate student housing.

    Taxpayer Dollars In Question

    The McClellan Terrace purchase is funded by Measure G. This measure, which passed by 59%, was written as a bond to “upgrade facilities preparing students/veterans for university transfer/careers like healthcare, nursing, technology, engineering/ sciences; upgrade/repair aging classrooms, labs for science, technology, engineering/math-related fields of instruction; acquire, construct, repair facilities, equipment/sites.” It created $898 million in bonds “levying 1.6 cents/$100 assessed valuation ($48,000,000 annually) while bonds are outstanding.”1

    “If you read the ballot measure language, it doesn’t talk about acquiring properties off-campus. When you read about all the different facilities improvements, you have to find a buried line in there that would ostensibly allow them to be purchasing [property] and evicting our residents,” said Vice Mayor Moore during the meeting. “I feel for the individuals who voted for this, including myself, unaware that we were going to be evicting our fellow residents.”

    In written communications, Mayor Chao also expressed dismay that the FHDA Board was spending so much to acquire an old building with existing tenants. Nearby communities are building new housing for less. She cited San Mateo County Community College District’s brand-new housing for approximately 316 students. It will leverage $56 million in state grant funding while using just $10 million of its own funds.2 

    Conversely, the FHDA board will spend $95M of local taxpayer funds on purchasing McClellan Terrace to evict existing residents. This includes $66.7M to purchase and $28.2M to renovate the 50-year-old building3. Cupertino resident Rhoda Fry added, “In 2022, Prometheus bought the property for $52 million. Under AB1482, they were not allowed to evict residents and replace them with younger residents. But that is exactly what FHDA intends to do. Prometheus discovered that they bought a lemon. They are now in court over it, while they intend to sell to FHDA for $67 million.”

    Councilmember Fruen expressed opposition to the moratorium. He stated that he did not agree with some of the facts in the recitals. “I don’t really see how it’s possible for us to substantiate this on an urgency basis,” said Fruen. It did not seem likely that Mayor Chao would get the required 4-to-1 super-majority vote. As such, she chose not to proceed with a moratorium.

    Instead, Chao, Moore, and Wang voted to approve a resolution encouraging the construction of new student housing, and preserving multi-family housing by discouraging its conversion to student housing. Fruen and Mohan voted no, which is consistent with their track record of aligning with outside interests over resident interests.

    FHDA Creating False Hope

    FHDA sought to alleviate the concerns of Board Members, Bond Oversight Committee Members, and the community. In a memo, it assured them that residents will receive relocation help. It also said that they are in discussions with the local school districts to address K-12 student concerns. However, there are no other large apartment complexes in the Lincoln Elementary, Kennedy Middle and Monta Vista High School attendance area. Worse, there are only a handful of two bed – two bath apartments of comparable size and rent within Cupertino. Consequently, McClellan Terrace residents, which include nurses and public-school teachers, will find a similar home that is walkable to the tri-school area. 

    The College District can still pull out of the sale. We first covered McClellan Terrace in March 2025, when dozens of concerned residents showed up to protest their potential eviction.

    References

    1 – Foothill-De Anza Community College District. “Resolution of the Board of Trustees of Foothill-De Anza Community College District Ordering an Election, and Specifications of the Election Order.” https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/fhda/Board.nsf/files/BJ52PW03336F/$file/Resolution_No_2019-36_Ordering_Election.pdf. November 25, 2019. Accessed June 20, 2025.

    2 – San Mateo County Community College District. “Update on Districtwide Student Housing at College of San Mateo.” https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/smccd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=CREQBU6881EC. August 9, 2023. Accessed June 23, 2025.

    3 – Foothill-De Anza Community College District. “Student Housing Project Update.”  https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/fhda/Board.nsf/files/DENM9G5A260E/$file/2025-03-10%20FHDA%20Housing%20Update.pdf. March 10, 2025. Accessed June 20, 2025.

  • McClellan Terrace Residents Upset Over Potential Eviction, Cupertino Council Moves to Evaluate Options

    McClellan Terrace Residents Upset Over Potential Eviction, Cupertino Council Moves to Evaluate Options

    On Wednesday, April 2nd, residents gathered at Cupertino Community Hall to protest potential eviction from their homes. The Foothill-De Anza College District is entering a contract to purchase the 94-unit McClellan Terrace apartments on 7954 McClellan Rd. But this will displace the apartment’s existing residents and numerous families with school-age children, whose units will be provided to students attending the community college.

    Residents are now upset at the prospect of being evicted not only from their homes, but also having to leave the CUSD/FUHSD school district and the City of Cupertino. Neighbors are worried that the loss of sixty-seven K-12 students will exacerbate the decline in public school enrollment, leading to more school closures.

    In 2020, voters passed a Foothill-De Anza College District bond including projects to “plan, construct, acquire or contribute to affordable employee and student housing units.” The College District’s consultant recommended purchasing the off-campus McClellan Terrace apartments, but failed to disclose that the apartments are heavily populated by local K-12 school district families, and that these apartments are more affordable than others in our community. McClellan Terrace is one of very few apartments within a half-mile of Lincoln Elementary School, Kennedy Junior High, and Monta Vista High School. 

    Per county records, Prometheus purchased the property in 2022 and is assessed at $52M. The College District would purchase the property for $67M and make it ready for approximately 332 students for an additional $28M, for a total of $95M; the deal would not be finalized until at least July. 

    Via CBS news, McClellan Terrace resident Rachel Green said she did not receive any “official correspondence from the property management company.” The only information she and neighbors had was via news reporting. “All the communication we see online is that we have to be out by the summer,” said Green.

    The new resident-focused Council majority acted with expedience to address the situation. During the April 2nd meeting, Mayor Chao proposed a special session to study the city’s position on the conversion of multifamily housing to student housing, evaluate existing bills on student housing, and compare with other jurisdictions. This motion was approved unanimously by the City Council. Vice Mayor Kitty Moore emphasized the time-sensitivity of the discussion, since the purchase is already under process. Councilmember Ray Wang added, “I think it’d be prudent to let the College District know that we’re heading in this direction so that whoever’s in escrow knows this could be an issue.”

    Residents wishing to express feedback should attend the next College District Board Meeting, held at 6:00 P.M. on Monday, April 7, 2025 in the District Office Building (D700) at Foothill College, 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills. They can also email the College District Chancellor’s office and the District Board at Carla Maitland [email protected].

    Additional information:

    Fox 2 coverage of the April 2nd resident protest at Cupertino Community Hall:

    KPIX CBS News Bay Area Coverage of the McClellan Terrace Purchase:

    Coverage on Sing Tao Daily

    For more information, refer to the March 10 Foothill/De Anza College Board Meeting:


    – Agenda and documents https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/fhda/Board.nsf/Public
    – Meeting on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/live/XorJDacQ6Vs

  • City Council Prioritizes Economic Growth, Fiscal Sustainability, and More in 2025-27 Cupertino City Work Program

    City Council Prioritizes Economic Growth, Fiscal Sustainability, and More in 2025-27 Cupertino City Work Program

    In the March 18th City Council meeting, Mayor Liang Chao, Vice Mayor Kitty Moore, and Councilmember Ray Wang voted to approve the 2025-27 Cupertino City Work Program, which seeks to improve economic growth, fiscal sustainability, and public health and quality of life in Cupertino. Councilmembers Fruen and Mohan voted against the 2025-27 City Work Program.

    The new initiatives are summarized below (view the full list here):

    • Economic Development for Retail and Small Businesses: Streamline permitting for small businesses, explore options to retain and recruit businesses, explore themed events like restaurant weeks and festivals, explore creation of a small business council, restore the Economic Development Committee, and explore a Grants Analyst position.
    • Permit Streamlining and Simplification for Small Home Upgrades: This will be a suite of improvements to (1) improve access to, and (2) speed the processing of permits for small home upgrades to enhance compliance and improve efficiency. This includes setting SLA’s, customer service KPI’s, and internal staff expertise to reduce consulting expenses.
    • Financial, Investment, and Cashflow Policy Review: Review and assess the City’s investment policy and best practices. Establish a cashflow management policy with the goal to reduce the total percentage in cash from 20% to 2% and to reduce the total percentage in cash and cash-equivalent to at most 10%, on par with other cities.
    • Defensible Impact Fee Nexus Study for Traffic Impact Fee, Retail Impact Fee, BMR Impact Fee, and Parkland Impact Fee: Review impact fees and other means of offsetting conversion of commercial land uses to residential to ensure impact fees are defensible against legal challenges.
    • Enhance Senior Services: Utilizing survey results conducted in 2022 and 2023, consider consultant services similar to Palo Alto or Saratoga Senior Center to enhance services, while reducing cost to the city.
    • City Hall Retrofit and City Hall Annex Renovation including the EOC: Implement the previously approved 2022 Council plan with EOC migration funds
    • Planning for Optimal Use of City Properties: Future planning strategies for Stocklmeir house/ garages, Blech House, Blue Pheasant, McClellan Barn, and the house at the entrance of Blackberry Farm, with a goal of judicial use of city-owned properties. Investigate potential purchase of CUSD Finch/Phil property.
    • Emergency Operations Readiness: Review fire, earthquake tornado, active shooter, Tsunami, hazardous transport accident policies. Ensure EOC is active and functioning with a permanent position, not a consultant.
    • 5G Ordinance: Prepare an ordinance to regulate small cellular facilities in the public right of way.
    • Unhoused Policies: Determine best practices for limited-budget smaller cities to manage the unhoused. Review RV practices in surrounding cities for impacts and potential adoption. Review transitional housing outcomes in surrounding cities. Policies to include nimble contingency plans.
    • Water Conservation Policies: Reduce irrigation while increasing pollinator-supporting vegetation (turf conversion). Optimize irrigation systems including CUSD use agreement sites.
    • Urban Forest Program: Create an Urban Forest Master Plan that includes an updated and expanded tree list which will increase the number of trees, enhance the City’ s tree canopy, and promote landscaping throughout the City
    • Add notifications for SB 330 and other projects during the application and approval process: Consider a community meeting requirement for any major project application, especially those requiring a general plan amendment, as some other cities have adopted. Consider increasing notification radius from 300 feet to 500 (or 1,000) feet for any project application, especially those requiring a general plan amendment. Improve notification methods for SB 330 preliminary applications, streamlined projects not requiring planning/council approval, and other projects

    While many of the items reflect the fresh perspective of the new Council majority, the plan also continues several work program items from the prior council, including bicycle facilities, preserving and developing BMR housing, and the Vision Zero plan to reduce fatalities and severe injuries on roadways by 2040.

    Once approved, staff determines the resources needed to accomplish each Work Program item, and requests them during the Budget Adoption process. Via the staff report, the 2025-27 Cupertino City Work Program “will officially launch in July at the start of the new fiscal year.” Projects in the City Work Program are expected to consume about 10% of City staff time. The remainder of their time is largely devoted to day-to-day operations.

    Read more about Cupertino’s City Work Program here: https://www.cupertino.gov/Your-City/City-Council/City-Work-Program

  • Rezoning Church Land & Misinformation about Westport

    Rezoning Church Land & Misinformation about Westport

    In this post we cover two topics:
    1. Valley Church of Cupertino land being included in the Housing Element Site without informing them
    2. Rod Sinks’ campaign misleading residents about retail at Westport
    Valley Church: Designated Housing Element Site Without their Permission
     A resident made us aware of a situation where four parcels of land owned by the Valley Church of Cupertino were put on the Housing Element Priority Site List, without ever consulting the Church! 

    The church had  to write to the city to ensure that their lands, which were being used to provide community resources like tennis courts, were not converted for private profit.

    This is illustrative of the lack of transparency and notifications about the change in zoning proposed in the housing element development process carried out by the Builder’s Controlled council since the November 2022 election. Any open space in Cupertino was at the risk of being rezoned for builders to profit from.

    Residents of Linda Vista drive have expressed similar concerns of the rezoning of Evulich Ct. site from R1 (1-5 units/acre) to R3 (20-35 units/acre), where they did not receive any notifications. In the case of the Valley Church, even the property owner was not notified or consulted about the city’s plan to add their land to the Housing Element

    Rod Sinks’ Campaign: Misinformation About Westport
    Rod Sinks’ campaign sent out text messages and email claiming that the Westport development  (Oaks Redevelopment) only provides homes, but not retail. He is also claiming he can negotiate a better deal. As usual with the politicians aligned with builders, the facts do not justify the claims.

    20,000 sq ft of Retail Space at Westport

    The Westport development has approval for 20,000 sq ft of commercial retail space, 37,601 square feet of common open space and 2,400 square feet of common retail outdoor space. For context, a typical Starbucks store is between 1500-2000 sq. ft. So the Westport development has plans for about a dozen stores of the size of the typical Starbucks.

    Westport has a combination of owner occupied townhomes, senior housing, and assisted care facilities, and the retail spaces will open as different segments are built and occupied.

    And it is important to remember that the original plan for Westport was based around giant towers with more than 800K sq ft of buildout with bulk of it as office space which would have significantly worsened the traffic at the Stevens Creek/Hwy 85/Hwy 280 junction (see picture below)

    The plan being built is traffic neutral with the previous Oaks Plaza, provides valuable senior housing which our aging population needs, and helps address the housing shortage by providing more choices at a price point lower than single family homes..

    Rods Record of Negotiation

    Rod Sinks has a record of  conceding every demand of developers, especially Sandhill Properties, in spite of massive protests by residents impacted by them. Most residents in neighborhoods near Vallco have a deep mistrust of Rod Sinks based on their bitter experiences lasting almost a decade. 

    Any successful negotiation and agreement, requires an element of trust between the parties involved. Rod simply lacks the trust of the residents most impacted by future development at Vallco, and his claims of being able to negotiate are specious at best.

  • Ex-Mayors Deceive Residents & Steal Designs

    Ex-Mayors Deceive Residents & Steal Designs

    This is an urgent message. 

    Earlier this evening, the coterie of ex-mayors resurfaced and sent out an email message spreading disinformation about how and why the Housing Element was delayed leading to Builder’s Remedy.

    Stealing Design & Claiming Copyright

    In their message, they included a picture taken from the “Save Our Neighborhoods” sign which some residents developed to highlight the risk of high density construction in single family lots. They not only did not give credit to the person who had created the sign, they even claimed copyright to it! Further while the signs were meant to support Kitty Moore and Ray Wang, the deceiving mayors used them to support their opponents.

    We are including a video from the resident who created this sign, who shares his outrage at the theft of his intellectual property, and the unethical attempts by the ex-mayors to deceive Cupertino Residents.
    The residents demand an immediate retraction from  Richard Lowenthal, Dolly Sandoval, Kris Wang, JR Fruen, Hung Wei, and Sheila Mohan for stealing our intellectual property and attempting to falsely copyright it. This is emblematic of your unethical leadership and it is unacceptable .
    Screenshot from email sent by the three ex-mayors
    Disinformation Barrage Continues
    A lot has already been written about how the builder’s took over the city council via their YIMBY proxy JR Fruen & Sheila Mohan) in November 2022. 

    Instead of adopting the existing Housing Element draft and submitting it for approval, they waited till after the deadline to even submit it. While evaluating that submission, HCD declared that it  “addresses most statutory requirements. For context, Palo-Alto’s draft was judged to “address many statutory requirements”, a lower level of compliance.

    HCD also noted that many YIMBY orgs including JR Fruen’s Cupertino For All shared comments about why the draft required revisions. Thereafter they delayed the housing element by 18 months exposing the city to Builder’s Remedy. In their legal settlement with JR’s buddies in other YIMBY orgs in early 2024 the City invited Builder’s Remedy projects. All Active Builder Remedy projects were filed after that settlement.

    Please do not let these unethical people succeed in deceiving you.
  • Cupertino’s Disinformation Network

    Cupertino’s Disinformation Network

    In this post we focus on how the Builder-Political Complex uses a sophisticated disinformation network to achieve its goals. The disinformation network has been extremely successful in misleading the residents. Three years ago when CUSD shut down multiple school campuses, most residents believed it was because of a budget shortfall due to falling enrollment. The reality was that CUSD was projecting almost $39.5M of surplus over the next five years. The video by CUSD Trustee Jerry Liu sheds light on it 
    The modus-operandi of such campaigns is to get articles & editorials published in regional news outlets which support policies sponsored by builders, without providing the readers with a comprehensive or objective view. For example, articles were written blaming falling school enrollment to justify the need for a lot more new housing in Cupertino.  However they failed to mention that prior to the drop the enrollment had increased every year for almost 15 years. Or that even after the drop CUSD schools were running way above planned capacity with almost 25% of classes in portable classrooms. Or that the year after the decision to close the schools to save $1.5M, CUSD was projecting the biggest surplus ever in its history, $16M in the next year.

    In this article we will focus on the disinformation campaigns organized by JR Fruen’s Cupertino For All, especially those run by its Information Officer, Jean Bedord.

    Disinformation: East Cupertino vs West Cupertino

    One method employed by the builder’s lobby is to project residents’ concerns of builders’ influence over city council as a conflict  between the East and West side of Cupertino. The controversial Sand Hill Properties proposals to redevelop the Vallco Mall disproportionately impact the residents of East Cupertino. It is reasonable that the residents of the neighborhoods around Vallco will be vocal in challenging the resident unfriendly behavior of the council.

    However, campaigns are run by the builder’s lobby to frame that community leaders from the East side want to harm the West side, and hence the residents should vote for the builders’ candidates

    The reality, however, is the opposite as residents of Linda Vista Drive are now realizing.

    Recent Nextdoor Interaction

    We wanted to highlight a recent Nextdoor conversation illustrating how Jean makes misleading statements to create confusion in the mind of fellow residents. Jean comments on a post saying:

    “Kitty Moore and Ray Wang voted to bring high density housing to Western Half of the City, ignoring the Topography”   

    Fact Check: Statement is False

    1. In 2019, the resident focused city council voted against development on the Vista Heights property. (details here)
    2. On the contrary, Jean Bedord, spoke in favor of the project on the top of the cliff moving forward (video below), during the 2019 City Council Meeting, “ignoring the topography”
    3. Kitty Moore voted NO, to the July 2024 Housing Element approval which legally up-zoned the Evulich Court site to R3.
    4. The residents focussed council reduced the density for Westport (Oak’s Redevelopment) to just 30% of the original proposal and also put to end conversations of rezoning the Blackberry Farm Golf Course as a residential housing site.

    West Cupertino Faces YIMBY Assault

    The residents of Linda Vista Drive on West Cupertino are dealing with the impact of the decisions taken by the JR Fruen led council since November 2022 which has led to two new developments which will double the  number of homes on their street. 

    One project on Evulich Ct is the result of rezoning of a series of R1 (single family) parcels to R3/TH (multifamily townhomes) which was approved in July 2024 as part of the Housing Element

    The second project is a Builder’s Remedy project near Linda Vista Park, which is proposing an even more dense development than the earlier proposal rejected by the resident-focussed city council during November 5, 2019 meeting.

    The city is forced to accept Builder’s Remedy projects because JR Fruen led council decided to completely redo the city’s housing element plan finalized in October 2022, and also agreed to accept Builder’s Remedy projects as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by YIMBY organizations.

    Further, the JR Fruen led council attempted to rezone all corner lots in single family neighborhoods to enable construction of condos, (Strategy HE-1.3.6 of the 2nd HE draft). The proposal would have allowed all corner lots to have buildings similar to the Builder’s Remedy project at Scofield Drive

    How to Mislead Neighbors: Jean’s Master Class.

    An element of Jean’s style is to provide a lot of information, with omissions and misrepresentations, to mislead her readers. Since she is perceived as the local expert, people trust her words. Her recent September 10 newsletter  highlights that.

    In that post, Jean gives a timeline of the housing element but conveniently forgets to mention key details, the role played by YIMBY orgs like Cupertino For All, or highlights information which is irrelevant to the progress of the housing element

    In the next section we are including the timeline she published in italics, interleaved with  additional context being provided in regular font in blue. Some of Jean’s content is highlighted in RED to represent how Jean highlighted it.

    Context

    ABAG adopted the RHNA Allocations for the 2023-2032 planning cycle on Decemeber 16, 2021, asking Cupertino  to have a plan to construct 4588 new homes. The city starts process in Q1-2022 with the first draft discussed with the city council in August 2022.

    In August 2022, JR Fruen, writing as the Policy Officer of Cupertino For All, lists out demands from YIMBY groups, as the city is reviewing the Housing Element Draft demanding more buffer, more upzoning and not to count pipeline projects.

    >Oct. 22, 2022, First Draft provided for Public Review
    After the approval of the HE sites in August, the City published the first draft

    >Dec. 10, 2022: new councilmembers Sheila Mohan and JR Fruen sworn in, and Hung Hei(sic) chosen as mayor. As customary, city offices were closed between Christmas and New Year’s.

    After JR Fruen’s election,  Cupertino For All, wrote to the City Council again, demanding major changes and a redo of the Housing Element. The letter is endorsed by Jean Bedord, Connie Cunningham and Louise Saadati. This letter is in the records for the Dec 10 meeting.
     

    >Feb 3, 2023: First Draft submitted to HCD as a placeholder to show progress.

    The City waited more than three months after the 1st draft was available (October 22, 2022) to send the draft to HCD on February 3, 2022, missing the approval deadline by three days

    >May 4, 2023: within the full 90 days allowed for review, HCD provided 14 pages of comment requiring the city to basically redo the First Draft.

    The May 4, letter by the HCD reviewing the first draft: stated that the draft submitted by the city addresses most statutory requirements! It also states that several YIMBY organizations, including JR Fruen & Jean Bedord’s Cupertino For All, had written to demand changes in the Housing Element.

    For context, the Housing Element draft submitted by Palo Alto in December 2022, was only found to address many statutory requirements, a lower level of compliance than Cupertino’s . 

    It should be evident that there was NO justification to completely redo the draft as claimed by Jean. The draft was deemed as mostly compliant and some edits would have fixed it. The changes made in the subsequent drafts were made to transform it to what was demanded by YIMBYs which JR Fruen had listed in his August 2022 letter


    >July 25, 2023: Council Study Session on the 6th Cycle Housing Element Update Council approved direction to staff to develop a Housing Element with additional sites and policies per HCD direction on a vote of 4-0-1 with Moore (inexplicably) abstaining.

    The new housing element draft was submitted about a year after the first draft, This draft proposed that ALL Single Family Home Lots (R1) at corner lots or near mixed used areas, should be rezoned to R3 (Condos).  During 2023, when the new draft was being prepared 18 out of 24 Planning Commission meetings were cancelled.
     
    >Oct. 6, 2023: the Second Draft was submitted for public review under the guidance of a experienced replacement consultant

    Note, that 2nd draft (October 2023) took almost a year to develop after the first draft (October 2022). But Jean blames the resident friendly council for the delay in the initial draft which was published within 10 months of the RHNA allocation being finalized in December 2021.


    >Oct. 16,2023: the Second Draft was submitted to HCD, then revised on Oct. 30

    The HCD downgraded Cupertino’s compliance with the law after reviewing the 2nd draft. It said the draft “addresses many statutory requirements”. This was less compliant than the first draft which was deemed to have “addresses most statutory requirements”. Cupertino perhaps is the only city whose second submission was judged to be less compliant than the first submission.


    >Dec. 15, 2023: HCD provided 6 pages of comments for revision. (Just in time for holiday shutdown)

    On January 1, 2024, the city settled a lawsuit filed by JR Fruen’s YIMBY buddies. In the agreement the city stated that it is open to accept Builder’s Remedy Projects. All active Builder’s Remedy Projects were filed after the settlement of the YIMBY lawsuit in 2024. Jean chose to omit that.

    >Feb. 16, 2024: Third Draft submitted for Public Comment
    >Feb. 27, 2024: Third Draft submitted to HCD, then revised in March.
    >March 28, 2024: Final Third Draft submitted to HCD
    >April 10, 2024: HCD conditionally accepts the Third Draft, pending zoning revisions to ensure
    >May 14, 2024: Council adopted the Third Draft of the Housing Element on, on a 3-2 vote with Councilmembers Kitty Moore voting NO and Liang Chao abstaining.
    >July 16, 2024, associated zoning changes were approved by council on a 4-1 vote with Councilmember Kitty Moore voting NO.

    This was the day the rezoning of sites like Evulich Ct. were approved. Kitty Moore opposed the motion and voted NO. This adopted Housing Element required the city to plan for 1800 more homes than the 1st draft, leading to widespread upzoning across Cupertino.


    >Sept. 4, 2024 HCD officially certified the Housing Element, ending new Builder’s Remedy projects.

    Jean’s description of the process, has zero references to the letters and actions taken by Cupertino For All (Demanding changes in August 2022, Asking for a redo in December 2022, writing to HCD to oppose the 1st draft, Q1-2023). She also fails to mention the attempt to upzone single family lots to condos (R3)

    Do note that Jean highlights that Kitty Moore voted NO to motions when the draft was being redone to meet YIMBY’s demands. She is perhaps attempting to create the impression, that her NO votes led to the delay. The reality is that after November 2022 elections, the builders had control of the council (JR Fruen, Hung Wei, Sheila Mohan) and all the motions Kitty voted NO on, passed.

    Kitty Moore’s NO votes were an expression of her disagreement of the process and the outcome; they did not hinder the progress of the HE in any way.

    Chief Disinformation Office

    We feel that instead of the title of Information Officer at Cupertino For All, the Builder-Politician Complex should recognize her impact and appoint her as their Chief Disinformation Officer.

    Whether it is the facilitating the shutdown of schools while CUSD had a huge budget surplus, or the proliferation of Builder’s Remedy projects, Jean has succeeded in misleading a large segment of residents with her disinformation campaigns to drive the builder’s agenda of making billions on the back of our quality of life.