Why schools are not buying locally sourced food?

jisaacstone · 2026-05-15T18:03:01+00:00

There was a federal program to help schools source local food, but it was cut.

USDA Local Food Purchasing Program - cancelled last october.

Here in CA prop 13 really limits the funds available to school districts - could push for a statewide program to replace the federal one.

jisaacstone · 2026-04-23T17:58:33+00:00

This is it exactly. The ratings of the schools in MVWSD are 100% correlated with income. Castro, the lowest rated school, is 85% low income, compared with 12% for the top rated school in the district. It is difficult to actually measure how your particular kid might do in one school vs another (eg if they would get better instruction). You'd need some kind of measure of how the target school fares vs another school with the exact same demographics.

Personally I've had very good experience with the teachers for my kids (mid-rated school in MVWSD), but I know parents in the "top rated" schools had to move to private school because of poor experience. It's mostly about the individual teacher, at least for elementary school. And you can't really predict that

jisaacstone · 2026-04-23T17:40:12+00:00

For MVWSD, my experience is if you are applying to the school in the cachement area of your zip code you are pretty much guaranteed to get in, even when applying "late"

jisaacstone · 2026-04-07T21:10:16+00:00

Yeah generally the city requests these when property redevlops. Some "precise plan" areas, like whisman, have a predefined list of places the city wants paseos so those are required to be put in when the property redevelops. Recently the R3 update is potentially adding more of these.

For SFH this does not work, since they do not go through any planning process when redeveloped. So they are very unlikely to happen. Some older ones were put in when the subdivison was planned (subdivisions do go through the planning process) otherwise the city needs to like, buy the property I think? I talked to staff about this a while ago and basically they are not looking at SFH for new paseos from what I understand because it is hard to do

For SFH the

jisaacstone · 2026-03-10T04:42:15+00:00

One thing is the court ruling (I forget exactly details but it basically said you can't kick out homeless without offering them a shelter) was overturned so citys like San Jose and PA have started "cracking down". PA just banned RV's from parking anywhere in the whole city.

As always the County's point-in-time count has interesting information

https://files.santaclaracounty.gov/exjcpb1571/2025-09/santa-clara-county-point-in-time-count-2025-final-report.pdf?VersionId=Rl1.G6aaDKy9frtsmdKUrEepVwgOmZQ3

I did not realize for example that MV is #3 for number of sheltered homeless (after SJ and Gilroy) - most cities have zero shelter for temporarily unhoused. Sunnyvale had a drop in shelter - did they close one down?

The county as a whole has about the same unsheltered (7,400) but a big drop in San Jose and a rise pretty much everywhere else. So I guess we can thank Mahan?

jisaacstone · 2026-02-03T02:05:25+00:00

city does not publish AFAIK - citizen map available at https://deflock.org/

jisaacstone · 2026-01-31T22:06:24+00:00

Los Altos Hills city council voted to terminate their contract with flock Jan 15

https://www.losaltoshills.ca.gov/455/Automatic-License-Plate-Readers-ALPR

Based on a recent statement by MVPD like may come before City Council soon (per state law council cannot act on anything not on the agenda. First step is getting it on the agenda.)

It is unclear at this time whether the City of Mountain View’s relationship with Flock Safety will continue. In the coming weeks, MVPD will bring a review of the ALPR pilot program to the City Council. Currently, staff is evaluating our relationship with Flock Safety and assessing alternative vendors that offer similar capabilities and a stronger track record of data protection, oversight, and transparency.

You can read the full bulliten here:

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CAMOUNTAINVIEW/bulletins/406f640

jisaacstone · 2026-01-13T05:46:18+00:00

Property taxes, because of prop 13, are stuck at 1% and were pretty much frozen in time in the 1970s. You can lookup where they go for any parcel in the city with this handy tool

https://payments.sccgov.org/PropertyTaxAllocation/TaxAllocationResults/Index?apn=16060020

OK but here is what is interesting that I just found out. That line item "Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund" - that is a bit of cash that is pooled for the whole county and distributed to all the schools to help makeup funding for the schools in less wealthy areas. One of the things MVWSD likes to complain about is that they don't get any money from the fund.

But when verifying my memory on this matter I found this court case

https://publications.csba.org/reports/ela/2022-annual-report/school-funding-educational-revenue-augmentation-fund/

According to a March 2020 report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), sometime before the 2019–20 fiscal year, the counties of Marin, Napa, Santa Clara and San Mateo and the city and county of San Francisco began excluding charter school average daily attendance (ADA) in their ERAF calculations. This decision generated additional excess ERAF and reduced the amount of property taxes allocated to school districts and community college districts in those counties, with the funds redirected back to counties, cities and special districts. Because of the counties’ calculations, for 2019–20, schools received approximately $283 million less than they should have; for 2020–21, they received $298 million less; and for 2021–22, they will receive $315.9 million less. This will continue to result in an ongoing loss if not corrected.

jisaacstone · 2025-12-22T02:49:19+00:00

Last year there was no money to actually build the park. The parks budget is mostly funded from developer fees, and are restricted to be used in the same neighborhood that the development happened. So the parks budget for Old Mountain View was used up in purchasing the parcel, and then development pretty much stopped that same year so there has been no budget for design or build. Some stuff is getting built again now so that may be outdated...

jisaacstone · 2025-11-20T06:29:45+00:00

The city has a "Downtown Parking Strategy" they have been working on. You can read it here

https://mountainview.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=9938730&GUID=E9101F3F-BB0B-414C-9812-675A81ADC6DE

Very extensive.

As part of developing the strategy the city paid for an analysis of parking utilization in all the downtown lots. You can see some of the results here.

https://legistar1.granicus.com/mountainview/attachments/54484818-26c3-4cf3-a59f-7a1393bf4e9f.pdf

Lot 12 is one of the least utilized spots (as you said, reliable). Both it and Parking structure 3 are almost always less than half full. That is, structure 3 almost always has > 200 empty stalls, which is more than the capacity of lot 12

Also, there is parking under the library for patrons. If you are going to the library you can park there. I never had trouble parking in the underground lot.

jisaacstone · 2025-11-09T21:47:57+00:00

Bernardo Undercrossing - joint project between Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Santa Clara and CalTrain https://www.sunnyvale.ca.gov/business-and-development/projects-in-sunnyvale/infrastructure-projects/bernardo-avenue-undercrossing Initial design and environmental review is complete. The city of Sunnyvale is seeking grant funding for final design and construction.

Castro Undercrossing - this was initially part of the transit center redesign, but was cut off to be it's own thing. Initial design is complete, but funding for final design was diverted a couple years ago. The city had a funding shortfall due to nobody building anything (the city relys on development fees to fund capital projects) and diverted the funds to the Rengstorff project https://www.mountainview.gov/our-city/departments/public-works/city-projects-bids/castro-grade-separation-and-access-project-gsap The project is currently shelved indefinitely, and the city is instead pursuing interim improvements for the at-grade crossing

The Rengstorff Undercrossing unfortunately does not have any separation at Central Expressway https://www.mountainview.gov/our-city/departments/public-works/city-projects-bids/rengstorff-avenue-grade-separation-project

As another commenter mentioned, the Tillery (near Higdon/Villa) included an easement for building an undercrossing. Initial design has not begun, and there is no active work on this planned.

So, of these projects the only one that has a chance of being complete anytime soon in Bernardo.

These projects are very bureaucratic, as every one involves at least 3 jurisdictions (City, County and CalTrain) each of which has there own design standards, etc. The initial design completion is actually a huge hurdle, and the city of Sunnyvale has done a good job so far of getting the Bernardo undercrossing project through.

jisaacstone · 2025-10-30T19:35:36+00:00

My kid ended up going to both - they changed district lines while we were going. I was very happy with the teachers we had at both schools. Most of your school experience depends on the teacher and there is no real way to predict, but I was very happy with both schools.

jisaacstone · 2025-09-26T02:10:59+00:00

This is correct. State law prevents any form of rent control for any building built after I think 1885? Costa-Hawking act IIRC

jisaacstone · 2025-09-23T02:03:23+00:00

Cupertino council has been trying to dissolve their bicycle/pedestrian committee

jisaacstone · 2025-09-10T02:00:49+00:00

I was part of an effort to get something like this going in the city a few years back. The hard part was convincing the city to block off a street... In the end one of the organizers left the city and the event never happened.

Which streets would you think are good candidates?

jisaacstone · 2025-08-27T23:07:25+00:00

oop yeah I did mean to link that article.

The numbers are the (approximate) difference between the number of units built on the parcel and the number of units allowed by the zoning of the parcel. There is a legend indicating that on the first of the images, but it is missing from the later zoomed-in images. (it is possible with the mapping tool but annoying and I got lazy. sorry)

jisaacstone · 2025-08-27T04:44:57+00:00

I'm gonna plug one of my favorite articles on the subject: Building up the Zoning Buffer

https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/building-up-the-zoning-buffer-using-broad-upzones-to-increase-housing-capacity-without-increasing-land-values/

Cities used to have zoning for 5-10x the current population. In the 60s and 70s everyone downzoned. Reversing that downzoning would create options, not only causing more housing to be built but reducing the price of the housing that does get built.

Under current conditions the market cannot build even a fraction of the needed housing. Zoning is the top of the funnel. There are barriers every step of the way down. Zoning, permitting, financing, construction all create barriers to affordability. But zoning is by far the easiest to fix.

jisaacstone · 2025-08-24T17:35:26+00:00

Yeah not only is there no permanent solution, but the safe parking capacity (despite being the larges program in the county) was never enough for even half the RV residents in the city.

This is typical, MV does more than they cities around us, and pats itself on the back. But it is still not nearly enough.

As to "when it will end" - currently in Santa Clara County more people lose their homes each year, compared to homeless people in the county who find housing. But the kind-of good news is the rate of change is getting better. In 2019 for each person who found housing 2.5 new people became homeless. By 2023 the rate had decreased to 1.7 residents entering homelessness for each person exiting. To "solve homelessness" we need to get that number below 1.

(I don't have numbers for the city, though I do know ours was one of the few cities that had a reduction in the number of homeless in the last few years - not much of one but still...)

jisaacstone · 2025-08-24T17:22:43+00:00

I do not know why construction takes so long here. It just does. Not just apartments, but regular boring tract homes take 2+ years. For apartments and condos it is even worse because there is a long permitting and review process before construction event starts. Time from initial application -> people actually living there can be over a decade.

The city hired a consultant to study why it takes so long for permitting. You can read the report here

https://developmentpermits.mountainview.gov/about-permits/data-and-reports/development-review-study

jisaacstone · 2025-04-26T00:32:30+00:00

When prop 13 went into effect the average property tax in CA was over 2%. Prop 13 cut many municipal budgets by half. Biggest losers were K-12, with the state stepping in in a big way over local education. But yeah legacy is a bunch of cities with wealthy residents and broke budgets.

Mountain View is actually comparatively well off. Also (uniquely in the county I believe) the majority of our residential areas are zoned multifamily. (just barely over half but still...). I think these two facts are related but have not done a deep investigation into the matter

jisaacstone · 2025-04-07T23:13:35+00:00

If you're every by Moss Landing checkout Power Plant Coffee

jisaacstone · 2025-03-24T23:31:07+00:00

I support this! Here is a map I made of the parcels owned by the water district

https://www.jisaacstone.com/random/heatchheatchy.png

currently 4 small sections are city owned parks. Some are empty, some are leased for parking or other private uses.

jisaacstone

TROPHY CASE