Mountain View is fortunate that its fiscal stewardship over the years has historically
produced sufficient financial resources to maintain the high-quality services enjoyed by Mountain View residents today.

However, as with most municipalities, repairs, maintenance, and eventual replacement of facilities and infrastructure will continue to be an ongoing need in the future. In addition, new initiatives to address the evolving nature of modern cities will also require additional financial resources.

The City needs to explore options for increasing revenue generation to maintain essential services while addressing the evolving community needs of the Mountain View of tomorrow.

The City of Mountain View is committed to maintaining our great quality of life and
keeping our community a desirable place to live, do business and raise a family.

To keep Mountain View resilient and prepared for the future, the City Council approved the Fiscal Years 2023-24 and 2024-25 Council Work Plan which included a Priority A work plan project to “explore the feasibility of a potential 2024 revenue measure.”

Currently, the City is in the process of considering placing a revenue measure on the November 2024 ballot. At the May 14 Council meeting, staff was directed to continue community and stakeholder outreach regarding service needs and to return to the Council with community feedback and recommended action at the June 25 Council meeting.

The following are examples of some of the future needs that Mountain View will face:

• Public Safety – The provision of best-in-class public safety services has been,
  and will continue to be, of paramount importance for the City.
  
  The City’s public safety administration building and several of our firehouses will
  be reaching the end of their useful lives and require replacement or extensive
  renovations. For more than 20 years, the City has studied and discussed the
  need for constructing a new public safety administration building, which houses
  the police department, fire department administration, the emergency operations center, and the 9-1-1 emergency dispatch. The current building is antiquated and does not meet current seismic standards. The current estimate for a new building is approximately $200 million and growing.
  
  
• Pedestrian/Cyclist Safety - Another major priority of the City is to improve
  pedestrian and cyclist safety and access, as well as traffic and railroad
  operational safety. The City is committed to improving safety in a variety of transit spaces including: cyclist and pedestrian safety; increasing safety measures around railroad crossings; and continuing to provide Safe Routes to Schools programs to help protect every child in Mountain View from road hazards on their way to school.
  
  Mountain View has also partnered with VTA and Caltrain on the design of the Castro Street and Rengstorff Avenue Grade Separation Projects to improve safety, reduce noise, decrease traffic congestion and enhance traffic movement. Construction of the Rengstorff grade separation project is expected to begin in 2026, with the Castro Street undercrossing to begin once there is sufficient funding.
  
  
• Parks/Open Space Access - The City currently has an open space goal to
  provide three acres of open space for every 1,000 residents. Based on current
  data, the City is expected to create, on average, one to two new parks per year
  through the year 2030. The overall park acreage will be growing with these future identified parks; however, there are specific planning areas within the city that are not reaching this goal currently and do not have identified funding.
  The forthcoming Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan will identify funding
  strategies to meet the parks and open space needs of the future and is expected to require ongoing financial investments in the millions.
  
  
• Carbon Neutrality Goals - As a leader in local climate action and in recognitionof the serious threat of climate change, Mountain View is committed to achievingcarbon neutrality. In 2020, in response to state, national and internal action onclimate change, the City adopted a goal of carbon neutrality by 2045.
  
  The City of Mountain View was recently one of only 119 cities, states and regionsacross the globe to receive an “A” score from the Carbon Disclosure Project forour sustainability efforts and commitment to environmental transparency.However, a sustainable future with zero carbon emissions will require asignificant funding plan.
  
  
• Affordable Housing - In addition, the City is and will continue to be a statewideleader in the development and preservation of affordable housing. The City wasrecently designated by the Governor and the State of California Department ofHousing and Community Development as a “Prohousing Community.” MountainView is the only city in Santa Clara County to achieve this designation and one ofa few across the State, which allows the City to receive additional funding fromthe State for affordable housing projects.
  
  The City has nine projects and three land dedications in the pipeline, totalingapproximately 1,360 units. At this time, there is an estimated gap ofapproximately $50 million and growing to fully fund the affordable housingprojects in the pipeline.

The City does not currently have the funding needed to address many of theseinitiatives. 

Historically, when the State has had funding issues, they have taken funding from
municipalities like Mountain View to address their budget needs. At the start of a likely
multi-year budget deficit in Sacramento, Mountain View cannot count on their support. Mountain View needs a source of local funding that cannot be taken by Sacramento for our vital city services.

To better understand which future priorities the residents of Mountain View believe
should be addressed, the City engaged a polling firm to get resident input. This step
was vital to ensuring that any revenue measure our residents are asked to potentially consider aligns with the community’s hopes and dreams for the future of Mountain View.

The City recently conducted a statistically valid community outreach survey to get initial input. Service priorities identified by your neighbors included:

If you were one of the residents who responded to the City’s survey, thank you!

In addition, the City sent an informational mailer with a tear-off feedback card to all
registered voter households (23,455) the week of May 20. The feedback from this
mailing will be presented to Council on Tuesday, June 25 along with additional
stakeholder feedback.

If you are a representative of a local civic organization and would like a representative of the City to join your organization’s next community meeting and provide a short presentation, please contact us at City.Mgr@mountainview.gov or 650-903-6301.