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107-F. Letter from Berg & Berg.pdfATTACHMENT F From: Myron Crawford [Mcrawford@MISSIONWEST.com] Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2011 6:14 AM To: City Clerk; Cupertino City Manager's Office; City of Cupertino Planning Dept.; Building; City Council Cc: akis@cupertino.org. Subject: Proposed Green Building Ordinance & Cal Green Building Code BEWG & I E RG DE- VE- OPERS -INC. 10050 Bandlo Drive Cupertino, CA 95014-2188 P-11 (408) 725-0700 F'ax (408) 725-1626 ancrnivfbrrl(a`ntissicrttwest. cottt 1/15/2011 Mayor & Council Members City of Cupertino 10300 Torre Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 Ph 408-777-3308 3251 Fax 408-777-3333 cityclerk@cupertino.or ; manager@cupertino.or ; plannin < cupertino.org; buildins;@cupertino.org citycouncil@cupertino.org Aki Honda Sne(ting at 408,777.3313 or akis@cupertino.org. Dear Mayor & Council Members, Reference: Proposed Green Building Ordinance & Cal Green Building Code Subject: Objection To Imposition Of Muncipal Mandatory `',Green Building Standards In Excess Of The California Green Building Standards Code and Objections To Provisions in the Cal Green Building Code Aki Snelling & Council Members, The State of Californian Building Standards section explicitly stated that the new green building code WOULD NOT apply to any existing non residential building, would not apply to any TI in an existing non residential building, would not apply to any existing non residential shell building or to any initial or subsequent TI or alteration in that building. We object to the proposed ordinance applying to any non residential building other than new non residential buildings constructed after January 1, 2011. You should not require anything beyond State requirements. You can contact the state representative listed below regarding non residential buildings: Enrique Rodriguez Associate Construction Analyst State of California Building Standards Commission 2525 Natomas Park Drive, Suite 130 Sacramento, CA 95833-2936 Ph (916).236-0845 Fax (916) 263-0959 en rig ue.rodriguez(a,dgs.ca.gov Other objections we have to the Cal Green Building Code are: A number of Cal Green requirements amount to political pandering adding unnecessary additional costs. We have never seen a memo from the city that recommends reducing cost and expenses for citizens, why doesn't the city set up a council approved bonus plan for employee suggestions that when implemented reduce cost for the citizens. The city council and employees of the city just don't get it, if you are going to save jobs, you need to quit raising costs with everything you do. You should create an Economic Ombudsman and committee that reviews proposed polices and ordinances for economic practicality before they move forward. 1) Bicycle Parking We have definite objections to required bicycle parking. a. I was by the City of Santa Clara the other day and looked around at their main City Hall office complex. They had 4 or 5 bicycle racks and everyone of them was empty. They have 16 covered bike stalls that may have been occupied or half empty. They have roughtly 538 stalls including 87 on the streets which their visitors use extensively as the streets are vehicle friendly so at the very most they had 3% of their parking used by bicycles. They probably have several hundred employees working there. They don't have any significant demand for bicycle parking in the heart of a city with a stable employee base. It is totally baseless then to require the percentages of bicycle parking being mandated in the proposed code. If a City Hall complex doesn't generate any significant bicycle demand there certainly isn't going to be any significant demand in an industrial park in south San Jose or anywhere else where any significant residential is miles away. b. If the employers have a demand for bike racks from employees they'll get put in but no more than one temporary bike rake should be required. If bicycle parking demand arises then you could require that bicycle parking be provided by converting required vehicle parking stalls as necessary. c. Where is it written that you have to provide covered parking for a $200, $500 or a even $1500 bicycle but not a $20,000 $30,000 or $40,000 automobile or a $20,000 Harley Davidson. Covered parking should not be required for bicycles this is a totally ridiculous requirement. d. Providing covered bicycle parking creates more impervious surface areas which runs counter to stated public policy of minimizing impervious surfaces. e. We don't oppose those that ride bicycles but, be reasonable and rational. 2) Parking & Clean Air Vehicles - Marking Spaces For "Clean Air Vehicles". This is ludicrous for several reasons a. All electric vehicles are not clean air vehicles or zero emission. Most likely 70 to 80% or more of the electricity used for a vehicle recharge comes from a coal or hydrocarbon fueled power plants. All you have done using an electric vehicle is just transfer the point of origin of the fossil fuel pollution. Hybrid vehicles 2 will be moving more towards plug in's which again merely transfers the point at which pollution occurs. b. The true zero emissions vehicle is one powered by pure hydrogen in a fuel cell, but there are currently only two economical ways to obtain hydrogen, steam reforming from hydrocarbons and that has CO2 as a byproduct and electrolysis. Electrolysis is only economical when you have excess electrical power from nuclear power plants that can produce hydrogen in off hours as they do in France. The nuclear fuel cost is free for off hours electrical generation as nuclear fuel rods decay at the same rate regardless of whether they are being used or not. There is wear and tear on the mechanical equipment but that is true in all electrical generation. If cities, states and environmentalist were truly concerned with zero emissions, curbing CO2 and fossil fuel use they would be promoting and supporting nuclear power. c. A good majority of the hybrid vehicles are imported which have knocked a significant number of your citizens out of jobs, decreased your tax revenue, caused you to lay off employees, caused needed infrastructure improvements or maintenance to be deferred or totally canceled. While some foreign based vehicle manufacturers assemble here, they import the high value components, engines and transmissions. Assembly of a vehicle only requires 12 to 16 total man hours. d. A good number of the imported vehicles come in from countries that erect barriers to US manufactured goods but benefit from easy US import policy again eliminating job creation here. e. Requiring striping and lettering for "clean air vehicles" is unjustified and adds initial cost and requires ongoing extra maintenance costs. If you want to do something for clean air and the economy start advocating and put some effort to promoting nuclear fueled power production and removing impediments to it. Be honest with yourself. 3) Water Meters a. Requiring water meters for individual tenants is totally ridiculous. In 90% of the cases you are dealing with individual office worker needs not process water. Individuals need water, they are going to use water and just because the boss gets to see a water meter in the tenant space that does not guarantee that the tenant or employees will look at it or even pay that much attention to the water bill. The demand for water is driven by personal needs not cost or consumption. Is the employee not going to use the restroom because they just looked at the water meter? b. We had one of the plumbing designer/contractors that has done a lot of work for the company take a look at what you are proposing based on a two story R&D facility of 67,500 sf and looked at the water demand and costs for submetering. b 1. The first floor of 33,750 sf would generate 169 employees using 2100 gallons per day for showers and roughly 3000 gallons per day for personal needs. Roughly 56 people or 11,290 sf generate 1000 gallons per day exclusive of shower use. The new code requires a meter for every tenant space with a consumption of 100 gallons per day. b 2. Each additional meter and piping would cost 150 to 2000 per meter. 3 b 3. There would be additional maintenance cost. b 4. There would be additional cost for meter reading and administration. The requirement for separate water meters is simply not justified. If you want to educate employees about conservation of water, then educate them not bludgeon property owners with extra meter costs. Your code provisions won't accomplish conservation because you have more water meters in a building, you are merely heaping more unnecessary costs on building owners for no valid reason. 4) Material resuse and recycling requirements Instead of going to the dumps and landfills and making them meet and provide documentation and meet goals on diversion and recycling, the City or state makes every permitee post deposits, generate a demo diversion plan, report, wait, follow up and then finally get a deposit back, all of which consumes a significant amount of administration and lost interest cost to the permitee. In addition the City expends a significant amount of administration running the program. I would bet it cost the City several hundred dollars to a thousand to write the refund check by the time you add all the program administrative cost in. It would be more effective to administer the landfills and leave the permittess alone. When you impose requirements on the landfills they will in turn set their pricing in ways that will cause the permittee's to comply with diversion and recycling without all of the unnecessary administrative costs the City is now causing. Permittee's may or may not comply under the current City program but if the landfills are required to comply, the permittee's will wind up complying by proxy, and if the non permittee's dump down some canyon, well you can't control that anyway. Our field superintendents already respond to the landfill pricing in that it either costs them more for non segregated material or incentivizes them for segregated waste disposal or recycling credit. Don't make hundreds of thousand permittee's and City employees have to administrate and generate reports when you can accomplish the same thing by regulating a handful of land fills and waste facilities. 5) Requiring documentation for ongoing systems maintenance is simply another case of overkill. 6) There should not be any incentives; expedidited plan checks or FAR increase or any other incentive of any kind for projects that exceed Cal Green nor disincentives of for any project that just meets Cal Green. Any construction methods or materials should be based strictly on market economics and at the discretion of the developer or building owner. Any methods or materials that require incentives; which amount to subsidies, are not economically viable and should not be mandated nor incentivized. Just look at the Solyndra snafu in Fremont, CA where the US Government spent $535 million underwriting a failed solar manufacturing project. If something is viable it does not need a subsidy. 7) Politicians and local bureaucratics talk about "you can't export green jobs" as if that is something great. That's like saying we can keep everyone employed by everyone taking turns selling each other hamburgers in fast food franchises owned 4 by the Chinese and Japanese that they bought with profits made from selling Americans, automobiles, machinery and electronics and electronic parts. You as government officials should start helping business by scrapping your green building ordinance and start thinking about how you can reduce the cost of doing business in the USA. The Cal Green Code should be scrapped as well as it is has some very ridiculous requiements in it as well. You need to do something that changes the tide so that the USA is providing automobiles, machinery and electronics and electronic parts to the Chinese, Japanese and other countries not the other way around. As you can see the Cal Green Code is adding additional and unnecessary cost strictly as a result of political reasons and pandering to environmental groups. Please do not add additional mandatory requirements. Please do look at these Cal Green requirements and start working on eliminating a number of these unwise code Cal Green requirements. Thank you for your consideration, Myron Crawford 5