From: Paulette Altmaier [ ] Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2018 10:39 AM To: City of Cupertino Planning Dept. <
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[email protected]>> Cc: ICE Richard Altmaier <
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[email protected]>> Subject: Vallco EIR vis a vis commuter patterns I attended the EIR scoping meeting this past week. Several speakers had a coordinated talking point about how "only 10% of people who live in Cupertino work in Cupertino." It's important that the EIR take into account several much more relevant issues when determining environmental impact, in particular the way Bay Area cities flow into each other. For instance, depending on which part of Sunnyvale you live in, you may live closer to Apple than people who live in Cupertino! So the 10% statistic that was cited by these speakers is not environmentally meaningful. The meaningful questions are - i) How close to their work do people live? And how close do they WANT to live? ii) How do the numbers change when one analyzes renters separately from homeowners? We know that moving is often cost-prohibitive once you buy - but we all know renters move when their job changes. From an environmental impact point of view, if renters move to be close to their jobs, that is a huge positive benefit to providing high-density rental housing at Vallco that must be considered in an EIR. iii) Another reason to make the distinction between renters and homeowner behaviors is that focusing on the total population (including the people fortunate enough to be homeowners) completely misses the population whose commute patterns we can actually affect with our decisions - all those renter employees at Apple and other companies who are commuting from distant locations.