Palo Alto Weighs a Cubberley Tax, a Billion-Dollar Rail Plan and the Price of Its Ambitions

Palo Alto has never lacked ambition. It has a habit, admired by some residents and lamented by others, of studying its largest decisions for years, sometimes decades, before making them. This autumn, two of those long deliberations have arrived at the same moment, and both come with large price tags.

The first is on the November 3 ballot: Measure J, a half-cent sales tax intended principally to buy and rebuild land at the Cubberley Community Center. The second is unfolding in the City Council chamber and in Caltrain’s engineering offices: a plan to separate the railroad from the streets at three crossings in the south of the city, at a combined cost that could exceed $1 billion.

What Measure J Would Buy

Cubberley, the former high school campus on Middlefield Road, covers 35 acres. The city owns eight of them. Under the plan the council placed on the ballot in June, revenue from a general half-cent sales tax would primarily fund the city’s purchase of seven additional acres from the Palo Alto Unified School District for $65.5 million, and then begin renovating the 15-acre portion the city would control, Palo Alto Online reported at the time.

The city has lined up public-private partners for a performing arts center and a recreation and wellness area, and the council adopted advisory spending guidelines tying the revenue to the land purchase and the first phase of the Cubberley Conceptual Master Plan. Those guidelines are not legally binding, which council members acknowledged. “Woe be to a future council who would betray that trust,” Councilmember Pat Burt said in June. Because it is a general tax, it needs only a simple majority to pass.

The measure’s difficulties are no secret. Polling commissioned by the city from the firm FM3 found in May that 55 percent of residents leaned toward support, a result within the poll’s 4.9-point margin of error, and that support tended to fall as respondents learned more. Pollsters advised waiting until 2028. The council pressed ahead because the land agreement with the school district depends on a measure passing this year. “Time is no longer on our side,” Councilmember Julie Lythcott-Haims said.

Since then, the campaign has been shadowed by a dispute over the appraisals the city relied on in agreeing to the $65.5 million price. The Daily Post, which has editorialized against the measure, reported the city initially declined to release them before the council voted to do so. On October 5, the council formally reaffirmed its support for Measure J and for the regional transit tax, Measure RTM. The Daily Post has noted that if both pass, Palo Alto’s sales tax rate will exceed 10 percent.

Three Crossings, One Decision Deferred

The rail question is older still. On September 28, the council voted to advance designs for the Churchill Avenue, Meadow Drive and Charleston Road crossings to 35 percent design, including environmental review, a step required by the grant that pays for the engineering. The current concepts are a partial underpass for cars at Churchill, a hybrid design at Meadow that would raise the tracks and lower the road, and a full underpass at Charleston. Caltrain and city staff expect the 35 percent stage to be complete by the end of 2027.

The numbers presented to the council explain the caution. Building Meadow and Charleston at the same time would take about five years and cost up to $1.1 billion, according to Palo Alto Online. Building them in sequence could take as long as nine years and add $200 million. Either path would require temporary “shoofly” tracks along Alma Street for 30 to 36 months. Building Charleston alone, using a technique called jacked box construction, would be the cheapest and fastest option and would avoid the shoofly altogether.

Council members were candid that not every crossing is likely to be built. Burt, who also sits on Caltrain’s board, noted the city still holds a little over $350 million from the Measure B transportation sales tax approved in 2016, enough to cover much of one crossing. Councilmember George Lu asked that the environmental review also study closing Churchill to cars while building only a bicycle and pedestrian underpass. Councilmember Keith Reckdahl recused himself because he lives near the Charleston crossing. Residents near Meadow have objected strongly to the retaining walls the hybrid design would require along Alma.

The safety argument has also shifted. Grade separation has long been framed in part as a response to deaths on the Caltrain corridor. Burt told the council there has not been a single death by suicide since the city placed track guards at its crossings, a program the school district now helps fund.

A Council Under Scrutiny

The deliberations have unfolded against a season of closer public attention to City Hall. On October 5, the council voted 6-1 to appoint business owner Tom Siegel to the Planning and Transportation Commission, filling the seat of a commissioner who resigned in August, a day before the council was scheduled to vote on removing him, after a complaint about his conduct at a tow yard. The council race on the November ballot, which includes incumbents Vicki Veenker and Ed Lauing, has turned in part on transparency and on the influx of oversized vehicles parked on city streets.

The Palo Alto Paradox

Taken together, these debates express a paradox familiar to anyone who has watched the city for long. Palo Alto is one of the wealthiest communities in the country, yet it repeatedly finds itself short of money for the civic projects its residents say they want. It prizes deliberation, yet the cost of deliberation compounds: the rail crossings have been under discussion for well over a decade, and Cubberley’s buildings have aged throughout.

Stanford has a particular interest in both outcomes. Thousands of students, faculty and staff ride Caltrain through these crossings, and the university’s new land-use application proposes 500 workforce homes across from the Palo Alto Transit Center. Whatever voters decide on Measure J, and whatever the council eventually builds on the rail line, the city’s choices will shape the daily life of the university next door for a generation.

Photo: Saucy / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0