"Kou cited confidential legal advice"?? What does that mean? Did she share something she wasn't supposed to?

No - of course Kou did not share confidential info.

Although it is not clear, it sounded like the Council received two pieces of information that Kou believed should be considered prior to them taking action, but the discussion would need to be in closed session due to potential legal liability. The first was a letter that the AJ Capital attorney sent just yesterday. The other may have been the third party expert legal analysis that the Planning Commission recommended the Coucil receive.

Holman trained Kuo well- she has taken over as a dependable "no" vote on everything, just like her mentor before her.

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I believe council member Kou wanted to slow the council process down so as to have a chance to properly evaluate the information especially the two long letters from attorneys submitted only yesterday afternoon that the public and council and staff were unaware of and had not yet vetted that pertained mostly only to the president apartments property.

She recieved virtually no support which is a shame.
Kou really tried to do the right thing but one cannot act alone. The rest of council seemed weary and defeated or perhaps aware of some information that had not been shared with the public that tied their hands.

Either way the whole AJ capital interests in the president apartments seems to demonstrate how staff and council were outmaneuved by those outside our community with an interest only in optimizing their financial rewards by
ignoring local legal zoning laws; resulting in property owners who wish to manipulate local zoning and wish to get special exceptions to our local laws which do not represent the values and goals of our community and are not generally available to others.

Let’s work together to stop this

"Even if well-intentioned, the proposed waiver process would not achieve its stated purpose, but rather would merely create an arbitrary, futile, and pointless obstacle to lawful efforts to repurpose or restore old or possibly blighted properties to otherwise beneficial and conforming uses in this one area of Palo Alto,"

Only for politically naive developers who don't know how to underwrite city council campaigns.

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"The zone change has put several downtown property owners in a bind. Several downtown retail establishments and restaurants, including the buildings that occupied The North Face and The Cheesecake Factory, have been vacant because owners had not been able to move ahead with planned conversions to other code-conforming uses."
Couldn't these properties be converted into much-needed multi-unit housing? Or wouldn't that be as lucrative to the developers as commercial properties?

Hi Joe Simitian passed a law (AB1945) which makes it illegal to share confidential information thanks

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Lydia Kou is probably one of the few recent members of City Council who places the good of Palo
Alto as a whole before that of our over-zealous developers on the Council.
We need more people like her on the Council. Palol Alto should not try to demean her. She is currently the best council member we have.

[Portion removed.] Why haven't the citizens that have been calling for kniss, finde and Tanaka to resign been calling for kuo to resign? Why hasn't the weekly looked into this?

Under current zoning, the owner could convert the President to condos if it gets some parking favors. But, then the income stream would be a one time pile of cash from condo sales instead of the institutional investors' favorite long term mountain of cash from an income stream that a high end hotel chain could produce. City Hall employees are eager for more hotel taxes to fund their pensions.

Palo Alto is simply not serious about the City's housing/jobs imbalance. Witth this waiver farce, City Hall shows it is happy to throw away more housing units instead of fiercely protecting existing housing.

For the owners, this is about profits while thinking it can bully it's way through a lightly enforced local zoning code. Our City leadership is now more worried about ligitation costs than safeguarding our local zoning power and quality of life.

Why the City doesn't dig in its heels on the Elephant on the Room parking issue for the grossly underparked President is a mystery. But, then it has granted waivers and favors so often for those downtown the elephants have breed into a herd.

We cannot repeat often enough:

Lydia Kou is probably one of the few recent members of City Council who places the good of Palo. Probably because as a Real Estate professional she looks through the word fog produced by the developer-finances city councilors ands the agreement at any price faction.

Palo Alto has allowed too may office buildings because of our over-zealous developers on the Council.

A council which allows buildings with 100 offices and 2 small condos to be approved as "mixed" u8se.

We need more people like her on the Council. She is currently the best council member we have, ahead of even DuBois and Filseth who try too hard to be amenable to the build at any price faction.

Kuo is just another in a long line of council members whose purpose is to stop palo alto from meeting their affordable housing obligations. Plus she has personal interest in stopping affordable housing in the city.

A while back it was pointed out that Keene's Deputy City Manager, Steve Emslie now works for AJ CApital.
Also a staff member from City Manager Keene's office now works for AJ Capital.

If you are looking for corruption, you need to look in the right place.

The former Keene staff member who now works for AJ Capital is
Richard Hackmann.

He and Emslie are betraying the city they worked for, in my opinion.

Kou is one of the few council members who wants Palo Alto to keep what remaining sense of community it has. Kniss and Company do -not- represent the citizens of Palo Alto. Unfortunately, although traffic and overcrowding is waking those voters up, I'm afraid it is too late. The huge development under construction are the nails in out coffin. When Google and Facebook eventually go the way of all corporate entities we will become the Detroit of the West.