Council voted to 4-1 to not go ahead with the application. The motion to not go forward was made by Council Member Lisa Matichak, and seconded by Council Member Ellen Kamei. Council Member Matichak did not want to move ahead with the grant application because it included specific development density requirements for which no public outreach had been conducted and whose impact on the downtown’s historic retail/restaurant district were unclear. Council Member Kamei objected to the grant’s inclusion of the development density, saying that this is a policy goal that should be decided by the council. Council Member Lucas Ramirez and Vice Mayor Pat Showalter also voted in favor of the motion not to go forward with the grant after Ramirez asked if a motion to approve the grant required 4 votes. Council Member Emily Ramos voted against the motion, since she wanted to move ahead with the grant application.
Much of the council’s Q&A, both to staff before the meeting and at the meeting, involved whether in accepting the grant application, the council was obliged to adopt the grant’s density requirements. Also, if the council had the flexibility to reject them, would the money need to be repaid? Staff indicated that while not having a definitive answer from MTC, MTC cited a case in Santa Clara where a grant was given with certain requirements, that Santa Clara decided it did not want to meet those requirements, and at the point of that decision, the funding was withdrawn, but it did not need to be repaid. Multiple council members expressed doubts that the grant requirements were right for the downtown, and then questioned whether it would be useful to proceed with a process which would end with having the grant funding cut off.
— Robert Cox, OMVNA Vice Chair
