Dear Friends & Constituents,

2010 was both a rewarding and challenging year for me serving on Cupertino City Council.  2011 promises to bring more challenges for the community as I continue to work on Health and Safety issues which were part of my campaign promises when I ran and was elected to City Council in 2009.

I will continue to use this web site as a conduit of vital information from City Hall to you the residents of Cupertino.  I hope you will bookmark and continue to visit this site from time to time to see what is going on in your city government and how your tax dollars are being spent.  I believe in keeping in close touch with residents whom I represent.  I encourage you to contact me by email about your concerns and suggestions at councilbarry@barry4cupertino.com

With Gratitude,
Barry Chang

 

Letter from Jo Lucy President of the Board of Trustee, Cupertino Union School District about Measure C

 

Items of Interest:

  1. Lehigh Cement Plant:

    • For environmental issues go to NoToxicAir.org (name changed to: Bay Area for Clean Environment).

    • Letter from Office of Mine Reclamation (click on link for original document) - July 20, 2011 notifying Lehigh that they will remove Lehigh from AB 3098 list in 30 days for violation of State mining laws. (see news clips)

    • Notices of Violations issued by Santa Clara County to Lehigh Cement & Permanente Quarry:
            1st Notice of Violation from Santa Clara County November 10, 2006
            2nd Notice of Violation from Santa Clara County June 20, 2008

  1. Steve Jobs' proposal for a new state-of-the-art Apple headquarters - A vision turning into reality:
    On Tuesday, June 7, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, Inc., made a surprise visit at a City of Cupertino city council meeting and announced that Apple would be moving forward with its plans to build a state-of-the-art campus in Cupertino.  He announced the next steps to be taken in Apple’s long anticipated plans to build a large headquarters campus.

    Apple is planning to build a new campus in Cupertino in the shape of a huge circle to house 12,000 employees.

    The announcement was enthusiastically received by the city council.

    Apple continues to be the single largest employer in Cupertino and is among the most profitable high growth technology companies in the world.

    Steve Jobs vision:

    "We want to submit plans fairly quickly, break ground next year and move in by 2015," Jobs said.

    "Think about that, that’s rather odd—12,000 people in one building … we’ve seen these office parks with lots of building, and they get pretty boring pretty fast, so we’d like to do better than that. So, I’d like to take you through what we’d like to do ... it’s a little like a spaceship landed … it’s got this gorgeous courtyard in the middle, but a lot more.

    "It’s a circle and so it’s curved all the way around. As you know, if you build things, this is not the cheapest way to build something. There’s not a straight piece of glass on this building … we’ve used our experience in making retail buildings all over the world now. We know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use, and we want to make the glass specifically for this particular building here … it’s pretty cool."

    "Again, today, about 20 percent of the space is landscaping. Most of it is a big asphalt parking lot, several big asphalt parking lots … We want to completely change this; we want to make about 80 percent of it landscape. And the way we’re going to do this is we're going to put most of the parking underground."

    "… Today there are 3,700 trees on the property; we’d like to almost double that. We’ve hired one of the senior arborists from Stanford, actually, who’s very good with indigenous trees, so we’d like to plant a lot of trees, including apricot orchards."

    "An energy center: We deal with people sitting at computers all day writing software, and if the power goes out on the grid, we get to send everybody home, so we have to have back up power to power the place in the event of brown-outs and stuff."

    "And I think what we’re going to end up doing is making the energy center our primary source of power, because we can generate power with natural gas and other ways that can be cleaner and cheaper and use the grid as our back up, and we think that makes more sense … a fitness center and some R&D facilities … this is roughly the kind of thing that we’re thinking about."

    This plan requires Cupertino to concede a portion of a street to Apples which Council must discuss and vote upon.  The concession may cause some residents a certain amount of inconvenience.

    Video of Steve Jobs talk to Cupertino City Council:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M

  1. Amendment to the Reclamation Plan for Permanente Quarry submitted to Santa Clara County in July 2011

  2. Notice of Lawsuit from Sierra Club to Lehigh Cement & Quarry for pollution of Permanente Creek on August 24, 2011

    Sierra Club Threatens Suit Against Lehigh For Permanente Creek Pollution (document)
    Sierra Club alleges elevated levels of selenium and other toxins are threatening wildlife; will sue under Clean Water Act if discharges don't stop within 60 days. - Cupertino Patch  Aug. 26, 2011