Kevin Moore - Santa Clara City Council - 20 Year Quest for a Taxpayer Subsidized Santa Clara Stadium
Kevin Moore at the San Francisco 49ers Santa Clara headquarters
Kevin Moore is the most avid proponent of the City of Santa Clara building and running an NFL football stadium for the San Francisco 49ers (with Patricia Mahan a close second). He was also involved in trying to bring the San Francisco Giants to Santa Clara in the 1989 time frame, and the Oakland A's 10 years later. Even before he was on the City Council, he wrote to the 49ers co-owner John York asking that they move the team to Santa Clara.
Kevin Moore on the Great America parking lot
proposed as a Santa Clara San Francisco 49ers stadium site
Former Santa Clara City Council member John McLemore on Kevin Moore:
"He is known in some political circles in California as 'the stadium Energizer bunny,' because he just keeps pushing and he keeps going and going,
trying to pawn this city land off to a sports franchise to put a stadium there," said John McLemore, a Metropolitan Transportation Commission
member and former councilman who twice lost mayoral races to Patricia Mahan, a Moore ally.
"Why is Kevin Moore the lead agent trying to push some stadium there?" McLemore said. "It's not his land, and it's not his money."
Kevin Moore on massive 900 Kiely Boulevard project
On 8/18/2009 Kevin Moore gave his justifications for approving the massive 900 Kiely Boulevard high density development (note that he never says that it is what the people of Santa Clara want - he was not governing from a democratic standpoint - but from a Kleptocratic or Aristocratic one):
OK, I'm gonna go off a little bit here for a second I just need to clarify somethin here. Uh, we sit here and we listen a lot. We spend a lot of time deliberating and lookin at every single angle turning over every rock. Tonight we even listed to a guy who thought he was God. OK And I want to clarify you something here. OK. For Gary Gillmor who's not here to speak for himself. Gary Gillmor does not own the land under Great America amusement park. The city of Santa Clara does. Number two. Gary Gilmore didn't tear down the downtown of Santa Clara when he was a freshmen in college on the basketball court. And number three, even though somebody thinks their God, uh I I believe he has no vested interest in Fairfield corporation at this time. So, uhm, I just wanna clear those things up
Kevin Moore works for Gary Gillmor at Gary Gillmor and Associates as a real estate agent so took some time to defend his boss against criticism from a member of the public.
It's too bad people have to go to those levels of deception. And the last one is Uhm, that same individual who's God who said that I damaged his car one time, scratched it, uhm If he can give the film and pass it over to the chief of Police uhm I would definitely admit if he has that film but it's somethin that I don't do especially when I'm in the council chambers. So just to clarify iwhat God is out there saying is very innacurate but it's not the God that I look up to. Thanks you. Secondly, here Somebody uhm, you know, kinda and I won't mention there name here uh re reduced what we're gonna get here with the creek trail. We spent a lot of years there, I mean poison oak, climbin down in the trail. I mean, I think Loree Garcia is here today who wore out a couple pairs of tennis shoes here and uh it's nice to see the last few weeks uhm I was over at uhm somewhere towards city hall there and a lady was talkin about walkin the creek tail and I said oh, so you're goin down to Los Gatos. She goes no no no we're going on up here to Monroe, that new staging area. And the next morning I had a teacher come up to me and say hey you know what my wife's No no no, we're going up to This wasn't my idea. wore out a couple of pairs of tennis shoes here. Hey you know what, my wife's gonna go out there and run the trail. We're trying to link up some very positive ... I mean this wasn't my idea. ... the father of the creek trail I'll take that but 1959 uh years ago our council members, I don't think we have any from 1959 here. I don't think Dave Thompkins was 1959 but I knew he was back aways now, but, the plan for the city was to link up the parks and the schools and and entertainment things along the trail. When I saw that master plan for 1959 and we came out here and we walked out there regarding the trail with uh God bless his soul, Earl Carmichael he said hey son, with his Texas drawl, he goes I don't think that's gonna happen. I don't think it makes sense And then he saw a gentlemen, ride his bike up, middle of Silicon valley, no paved trails Take his bike, put it over the fence, climb the fence and ride down the trail. And he goes well son, maybe things are changing. Well we have a real opportunity here to link a park. I'd love to have 52 acre park in my neighborhood. Central Park, you know I went to St. Justins right there I saw the traffic at Kaiser uh you know, there was a lot of traffic at Kaiser walkin across that street to get some gum or to get somethin before practice. boy that was traffic goin in there. Ambulances, once and a while you'd even see a helicopter going in there. So there was traffic whatever anybody wants to say. And the building was, I gotta say I wanna say when I was there was at least on the eigth floor. I mean I don't know how many floors it is but it's quite a few floors. Uh, this project here is gonna come back and it's gonna be somethin that we can be proud of with the open space we're getting here, somebody lessoned the open space we're getting. When you see the trail and what's gonna be there this is gonna be good for not only the area people there are gonna be takin walks there and gonna be able to access the trail and the park. It's gonna link are (sic) 52 acre park with potentially another park parcel of land that's gonna be very good open space for walking, recreating and it's gonna increase the value. Whoever says it's gonna decrease the value of that area I'll look forward to seeing them in a year, 2 years. And then what it's gonna do, it's gonna link up eventually to Homeridge park a lot of people don't know about. It's a great barbecue area. And it's gonna be a really good thing. So whoever lessened that, you nkow, it's too bad. They don't understand the trail and what it's gonna be doing. I will be supporting the motion. Uhm would I like to see it be an open field of 10 soccer fields, be great. We worked to get em, all of us, the majority of us on this council here to get 3 soccer fields out there north of Bayshore. Would I like to see it be all the trail. It can't happen. But we worked to gether to get 20 it's almost 20 acres. er 20 acres, I wanna say 20 acres of park land along the trail that we're workin to get. So we are trying to get wins every where we can.
One of the proposals for the 26 acre 900 Kiely site was to make it an extension of Central Park which is across the street. One of the Santa Clara Planning Commission members - Ian Champeny - asked the woman who headed the small Oakland firm who prepared the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) why she had not chosen a park as the use of the land (and why is an Oakland firm ostensibly choosing the use of Santa Clara land??) , adding it wasn't that often that you got a chance to expand your park land. She responded that a park "wasn't green enough". She said that buliding a high density development was greener than making the land into a park. To make this claim she rely on a false dilemma that Jamie McLeod is also fond of. That false dilemma being that you either build more residential housing in Santa Clara, or you build it in Tracy (or someplace else further away from Santa Clara commercial buildings) - while continuing to build new commercial development in Santa Clara. This false dilemma ignores the obvious alternatives - you stop building in both Tracy and Santa Clara. One of the rationalizations of continuing to increase the population of the United States is that there is plenty of land - in the midwest. And the false dilemma relies on a false dilemma taken to it's extreme - there is only one choice - that is, commercial buildings must continue to be torn down and made ever larger in Santa Clara - there is no other alternative. And yet, stopping building commercial in Santa Clara, and instead building it in Tracy is entirely possible. And that alternative would make Santa Clara residential development the "non-green" choice and make building residential in Tracy the "green" choice.
And uh, Reduction. Did we meet with the neighbors? Yeah I got an email right here that I just read off from one I got yesterday and talked to um and Would we love it to be a whole open space preserve
Kevin makes a straw man logical fallacy - open space preserve - knowing that overdeveloped cities never make them so he can then argue that it has to be developed in some fashion. However, cities do make parks and it was proposed that the land be used as an extension of Central Park across the street. Kevin was not unique among council members in failing to talk about the fact that the land could have been a park - all seven city councilmembers were silent about that possibility. And making the land into a park would benefit existing residents, whereas making it into high density development only benefits people who don't currently live in the city. With the exodus of people from Santa Clara county at a rate much higher than births minus deaths in the area, there is no internal need for housing.
or would we love it to be a a you know somethin where downtown area of somethin that's gonna bring a lot of traffic. And I tell you the traffic that would be there if we did an office building there. You'd have traffic you know quite a lot larger than that. You know and so uhm I think it's a tough decision here but it's a responsible decision and I think what it's gonna do for your trail is gonna bring big benefits not only for that area but for the entire city.
