Belmont City Council candidates square off

The three incumbents have been intimately involved in the development of a plan to create a downtown in Belmont and new zoning rules for single-family neighborhoods. Also, there are currently more development projects in the works than Belmont has seen in decades.

For Bolbol, most of those changes are flawed at best and detrimental at worst. She said she’s committed to fighting “overdevelopment” in Belmont, slowing down the production of housing and was motivated to run for City Council because she said many residents are not being heard.

“I want to bring open and independent thinking on this council. You’ll hear [the incumbents] say they’re independent thinkers, but when you really look into the direction they’re taking the city, they are in unison,” she said. “I would be the only voice that would probably vote against things on this council but that’s OK, that’s the way the chips fall and I’d be fine with that.”

One of those things she’d vote against or at least modify is the effort to create a downtown, outlined in the Belmont Village Specific Plan. That plan envisions as much as 800 additional housing units by 2035, including townhomes, multifamily buildings and single-family housing as well as expanded retail offerings and pedestrian walkways.

Lieberman described the vision as a “true village feel,” but for Bolbol, it epitomizes the overdevelopment that she believes is pushing Belmont in the wrong direction.

“Belmont never had a downtown and never will have what people perceive to be a downtown,” Bolbol said. “[The plan] allows up to five-story buildings along the Ralston/El Camino corridor and top three to four stories will be for residential. I absolutely think that’s a bad idea for Belmont. To suggest that those people are not going to have cars and won’t add congestion to the area is ridiculous and defies common sense.”

Bolbol suggested three-story office buildings along that corridor instead. Offices would boost city revenue and workers would commute to the offices by train and not add to the city’s traffic congestion, she argued.

Village ‘feel’

Each candidate spoke at length about the importance of preserving Belmont’s “quaint” village feel and Mates said both the general plan and the BVSP do just that.

“If you’re picking up this plan in 2027 you see ‘hey future leaders, this is why Belmont is so special, this is how we want you to go forward.’ We don’t have a crystal ball, we can’t predict what everything will look like, but please continue to keep this feel,” she said. “And that does involve things like making sure our residential neighborhoods aren’t touched in terms of density, making sure those things happen only in areas that can sustain them like El Camino Real and where there’s access to transportation corridors. We don’t want to touch our open spaces. ... As Belmont looks less suburban and slightly more urban as the years go on, we want to make sure we still have retained some of those aspects of Belmont’s small-town feel.”

She also specifically celebrated the BVSP for creating additional gathering spaces for the community.

Lieberman referenced “visioning sessions” dating back to the 1990s at which “everybody” talked about wanting a “village-looking feel.”

“Belmont is surface parking lots and strip malls, it’s not a village. What we want and what it is are not the same,” he said. “One of the things we were told by some of our planning folks that we hired was that the biggest reason we did not have a vibrant downtown or the thing standing in the way of good development or the things people wanted was our zoning of the downtown area. ... So we undertook this effort to do a rezoning.

“For many years, Belmont couldn’t attract anyone to even consider doing any kind of development in Belmont,” he continued. “We were not a city that anybody wanted to work with. We’re changing that now. ... We have taken a lot of really good steps over the last five years to enable a Belmont look and feel that’s consistent with what people have been asking for.”

But Bolbol said most residents aren’t even aware of the BVSP and said they often say “good grief what is the council thinking” when she shows it to them.

Beyond the BVSP, Stone said preserving the character of the city and building housing are not mutually exclusive.

“I lived in the San Mateo Village while Bay Meadows was being developed and it didn’t change the feel of San Mateo village at all for me and I lived there since 1989. I think you can build a downtown in Belmont, you can build a reasonable amount of housing but focus on affordable housing without changing the village feel at all, and with that housing comes tremendous community benefits,” he said, and referenced millions of dollars that city has and will receive in impact fees from past and future developments. “That’s how you strike the balance, you don’t just let people build willy nilly and build to seven to eight stories, you do it appropriately dense for your community development and you make sure your community gets what it needs out of it.”

Recreation center, pensions

A potential new recreation center and the city’s unfunded pension liability have also been talking points in the race.

“The council for a number of years was concerned about doing anything about Barrett in terms of a community center or any kind of planning because we didn’t have the money,” Lieberman said. “This council has had a different philosophy. This council is beginning to say we don’t know what will happen there but let’s at least start the outreach process and see what might be there and what the community is interested in. ... We are actively looking at options for how we might start getting a process going.”

Mates envisions a multi-generational facility and Stone said preserving field space seems to be important to people. He also said the type of facility he and the community wants would cost between $30 million and $50 million.

Stone said his original vision was to make the Barrett Center a joint facility with the school district, but the district said it couldn’t foot the bill.

Bolbol said she wants that option back on the table.

“I think we need to look creatively at ways we can make a cross-purpose facility and see if we can work with the school district to make it where they have more teachers to operate that facility,” she said. “I’d like to have that back on the table because there could be creative ways rather than whatever tax the city envisions.”

As for pension obligations, the incumbents celebrated the city’s finance department and said Belmont is in relatively good shape in terms of pension debt. But Bolbol appeared unconvinced and called for greater transparency as to how much the city is spending on pensions as well as on health benefits for retired city workers.

Mates said the city needs to prefund its liability and Lieberman and Stone said there’s no need to create additional tiers to ease costs.

On Nov. 6, Belmont voters will also decide whether the city clerk and treasurer positions will be appointed positions rather than elected ones and they’ll also decide if the city’s hotel tax will jump from 10 percent to 12 percent.

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 102