Campbell mayor’s annual address touts environmental goals

Campbell’s mayor took a fireside chat approach to this year’s State of the City, reading off her priorities in a soft, cushy armchair.

Mayor Susan Landry said at the annual address on Wednesday the city is furthering its environmental efforts, while prioritizing long-term land use planning and housing, larger city projects and community health and safety. She discussed the city’s financial stability as it moves past a structural deficit and a bond measure on the November ballot to raise revenue.

The main focus of the night was environmental sustainability. Landry shared the city’s newest initiatives — climate action and its parks and recreation master plans. The climate plan is in its early stages and is expected to be completed by next fall. Part of the plan will assess baseline greenhouse gas emissions in city buildings and include an assessment of infrastructure most vulnerable to climate change, while setting environmental priorities and policies to meet the state’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2045. The parks and recreation plan is a yearlong effort to frame future maintenance and rehabilitation of the parks. This is set to go before the City Council next spring.

Landry said residents have told her the climate is a top priority and as an owner of Environmental Edges, a small landscape architecture firm, prioritizing the issue is personal for her.

“Sustainability is the quality of causing little to no damage to our environment, our legacy, to plan now to provide a healthy community for the generations to come,” she said at the event. “We wish the future to be a place where there is a high quality of life and our city has a healthier environment.”

Landry addressed the city’s financials. She said Campbell managed to balance a roughly $5 million shortfall for fiscal year 2024-25 earlier this year by using pension reserves, American Rescue Plan funding and instituting a vacancy hiring freeze. The deficit was the first significant shortfall in the city since the pandemic.

To help with its finances, Campbell will ask voters to pass Measure K this November, a 1/2-cent sales tax increase estimated to generate roughly $7 million annually — and raise the city’s sales tax from 9.375% to 9.875%. The city also updated its economic development plan this year for the first time since 2017 to help support small businesses and bring in more sales tax revenue.

Ken Johnson, executive director of the Campbell Chamber of Commerce, said he’s glad the city has the deficit under control. He said he wants to see more affordable housing which could help young people buy homes in the city.

He added he wants Campbell to keep its charm while moving toward the future.

“I love Campbell and I think the people here do too,” he told San José Spotlight. “Maintaining its small-town feel in the heart of Silicon Valley is the ultimate challenge.”

Campbell is working on affordable housing. Officials approved two 100% affordable housing developments, which will bring 194 homes to the city, some near transit. Campbell was one of the first cities in Santa Clara County to get its housing plan approved by the state. It must build nearly 3,000 new homes by 2031, with 1,186 designated affordable for low-income residents.

Landry also updated residents on some of the city’s most anticipated developments, including the police department and library. Both are partially funded by Measure O, a $50 million bond voters passed in 2018, and are expected to be finished by next summer.

Campbell resident Jim Moffett, who’s lived in the city for about 25 years and is a board member of the Downtown Campbell Neighborhood Association, said he wants to see an emphasis on public safety, which the new police building could boost.

“Campbell has a young community and an older community and they don’t want to move,” he told San José Spotlight. “Nobody should have to walk and be confronted by a crazy person. Public safety, it’s a big thing.”
Landry said while the city makes progress, she wants to keep Campbell a close-knit community.

“I want to maintain the small-town charm, and we’ve worked really hard to do that, especially with our economic development plan, even with our housing (plan),” she told San José Spotlight. “We’re facing all these pressures around us, with congestion, with housing, with jobs and to try to preserve what we have is really a challenge.”

Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.