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From: Cary Bloomauist <br />To: Council -Diane Howard; GRP -City Council <br />Subject: Fwd: City Council to Review Child Care Business Zoning Amendments <br />Date: Friday, March 19, 20212:10:47 AM <br />CAUTION: This email originated from outside your organization. Exercise caution when <br />opening attachments or clicking links, especially from unknown senders. <br />Subject: Review of Child Care Business Zoning Amendments <br />Dear Honorable Mayor and Council Members, <br />Thank you for taking the time to review my email. I apologize for not being able to provide the <br />agenda number for the Item I am discussing. I tried several times to access the agenda online <br />but was not successful. <br />As a third generation native of Redwood City, and former small business owner (Coffee Shop <br />and Licensed Daycare Facility) I implore you not to amend any Zoning requirements as they <br />pertain to the placement and location of small Family Daycare Centers in Redwood City. I <br />operated a Licensed Daycare Facility in Redwood City for over 15 years and can tell you, with <br />experience and confidence, the impacts on the neighborhood are detrimental to both quality of <br />life for it's residents and for property values. <br />The noise generated by a daycare facility is a significant impediment to a potential buyer of real <br />estate in that neighborhood. No one wants to live next to a Daycare Center with kids screaming <br />all day long. The traffic and parking impacts as a result of parents dropping -off their children is <br />no less significant. Safety is a major concern, as parents and kids weave in and out of parked <br />vehicles to cross the street to gain access to the daycare facility... it's a real problem and a serious <br />safety issue. <br />Single-family residential neighborhoods already face parking deficits as more and more <br />"Granny" units have been approved, resulting in increased density which was not originally <br />planned for when the neighborhoods were designed 70-100 years ago. I have owned property <br />and lived in 4 districts in Redwood City during my 56 years here, and I can tell you from <br />experience each neighborhood I lived in had a parking deficit and traffic safety issues. Please <br />don't add to this already significant problem by approving changes to Zoning which would allow <br />more family daycare centers in areas which are not designed to cope with the additional vehicle <br />traffic, pedestrian traffic, and parking. <br />Property values translate into revenue for the City. The higher the property values, the more <br />revenue for the City. As a retired government employee of 30 years, I can tell you as an Analyst <br />I reviewed countless budgets over the years, and it's very important to have a stable tax base for <br />your residential sector. Redwood City already has lower average property values than most of <br />our Peninsula neighbors, which is a result of the bad reputation for the school districts and other <br />aspects I will not delve into here. <br />Bottom line, we need to at least maintain our current level of property value relative to our <br />neighbor Cities. Passing a Zoning amendment to encourage more small family Daycare centers <br />will not increase residential property values in Redwood City, it will lower them. The City <br />needs it's tax revenue to provide a certain level of service to it's residents and to ensure financial <br />