Editorial: Cupertino official should apologize for housing outburst

What is it with Cupertino public officials and their inappropriate outbursts on one of the Bay Area’s most pressing issues — housing?

Four months ago Mayor Steve Scharf was way out of line when he suggested during the beginning of his State of the City address that Cupertino should build a wall around itself, but San Jose should foot the bill. “It’s not going to come from our taxes,” he said.

Scharf later claimed he was joking, but, if so, it fell flat in the South Bay.

Now Cupertino Planning Commission Chair R. “Ray” Wang is immersed in a housing fracas that has the community understandably in an uproar. Responding to housing advocates on the neighborhood social media site Nextdoor on Sunday, he wrote “Save the suburbs from an onslaught of anarchists and YIMBY Neo Liberal fascists.” And that was just the beginning of his tirade.

At the very least, he owes Cupertino residents an apology for his poor judgment. If he can’t see the need, he should resign from the commission.

As ground zero in the housing debate, emotions are running high in Cupertino, where the median price for a single-family home tops $2 million, putting it out of reach for anyone making less than $400,000 a year.

When Sunnyvale housing advocate Richard Mehlinger, a software engineer at Dropbox, responded to Wang’s outburst with a tweet calling his message an “unhinged rant,” Wang wrote on Nextdoor: “well that’s fun =) we’ll have to talk to Richard’s employer, DropBox. =).”

He then later posted: “Next time you get harassed by a YIMBY track down their employer and send their HR, Legal, and CEO a letter outlining their YIMBY stance, and all their tweets, their digital and social comms to show their lack of civility. It goes a long way to getting them reprimanded and in some cases a dose of reality.”

Wang’s comments were an unacceptable attempt by a public official to try to silence dissent. And they showed a disturbing bias from the leader of a key city commission entrusted with fairly reviewing development proposals.

Wang argued that he was posting as an individual and not in his capacity as a city official. He took issue with his comments on Nextdoor being shared publicly, which goes against Nextdoor policy.

Finally, he said he didn’t intend to threaten Mehlinger.

Yeah, right.

Related Articles ‘YIMBY neo-liberal fascists’: Housing barbs spark backlash against Cupertino official The Cupertino City Council should condemn Wang and demand that respectful dialogue be the order of the day on city issues.

Amazingly, Mayor Scharf disagrees. He said the City Council didn’t need to take action because Wang made it clear that he was only speaking for himself.

That misses the point. However he voiced it, Wang demonstrated that he holds an unacceptable predisposition that prevents applicants from getting a fair hearing before him, and could intimidate residents from freely voicing their opinions.

Moreover, if that’s the kind of example city leaders are setting, it’s no surprise Cupertino is making little progress in solving its biggest political challenges.

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