When Ajit Varma moved to Palo Alto from Texas two decades ago, he was a 19-year-old with a car, a dream, a degree in electrical engineering and little else.
"I was basically living in a car for three months because I couldn't afford to find a place," Varma said.
Big tech was his ticket to success. He had stints at Google and Square and now works for Facebook, where he is product director for WhatsApp. He lives in Crescent Park with his wife and two children and he's making a bid for City Council because he wants others to have the opportunities that he had.
Varma has been troubled by Palo Alto's business climate for some time. While most other candidates bemoan the city's high jobs-housing imbalance and see a clampdown on office development as part of the solution, Varma believes the city should embrace its tech roots, get rid of its onerous restrictions on development, abandon its plan for a business tax and make small businesses feel welcome again.
"We went from a time to when every business wanted to be in Palo Alto to a time when everyone wants to leave Palo Alto," Varma said at a Sept. 15 debate sponsored by the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce. "This is not the time to raise taxes on business."
Varma was troubled by the recent announcement by Palantir that it is moving its headquarters to Denver and he is concerned about the prospect of other major companies, including Tesla, doing the same. The loss of such companies, he believes, represents stifled opportunities for today's and tomorrow's generations.
"I got lucky because companies like Google existed here, that companies like Facebook existed here, that companies like Square were in the area," Varma told this publication. "If those companies (don't) exist here, I think it means we won't have the same opportunities that we had 10, 20 or 30 years ago."
The ability of these companies to remain can, in his view, have global ramifications. Tech giants that are born here adopt the values of Stanford University and Palo Alto, which he sees as a good thing. Notwithstanding Palantir's work with ICE to identify undocumented residents and Facebook's role in allowing the spread of misinformation, Varma believes both companies are good, if imperfect.
"It's easy to criticize the negatives of companies. ... I'd rather these problems be solved by people in Palo Alto with our value system rather than in communities that have influences with maybe different value systems," Varma said.
As someone who works with businesses around the globe, Varma believes he is ideally suited to help the local business world recover from the devastating impacts of COVID-19. He wants to cut red tape, speed up the approval process for zone changes, make the recent closures of University and California avenues to car traffic permanent and drop the plan for a new business tax.
Among his ideas for creating more housing, he supports working with large companies on office developments that include housing, though he opposes the idea of asking smaller businesses to build housing to offset the impact of their employees on local housing stock.
In addition, he believes the city should promote housing by relaxing development standards such as height limits, parking requirements and density limits along major corridors such as El Camino Real, Page Mill Road and San Antonio Road. By focusing new office and housing construction in these areas, the city can avoid the loosening of zoning standards in single-family neighborhoods.
Unlike other candidates who supported a recent state effort to allow homeowners in R-1 neighborhoods to split their lots and build duplexes, Varma is no fan of state mandates. He believes the city can solve its development problems; it just needs the will to do so.
But in contrast to Councilwoman Lydia Kou, who similarly opposes recent Sacramento housing bills, he believes the city should do more negotiating with developers. The city's success is intertwined with that of its business community, he said, and it's important for the city to start saying "yes" to requests from developers for zoning adjustments that would facilitate growth.
"The reason that it's so important to say 'yes' is because that's what makes it feasible for developers to create housing," Varma said.
Like Mayor Adrian Fine, who is concluding his first term this year and who is not seeking reelection, Varma believes the city needs housing for all income levels, including affordable and market-rate housing. But Palo Alto is unlikely to meet any of its housing goals unless it becomes more flexible with its zoning and permitting, he said.
"A lot of times we hope for things to happen," Varma said. "We need to do more than hope. We need to have a plan."
While Varma's views on commercial growth make him an outlier in the candidate field, most of his other positions align with those of his opponents. He supports repealing the binding arbitration provision from the city's contract with the police union, providing more cultural and community amenities in places like Cubberley Community Center and, as an avid bicyclist, expanding the city's bike network. He also supports, somewhat begrudgingly, expanding access to Foothills Park to nonresidents.
Given the hit that Palo Alto has taken to its reputation because of the exclusionary policy, he said, the city has "no choice but to open it now," Varma said at the Weekly's Sept. 24 debate of City Council candidates.
Varma's views on campaign finance stand in sharp contrast to those of the other nine candidates. Several candidates in the race have pledged not to accept contributions from developers (Steven Lee and Greg Stone) or to limit individual contributions to $1,000 (Lee). Others, including Pat Burt and Cari Templeton, said at the Weekly debate they would support setting a cap on campaign spending. Varma goes a step further and believes the money has no role in politics. He is the only candidate who hasn't accepted any contributions for his campaign.
"I've been offered a lot of money and a lot of donations, but I said no. ... I believe people should win upon their views," Varma said at the Weekly debate.
Read profiles of the nine other candidates:
• Rebecca Eisenberg: Swinging for the fences
• Lydia Kou: Playing zone defense
• Steven Lee: Proudly progressive
• Raven Malone: Seeking social justice
• Greer Stone: Keeping it local
• Greg Tanaka: Following the money
• Cari Templeton: Ready to listen
More election coverage:
• VIDEOS: Watch our debate and interviews with the 10 City Council candidates in Palo Alto
Comments