"You've heard about the wall along our Southern border, this is the wall around Cupertino," he said on Tuesday. "We have a big problem with all these Teslas coming through our city from Saratoga, and other people from other cities. So we came up with this proposal. San Jose will be mainly paying for it, so it's not going to come out of our own taxes."
While making the comments, a picture showed the city's borders outlined with a thick black line and featured the words "Securing Our Borders With the Cupertino Wall," according to the Mercury News.
The reference to President Trump's proposed border wall is no laughing matter to Matt Regan, who advocates for affordable housing as a vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council. He said Scharf's joke illustrated a NIMBY attitude.
"When one city decides that they're just going to take the jobs and not accommodate any of the growth, that's puts additional burdens on neighboring cities, on neighboring communities," he said. "That's just not fair. Cupertino needs to pull its weight, it needs to become part of the solution, and not remain part of the problem."
San Jose City Councilman Lân Diệp tweeted his distaste.
"That's quite a nice little day's work for opposing new housing construction," he said.