Last week I talked about the Transportation Master Plan which was coming up before the City Council, to briefly summarize, everyone in the City was pretty much in agreement with everything with the exception of one item in the TMP and that was the issue of street widening for the sole purpose of adding capacity for cars. Basically staff wanted it and the Transportation Commission did not. Staff claimed that they needed the “flexibility” in order to keep the option open to add more lanes to roads if necessary. The City Council disagreed with City Staff all except one person.
Can you guess who?
Strangely enough, Doug deHaan stood firmly in the camp of City Staff defending their need for flexibility in order to, ostensibly, provide flexibility to future developers.
The other Council folks (Lena Tam, Frank Matarrese, Marie Gilmore) all said — in essence — look, there already is a built in flexibility if a project requires additional lanes, it’s called a general plan amendment. If some project is truly that worthy to move forward with something that we, as part of our policy, don’t want to become widespread in our city, then there already is a mechanism to deal with it. Let’s not water down (I believe that Frank Matarrese used the term “soften”) policy in order to provide this perception of flexibility.
Doug deHaan asks (see video), “Do you want to limit the flexibility of the Planning Board…er the Planning Department and the Public Works?” To which the answer is, yes. We do. Because it’s not limiting THEIR ability to do anything, it’s limiting what would be a mitigation measure on the part of a developer. He then asks staff (see video) if the general plan amendment would be “doable” or if it is too “awkward” for staff’s purposes. To that I say, who cares? It’s not the City Council’s job to make something convenient for staff, it’s staff’s job to carry out the policy put in place by the City Council as the democratically elected representatives of the citizens of this city. As an aside, I seriously had to censor that last sentence because if I had written it as I had said it in my head it would have been filled to the brim with choice expletives.
So in the end, the Council approved the TMP without the amendment that staff tried to shoehorn through. Although had I been someone who bends the truth to my will in order to serve some higher mission I would have entitled this post, “Doug deHaan in the pocket of developers.”
And speaking of developers, a little bird told me that Catellus just laid off the main point person for the Alameda Landing project. Looks like there will be a few more years of just pushing dirt around for a while for that parcel.
Is Catullus pushing dirt or just the gophers and rabbits?
By the ‘Landing’ contracts CC was in such a rush to approve that even the language couldn’t be reviewed – how long can Catullus do nothing?
I had missed this bit of news:
REGIONAL: CONCRETE FALLS FROM CEILING OF WEBSTER TUBE, CLOSED FROM OAKLAND TO ALAMEDA
A 60-square-foot chunk of concrete fell from the ceiling of the Webster Street Tube that connects Oakland to Alameda, prompting the tunnel’s closure until Monday morning, a California Department of Transportation spokeswoman said.
The 2-inch-thick mass was not a structural piece of concrete, but an aesthetic one that a Caltrans employee noticed in the tube around 6 p.m., Caltrans spokeswoman Lauren Wonder said.
Drivers trying to get into Alameda will have to take Park Street or the Broadway tunnel until about 6 a.m. Monday, Wonder said.
Comment by flexi-tuber hot potato — January 28, 2009 @ 10:20 pm
Wow! HOMES is starting to feel like a rock star being the topic for two days in a row now. Thank you Lauren for explaining the HOMES’ mission so well. Our focus has always been on seeing that a variety of housing types are included in any redevelopment at Alameda Point which we believe is needed to continue the character of Alameda there, provide housing choices for a variety of ages and stages of our citizens lives, and facilitate a vibrant and sustainable development.
As plans for the Point have emerged (first APCP’s and now SunCal’s), we have tried to analyze those in response to how well they fulfill the community vision – http://www.ci.alameda.ca.us/planning/pdf/GPChap9.pdf – that was developed as part of the Base Reuse Plan beginning back in 1993, so in a way we have expanded our focus a bit. We have never been about just affordable housing. We also offer and encourage sharing constructive concerns about the plan. David Kirwin’s concerns about traffic mitigation, rising sea levels and the need for a better explanation of financing are all concerns we share (and encourage readers to share those directly with SunCal which can be done through their web site – http://www.alamedapointcommunity.com/contact/). We just urge your readers to evaluate the plan on its actual merits, not just heresay, and to do the same for us. Our web site is http://www.homesalameda.org. The SunCal plan and a short summary of their plan can be found at: http://www.alamedapointcommunity.com/process/
Comment by helen sause — February 10, 2009 @ 2:20 pm