Volume Five, Number 5                                        What ElseYou Need To Know                       January 26, 2006

It is time for a change. This report card is getting tiresome

This city council, like the councils before it, had few accomplishments and its deficiencies are many. It was thought that when Jerry Thorne was elected to the council last June that things might have improved. However the Sandra Day O’Connor of the council has only added to the myriad headaches. Mayor Jennifer Hosterman muddies the water even more with her socialist agenda politics and is aided and abetted but Mr. Thorne who seems to relish throwing red meat into the cat cages in the Pleasanton circus parade.

Most of the problems relate to a liberal agenda and a bureaucracy all too willing to push the company line no matter the consequences. The agenda is to simply to study proposals to death—except those favored by the eco extremists. Project proponents usually simply fold their tents and go away to more business friendly environs. The studies, usually conducted by outside consultants, come at a considerable emotional and economic cost.

This council is still all about process. Accomplishments be damned.

Again, all we can say about the report card is ditto. Ms. Hosterman was a failure. Riding roughshod over her colleagues, she presided over a divided council that also failed. The city’s professional staff let us down by being run over by the council’s eco extremists. The bureaucracy is a willing accomplice to the far-left programs and policies the mayor and her supporters offer up. The obstructionist, go-slow baton has been successfully handed off once again.
We were correct to say that with two environmental extremists on the council, it is even more likely now that global warming and frog habitat will trump traffic and flood control as priority items worthy of speedy council action. We had hoped that Mr. Thorne’s election would have given us the opposite result.

Below is OpinionPleasanton’s council report card on the important issues facing the mayor and the city council. The report card covers 2001 through 2004 in italics and 2005 in bold.

2001 Traffic—F--It just keeps getting worse. The council must provide for current needs even while advocating no-growth. There are several areas where the council can make a major contribution without inducing growth. A mass transit hub and the long-promised ACE Train station and high-density housing on the Bernal property will take many cars off the city streets and the freeways. The Stoneridge extension to El Charro is a vital east-west connection. El Charro to Stanley would be a vital north-south connection. Realigning West Las Positas Boulevard to its long-planned for four-lane configuration would move traffic off of Foothill Road to the Hacienda Business Park. Improvements to the Stoneridge/I-680 interchange will reduce accidents and speed traffic off Foothill to Hacienda and eventually to El Charro. Synchronizing traffic signals would speed-up traffic along Stoneridge, Hopyard, West Las Positas, Stanley, Foothill, Bernal.

2002 Traffic—F. The puny experiments with traffic lights have not done much. If that is all the council can offer, we might as well dig in for the long haul. Now they are considering turning on metering lights on the entrance to east bound I-580. They are still pushing Sierra Club (high occupancy vehicle—HOV) lanes. They are also rolling over on Highway 84 improvements. Finally, they refuse to complete the road network (Stoneridge and El Charro) on Staples Ranch.

2003 Traffic—F—Not one thing has been accomplished. All of the issues outlined above still apply today. The metering lights are clogging things up on city streets and the freeway still only chugs along.

2004 Traffic—F—The lights are out of sync, they are agonizingly long when no traffic exists, and road improvements are on the back burner. Do not look for much to happen until the West Las Positas over crossing and the Stoneridge Drive extension are written out of the General Plan. The ACE train station, long promised, is flying under the radar. A mass transit center with ACE as the centerpiece is only spoken of in terms of Stanley Boulevard where no one will use it or if they do, they will drive there and increase the gridlock in downtown where freeway commuters will have to pass to reach a Stanley station. Finally, do not look for the mayor and current council to work on realigning Highway 84 or lending support to Congressman Richard Pombo’s freeway proposal connecting I-5 near Tracy with US 101 in San Jose. Instead, look for encouragement for the building of HOV lanes (High Occupancy Vehicle lanes) that only clog the already clogged freeways and spew pollutants into the already edgy air quality.

2005 Traffic—F—Not one darned thing was done to ease Pleasanton’s traffic woes and nothing is in the pipeline. Well, all except the removal of the Vineyard roundabout. The council and the bureaucrats just do not get it. The people want this problem to go away and the longer nothing is done the more painful the solutions will be to the obstructionists who control the agenda right now.

2001 Bernal—F--The council has abdicated its leadership position to a citizens committee and offered no direction to the committee. The committee founders trying to prioritize potential projects including a spot for an animal farm. The Bernal property has been under study for more than 10 years and intense study for about five.

2002 Bernal—F. The committee, that was formed to stall and obstruct anything happening on Bernal, was doing a modicum of good in discussing potential uses when the plug was pulled by the mayor. It was serendipitous. One woman, with a protest poster advocating a park, was all the opening the mayor needed to nullify the work of the rudderless task force he formed and stacked with obstructionists likely to advocate a park anyway. On the heals of changing the discussion--a sea change--was the Bernal initiative, which eventually won at the polls. It happened so smoothly that it appeared to be choreographed. No one could be that lucky. However, the mayor is. Along the way, the mayor also apparently dodged the bullet on being an elitist and anti senior for backing the anti-housing initiative. He was reelected by a good margin. Today, Bernal is fallow awaiting a lighted sports park—the compromise for nothing else going on the remaining 300-plus acres. The expense for this charade is incalculable. Wasted consulting contracts, wasted committee meetings, and wasted staff time are all buried in the city budget and the professional staff (alone or at the will of the council) will not give up the costs.

2003 Bernal—F—We are still studying uses for the land not promised to the powerful sports lobby.

2004 Bernal—F—Well, we now have lighted sports fields on the books. The only thing missing is the money with which to build them. In fact, if the city continues playing a shell game with the treasury, it is not telling when the money will be available. The sports lobby is interested in more practice fields and that will only add to the pressure of funding Bernal.

2005 Bernal—F—The lighted sports fields will get underway this year or so they say at City Hall. The rest of the park is being laid out. The final draft of the plan will go to the ballot this November--maybe. Right now it is likely that it will go to the ballot without an ACE train station and no affordable housing--things that we need and needed yesterday.

2001 Happy Valley golf course—F--The council is perfectly willing to suffer the environmentalist’s Red-Legged Frog demands but unwilling to even consider yielding one inch to the demands of the state and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) for subsidized housing. The golf course study is approaching five years. By the time the council gets around to the course, green fees will be in the hundreds of dollars.

2002 Happy Valley golf course—F. Here, it is money that covers up for the council and professional staff ineptitude. Up to 2002, it was the special interest agenda of the environmentalist council that cost $17 million in golf course construction costs. Delays from outside agencies that issue permits for these types of local projects demanded habitat mitigation. In other words, they made the city (the developer on the golf course project) buy land elsewhere to save frogs and some such. While begging for those permits, the cost of building a golf course doubled. Additionally, the annexation of the land for the course was turned down by Happy Valley residents intent on maintaining their rural lifestyle. The city’s annexation of a smaller piece of land has resulted in a lawsuit initiated by landowners who feel that for technical reasons the annexation should be set aside. Their hope is to bludgeon the city into building the bypass road of their liking. The gambit has worked; the council voted unanimously to focus on the Spotorno alternative proposed in the very beginning. It was an extremely safe vote as there is no money to build that road even if environmental extremists would issue permits to do so. The Spotorno road would require the environmentalist council to approve more houses and the golf course was approved and pursued to prevent development on Pleasanton’s southern boundary. Although the mayor said that the city would have to look at increased densities to fund the road, he did so knowing that it is extremely unlikely that the road will happen. However, it is his willingness that will look good when and if the landowner suit goes to court. The city already turned down a Spotorno development plan thought to have too many houses. It would also require habitat replacement land—just in case that a Red Legged Frog ever showed up there—and that will likely add millions of dollars more to the already bloated golf course project.

2003 Callippe Preserve Golf Course—D—The course (named after an endangered butterfly) is under construction. The $36 million project is more than double the original estimate of $15 million. A promised Happy Valley by-pass road is not a part of the original project and is now in court at considerable more cost to the city. The economy is down and golf rounds are predicted to be fewer than in the original estimate and we still have not heard how much a round will cost using the new numbers.

2004 Open space and driving range—F—Golf will eventually be played at Callippe Preserve Golf Course and Open Space. There is just no telling when that might be or how much it will cost. The Developer on the project (City of Pleasanton) just lost control of its contractor and subs. Grass did not get planted before the rainy season began this autumn and it will have to be sown in spring. The good news is that the city can spend plenty of time with the driving range pole problem while watching the grass grow.

2005 Callippe Preserve Golf Course—D—They got it open. That is the good news. The bad news is that the city will be subsidizing the course to the tune of $1 million per year. The by-pass road is still not in the books and the city is now fighting with the county about golf course and Happy Valley traffic. They must have really perturbed supervisor Scott Haggerty down at City Hall.

2001 Subsidized housing—F--The council appears to be elitist unwilling to clutter the landscape with houses selling for less than $1 million. The Bernal property and the newest fad of putting high-density housing near transportation hubs stare the council in the face and they appear as though they are deer caught in the headlights. The city has nearly $10 million in a subsidized housing fund and is considering buying shopping centers and trailer parks for subsidized housing rather than work with developers on Bernal or elsewhere.

2002 Subsidized housing—F. Here is where the council has really let down the people of Pleasanton. Bernal has plenty of room for senior subsidized housing for those most in need. The mayor and new council majority claimed that they favored other sites for such housing. They now have the opportunity to prove that they are not disingenuous when it comes to senior housing. However, their failure to speak out for the Elder Care Alliance’s— a coalition of the Sisters of Mercy, Burlingame Regional Community, and the Sierra Pacific Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—proposed project on the St. Augustine Catholic Church’s nearly five acre parcel at E. Angela Street and Bernal Avenue. The church has pledged to return half of the land lease payment to provide charitable care for church members and Pleasanton residents. The silence on the proposed assisted living project is one more piece of evidence that they are elitists preferring to approve million dollar homes and to talk about some nebulous plan for a run-down shopping center site. And, why would they speak out? They have plenty of lemming followers who will go over the cliff singing the same chorus of “too much traffic” and “too much out of proportion.” Evidence is also mounting that they are as mean spirited as agenda driven.

2003 Subsidized housing—F—It is dwindling since those original apartment developer contracts are coming to an end and so are the subsidized units. The council’s answer was to raise subsidized housing fees charged to homebuilders and commercial- industrial developers (right when the economy is at its worst and business is fleeing the area and the state).

2004 Subsidized housing—F—No new housing stock has been added. No expenditures from the modest fund have been made. No new sites have been identified. And the most promising site at St. Augustine’s on Bernal Avenue was dismissed by environmentalists and the usual whiners as neighborhood unfriendly.

2005 Subsidized housing—F—Not much was added to the subsidized housing stock and not much done to stem the flow of subsidized housing from going back on the market at market prices.

2001 Staples Ranch—F--The council should be leading the charge for the IKEA project. Pleasanton needs the sales tax revenue and the Staples Ranch location is perfect for a high-visibility retailer. The Council seems perfectly content to study this project to death wrapping it into an East Pleasanton study area. The project is a perfect segue into extending Stoneridge Drive to El Charro and El Charro to Stanley, two approved plans.

2002 Staples Ranch—F. This property is perfect for high visibility retail such as IKEA, chased away by council and staff stalling. IKEA needed streets. The council position that roads cause growth clearly was in play. IKEA could see the handwriting on the wall and skipped over the freeway to see if Dublin was friendlier. (The jury is still out on that.) If the council had chosen to extort tremendous amounts of money from IKEA as they have with Applera Applied Bio Systems and others we could have had developer help extending Stoneridge Drive to El Charro Road and El Charro to Stanley Boulevard which will ease commute traffic gridlock and add vital links out of Livermore in case of emergencies at the labs. Since those options run afoul of the council majority’s agenda, it is clear that stalling and studying will be the course of action. We can expect more bills for consultants, committees, commissions, and task forces for the “East Side” study. Look for a corridor here and an overlay there, a scenic corridor here and district there— Just about anything to slow down the process of development. The council feels that we are so flush with money that we can afford to flush down the drain a potential of $1 million in sales tax revenue. Had we accommodated IKEA a year ago, we might have a grand opening just in time to produce sales tax revenues to replace the loss of car tax revenues from the state.

2003 Staples Ranch—F—They are moving dirt. But for what reason? No projects have been announced for the 126 acres. No street network has been approved. No approved road extensions begun. IKEA is finalizing plans for a Dublin facility. The result? Pleasanton gets the increased traffic and bupkis in tax revenues. Good job Mr. Mayor.

2004 Staples Ranch—F—A baseball stadium with no Stoneridge Drive access? Senior living with no Stoneridge Drive access? A stadium will over utilize this property and senior living will under utilize it. Since ex-mayor Tom Pico and current mayor Jennifer Hosterman chased away the Swedish furniture retailer IKEA to Dublin, California, no major retailer is likely to propose retail development that would add to the treasury. Dublin’s Waterford shopping complex, that combines residential and commercial, would be an appropriate use that would also add housing to meet our state obligations. Do not, however, hold your breath on such a development.

2005 Staples Ranch—F—It is only five years into planning Staples Ranch so what is the hurry. Not even an auto dealer deadline will speed up this process.

2001 ACE train station—F--If anyone should embrace public transportation and a mass transit village it should be environmental extremists. Our council leadership is afraid of houses and business and the ACE Train station that they promised (especially on the Bernal property) would encourage (be perfect for) high-density housing and compatible office, retail and hotel development.

2002 ACE train station—F. The council waited long enough to look seriously at the station they promised that the down economy took its toll on ACE ridership and now the council will appear prudent when they nix the station on Bernal, everyone’s location choice. They fear the station at Bernal because most forward thinking cities are now looking seriously at transit villages and building nothing on Bernal is still their special- interest agenda priority. They claim that a transit village at the BART station is preferred. They do so because a transit village/station at Hacienda will prove too costly. This is one more way that they do not have to commit to doing anything. So much for their commitment to mass transit, cleaning up the air, and relieving freeway and cross- town traffic.

2003 ACE train station—F—There is no station planned. We gave up our seat at the table of the ACE board. Traffic continues to worsen. Freeway lanes are not in the foreseeable future. Highway 84 is years away from being improved. BART is too expensive to get to Livermore. But, the Dublin transit village is moving forward at the West Pleasanton BART station. Good job Mr. Mayor.

2004 ACE train station—F—It might have a home on the Bernal property. It might be developed on Stanley Boulevard. Either way you look at it, there is no home other than the temporary spot on the Alameda County Fairgrounds. The environmentalists who control the council agenda cannot bring themselves to back a diesel solution even if it means getting cars off the gridlocked freeways and saving fossil fuels in the process.

2005 ACE train station—F—They made supervisor Scott Haggerty pretty darned unhappy with their cavalier attitude about reneging on their agreement to build the station on the Bernal property. There is no commitment on this council to do anything about public transportation and consequently air pollution.

2001 Assisted living—F--The council talks a good game. Their actions speak louder than words however. There has been no council action over the last year even with an outside operator on board. Inviting Marriott to convert their Courtyard by Marriott property on Hopyard Road into assisted living in exchange for land on Bernal and allowing them to develop a regional conference center and hotel complex seems beyond the rural, off-the-hard-road mentality of the mayor and council. Their idea is to give away land and then loan money to get a puny project off the ground. Because it is seniors who need subsidized housing and assisted living the most, it also makes sense to assist in building rooms at Valley Care hospital in exchange for subsidized housing and assisted living credits with the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the state.

2002 Assisted living—F. The city is in the assisted living business. Only they do not have a facility. The facility and management have been on the drawing boards about six years. Typical of anything Pleasanton touches, the gestation period defies logic. Hum? Could this also be why our counselors and mayor are mum on the Elder Care Alliance project on the nearly five acres at St. Augustine’s?

2003 Assisted living—F—Not a thing has happened. Our city-sponsored project is idled by a slowdown in the economy. However, the boomers are getting older and parents from the East Coast are still trying to get closer to their children and grand children.

2004 Assisted living—F—The bloom is off the rose? All the political points that could be had off senior issues have been had? When a faith-based proposal was presented, nothing but howls came from the eco-extremists. The project is too big, the project is too massive for the neighborhood, the project is too traffic generating. Or, is it really because it is supported by a church? After developers, churches must be the next evil bogeyman.

2005 Assisted living—D—We have studs.

2001 West Las Positas overcrossing—F--The current study is now about four years old. The interchange has been in the General Plan since the mid-seventies. It seems that most people would just like to put the issue to bed and there is excellent support for shelving the interchange and simply making improvements to the current overcrossing.

2002 West Las Positas overcrossing—F. The mayor and his quislings have the horsepower but not the intestinal fortitude to pull the trigger on pulling this project out of the General Plan. As recently as last week we heard about how it was going to be done.

2003 West Las Positas overcrossing—F—It looks as though it will be removed from the general plan but no plans have been announced to realign the current roadway to be traffic flow from Foothill Road to Hopyard Road. Pulling it from the plan needs another consultant at about $100,000. Say what? Who is fighting for us to save this expense?

2004 West Las Positas Overcrossing—F—It’s coming out of the General Plan and that will cost a bundle. However, nothing has been offered up to deal with traffic and safety on West Las Positas.

2005 West Las Positas Overcrossing—F—It is neither in nor out of the General Plan. Things move a little slowly in Pleasanton.

2001 Stoneridge Drive extension—F--This extension has been in city plans for many years. It should be no surprise to anyone that Stoneridge would connect to El Charro. One need only to look from its dead-end a few hundred feet to El Charro to see that the extension was planned. Additionally, connecting Stoneridge to El Charro will complete a vital link to and out of Pleasanton in the case of a national emergency at the two Livermore labs. As it stands now only Stanley, Vineyard and Highway 84 are the safety links west out of Livermore.

2002 Stoneridge Drive extension—F. Build these roads and they will come. People that is. Or so say the environmental extremists on the council. As a result of that convoluted thinking, these roads, long in the General Plan, will be studied to death. It will take the next progressive council to get these built. That is if this council leaves the land available. They could tie it up so nothing can be done with it except save frogs.

2003 Stoneridge Drive extension—F—All that has happened is that naysayers have begun their public relations project to sink the extension. The approved project is being studied in the Eastside Plan and restudied in the general plan review. The only bright spot is that neighbors in the area can abide the extension if they receive some concessions in return—namely four lanes instead of six.

2004 Stoneridge Drive extension—F—With Ms. Hosterman and Counselor Matt Sullivan on the council, the long-planned Stoneridge extension is moving toward extinction in the General Plan. Stoneridge is a vital east-west artery to move people in and out of Livermore in the case of an emergency. By getting people to El Charro Road and then to I-580, congestion will be relieved on city streets. Those residents along, Stoneridge from Santa Rita to the dead end near El Charro, must cope. The road was clearly meant to be a thoroughfare when residents purchased their homes. Additionally, sound walls block the noise and the visual impact of through traffic. This part of town is no different that Hacienda Business Park where travelers move at 45 mph past hundreds of homes.

2005 Stoneridge Drive extension—F—Their heads are still in the sand.

2001 Flood control—F--The council has taken a dangerous wait-and-see position on upgrading our flood control plan. This could be the year of the hundred-year flood that they talk so much about and do so little to mitigate. Drought-like conditions have helped the council up until now but when might their luck run out. Costs for upgrading keep going up the longer that we wait just like the Happy Valley Golf Course. Letting developers do the upgrading is a good idea except that Pleasanton does not allow development. More importantly, there are several neighborhoods that are subject to flooding and the council puts those homeowners in jeopardy by not acting.

2002 Flood control—F. Still nothing concrete, pardon the pun. We saw the water in the arroyo rise a month ago and thought this might be the time for it to flood. The council lucked out again as they have for the past dozen or so years. Down by the green bridges watch the banks. They are not getting any better.

2003 Flood control—F—The Bernal property did receive collection ponds. They are pretty ugly though. The Arroyo de la Laguna is still untouched. The relatively dry winters have continued which means that future councils will be forced to deal with flood control.

2004 Flood control—F—As in 2001, the council has taken a wait and see approach to Pleasanton’s flood-control. There is nothing sexy about flood control. It is much more pleasant planning parks, theaters, and teen facilities. The sky is not falling today…

2005 Flood control—F—Have you looked at the arroyo near the green bridge on Bernal? The last couple of storms have eroded the banks and it might be too late for the eucalyptus logs to do any good.

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