Reasonable people need to regroup for 2004…educating busy people is a task that will take two years. Why the under-the-radar approach on city hall?…Sup with an abstention on his first vote?…Twenty seven hundred twenty four…Twenty seven hundred twenty five…Twenty seven hundred twenty six trees and still no big ones along Bernal Avenue. Twenty one consultants…Twenty two consultants…Twenty three consultants, and now since the election, really counting.

Programs for the mayor and new council

Full disclosure. The process and good public policy are two of the big winners in Pleasanton’s recently held municipal elections. Full disclosure is good public policy. That is what Mayor Tom Pico declared during his successful bid for reelection.

The mayor, and his new obstructionist majority, should pursue an ordinance demanding that home and apartment builders disclose the exact allocation of the renters or purchaser’s funds. For instance: land cost, development costs, regulatory fees, mitigation fees, general and administrative costs and actual material and labor costs. Builders must also disclose the agencies collecting taxes from their new renters or homeowners and an approximate amount each agency will be allocated. Furthermore, the mayor’s new ordinance must also include a provision for full and complete disclosure of the financial conditions of the city, the county and the other taxing authorities and the bond indebtedness of each agency.

It must be named “the truth in building and development act of 2003.” The disclosure could come in the form of a window sticker like the one found on new vehicles. Walk up to the door of your new apartment or home and the sticker will be right on your front door. Of course they would dovetail nicely with the disclosures homeowners must make when selling their homes.

Mayor Tom Pico, in his recent election campaign, said he was proud that Pleasanton has an open government-much of his making. As a consequence, we cannot see why he would not embrace a housing disclosure ordinance that would follow the new tradition of full and open government he has initiated.

What the ordinance will do is quite simple. It will show that out of the $1 million for a Pleasanton home, $200,000 is for regulatory and mitigation fees. OpinionPleasanton is confident that once new renters and new homeowners are aware of the allocation of their rental or purchase price, they will be thrilled. Saving a kit fox, whipsnake or a Red Legged Frog is everyone’s top priority. At the city’s option, under the new ordinance, reports of how those regulatory and mitigation fees are used can be presented for the renter or homeowner to evaluate. We cannot see why a homeowner would have any trouble with the city buying parkland for wildlife habitat and passing these taxes (extortion fee expenses) along to renters and buyers in the form or mortgage payments or rent checks. We cannot see why a homeowner or renter would have any trouble with the city extorting funds for parks and traffic solutions above those already built into the house or apartment costs. (It is easy to see that we have great parks and absolutely no traffic from the use of these extorted funds.)

Since it is not enough to think locally, Supervisor Scott Haggerty can run with this ordinance for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors global consideration.

Water

Water, water everywhere and too much for our canals, and not a drop that is safe to drink

Full disclosure is needed on two water fronts. We cannot see why Mr. Pico would not want to publish a flood alert for the neighborhoods that are still at risk-even after 12 years of slow-growth governance. Val Vista, Del Prado, Laguna Oaks and Greenbriar’s new Carlton Oaks (now under construction) are the ones that pop immediately to mind. The mayor might also list for the entire city which neighborhood he is protecting so that those residents can boost their flood insurance.

You might ask why the mayor does not want to put in pipes to take away floodwaters. It is quite simple. Digging pipelines for developed neighborhoods such as Val Vista, Del Prado and Laguna Oaks means that he hasn’t protected them at all. Digging pipelines for new neighborhoods is impossible because there are no development plans for those neighborhoods. To have a plan for those neighborhoods implies that there will be development and that is not on the mayor’s agenda. Once there is a plan, then the mayor can implement his neighborhood protection plans.

Additionally, Mr. Pico will run into his friends at the Sierra Club when he is forced to look at flood control. Arroyo de la Laguna needs bank work and a general cleaning. To do that near Laguna Oaks means a new bridge over the Laguna at Bernal Avenue. To build the bridge is expensive and, of course, it is growth inducing (easy automobile navigation encourages “outsiders” to move to Pleasanton.) More importantly, there might be frogs on those banks. Since there is no where to relocate the frogs, Pleasanton will be required to purchase private property (taking it off the tax rolls) to mitigate disturbing the frogs that may or may not live there. Bingo. The mayor has no money to mitigate disturbing the frogs. Without money to mitigate there will be no permits issued by the state and federal fish and wildlife agencies that have insinuated themselves in all development-especially here in Pleasanton. (Their insinuation in the golf course development in Happy Valley has likely cost taxpayers and golfers-beginning in a year or so-a great deal of money. The course overrun is currently calculated at about $15 million. That has not stopped the mayor in the past. He is quite adept at extorting money out of developers to cover his rear end when it comes to streets, flood control, water, sewer and power. And parks. The problem with the Laguna is that Mr. Pico has let Greenbriar off the hook for the lion’s share of the expense. Where else will he get the money for the bridge and the flood work? Again, the answer is simple. There is no money. That is why there is no plan.

Typical of agenda-driven left-wingers is that without a huge public (and in Pleasanton’s case) private trough of money, there is no plan. What the mayor has not calculated is that the homeowners in Pleasanton have plenty of money. The homeowners for those million-dollar homes the mayor favors have money for lawsuits. A good case in point is the Kottinger suit against PG & E to pay or attorney fees for stopping the beleagured utility from burying power lines in their neighborhood. If the mayor thinks that the organized homeowners in Laguna Oaks will not file suit when the Laguna spills over its banks, then he has another think coming. (They squashed the silo at the proposed living history park across Foothill Road from their development.) Some have suggested that the City of Pleasanton should have a good flood insurance policy to defend themselves against homeowner suits for not mitigating a weepy mother nature.

Diamond Lanes

If HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes work so well, why do we not take two on a four-lane freeway? Good public policy can become twice as good if Mayor Pico and the council demand that HOV lanes on five miles of I-580 go from one in each direction to two in each direction. As chairman of the Alameda Congestion Management Agency, Mr. Pico can score a coup for himself and Pleasanton with an HOV double whammy. The Bay Area Air Quality Control District and districts all around the nation will be using Mr. Pico’s air pollution public policy model. HOV lanes keep traffic moving and with moving traffic there is far less air quality degradation. When cars move, less fossil fuel is consumed. What could be better public policy than cleaning up the air, reducing freeway gridlock and sticking it to the oil companies?

Affordable Housing

Since Pleasanton is hopelessly unable to provide the state mandated minimum affordable units, the mayor can begin the process of demanding a “living wage” from Pleasanton businesses. Rather than subsidize million-dollar homes, which will cost the city mega bucks, we could demand that business owners pay those residents who work in town a wage equal to the wage required to purchase a million-dollar home. Hotel housekeepers, gardening technicians and restaurant workers can then expect to make between $150,000 and $175,000. Under this plan only teachers, police, and firefighters will be exempted (they are paid by government agencies including the city, etc.) Their salaries, now lower than service industry workers, will be inadequate to buy market-rate or inclusionary housing. Consequently, teachers and public safety workers will be given their homes. Since home builders will no longer be required to build subsidized units as the extortion demanded by the city, they will be required to set aside 15% of their units to be given to teachers, firefighters and police personnel. Sticking it to the homebuilders and the Chamber of Commerce-supporting businesses in town is a great unintended consequence of the Living Wage Act of 2003. Although “things move slowly in Pleasanton,” according to City Manager Debra Acosta McKeehan, this can be done fast-it is not growth inducing. In fact it will probably cause some people to leave Pleasanton. That is good. The traffic gridlock will ease up.

Rent Control

Open the process for demanding that landlords temporarily reduce rents to match the median rents for Tracy, Manteca, and Modesto where our service workforce must live. Once the living wage has kicked in for this group, landlords would be allowed boost rents to 2/3 of the median for the nine-county Bay Area (rents are too high right now and this will take landlords down a peg or two.)

Energy

Open up the process of composting on Bernal. Methane gas can, under an Energy Czar-Matt Sullivan-be sold through a city-owned energy company (now sure to be established post haste) to gasoline producers. Since MTBE-proposed by environmental extremists didn’t quite work out the way it was supposed to-is some day coming out of gasoline supplies, the market for methane additives will be wide open for a city-owned energy public utility. With the rest of the Bernal property, we can plant corn to produce ethanol another additive that replaces the carcigenic MTBE. During the process we will discover that such an initiative will accomplish many worthwhile objectives including: cleaning up the polluted water wells, cleaning the air, using Bernal for public uses and putting the greedy and evil agri-business giant Archers Daniels Midland out of business. A side benefit can be the use of photo voltaic cells on our Bernal greenhouses. The electricity generated by photovoltaic can be sold to the city-owned energy utility. If it is sold at just 1 cent per kilowatt hour over the city’s own rate we can fund the construction of dog parks. The dog poop generated at the park can then be converted into methane gas, etc. etc. At the end of the day, we can tell PG & E to screw off and sink ADM-supermarket to the world. What a country.

Chain of Fakes

Although there are no people slated to live in, around or near the Chain of Lakes-just years away from becoming Pleasanton’s next “crown jewel,” this is another “neighborhood” for which Mr. Pico can fight. Since foxes, snakes and frogs have been elevated to people status in Pleasanton, Mr. Pico should have no trouble defending their Chain of Lakes neighborhood. In fact, the mayor might be able to convince his friends in the Sierra Club to speak to the A.A.L.U. (American Animal Liberties Union) to preemptively sue the city to guarantee that not one people-oriented recreational activity is allowed on the Chain of Lakes.

A fee the Mayor’s gotta love

So many of the mayor’s plans are capital intensive and Pleasanton is running low (or soon will be when the Governor begins robbing the local treasuries to make up for his robbing the middle and lower classes to give to the rich) the mayor will have to think globally. One global approach is the real estate transfer fee (in another day that would read real estate transfer tax.) The nice thing is that new-to-Pleasanton residents will be expected to pay the fee rather than the current residents. (Remember, it is a privilege to live in our town.) There is not one resident in the neighborhoods for which the mayor has fought that would contest such a fee. They got theirs from the mayor and screw the people behind them-who will just come in with their SUVs and junk up the town, pour out pollution and clog our streets. Think of it, a one percent fee-a measly one percent fee-can generate $10,000 per transfer (based on Mr. Pico’s growth formula of million-dollar homes only.) On average, there are 25 transfers per week and that would mean a lock-box fund of $250,000 per week to be used for frog and fox habitat and consultants to study doing nothing for as many years as possible. Worst-case scenario is that a few bucks can be “borrowed” from the transfer fee fund to build dog parks-you know, the ones when the dogs can take their owners, who are obese from too many Big Macs and a sedentary lifestyle, to get in some communing with nature and some exercise.

Coup de Gras

Now that it only takes a 55% majority to pass tax issues, the mayor must jump on getting a city income tax on the ballot for March 2003 (any later than that and Governor Davis will have already put his hand in the pocket of the taxpayers and make things somewhat sticky for Mr. Pico.) Mr. Pico was re-elected (along with his soul mates Steve Brozosky and Jennifer Hosterman) with 60% of the vote. With a five percent cushion and almost every neighborhood to protect still, there should be no problem getting Pleasanton voters to look favorably on the income tax. Because most of those who need protecting commute out of town to work, the tax will not directly affect them. Sticking it to the commuters who come to work in Pleasanton and to Big Business should sell to voters-those two groups are among the evildoers. The very small group of people who actually live and work in town will just to have to deal with it. Public safety workers and teachers will, of course, be exempt. They will also be on schedule to receive their free homes based on the Affordable Housing proposal mentioned above. The mayor protects neighborhoods. No one ever said that he protects people--public safety workers and teachers notwithstanding.

News Opinion

Get it done attitude

…A proper and fitting end to the environmental extremist, elitist government that Pleasanton has suffered for the last dozen years will be the total and complete dismantling of the prevailing, arrogant attitudes at City Hall. Things can be done correctly and still be done expeditiously. People who plan and build are not necessarily evil. People come before kit foxes, whipsnakes and frogs...

That is the lead paragraph of the Page One article we had prepared before the election, November 5. That is how confident we were that Bill Eastman, Jerry Thorne and Bob Wright would win election to the Pleasanton City Council. They are reasonable people with reasonable, mainstream ideas.

The job of Pleasanton free-market capitalists or more appropriately non-socialists is much more difficult than originally imagined.

The job, during the next two years, is one than must be attacked at the grass roots. (You 50 to 100 moderate influencers have your work cut out for you. Plan on spending a few Saturdays at the Farmers Market and in front of Safeway, Raley's and Albertsons.) The Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce, an awakening giant will-out of necessity-hibernate for 18 months. The press will continue on the socialist road reporting favorably on environmental extremist issues-including energy and the patently ridiculous sustainability, report favorably on the anti American position on cultural diversity and open borders, and, to a lesser extent, report favorably on evil developers who still have a few acres in Pleasanton left to Napalm.

Messers Eastman, Wright and Thorne, if they were serious about how they would like to serve the reasonable Pleasanton voter, must organize this effort and remain open to the idea of running one more time against Mayor Tom Pico and counselor Kay Ayala. With two more years of unfettered, obstructionist policies there will be plenty to lay at their doorsteps. (Can you imagine that traffic will improve, flood control will be addressed, City Hall will be planned on property that we already own and have promised will be used for civic facilities and transportation? It did not happen in the two years that Mr. Pico served after defeating counselor Becky Dennis and Bob Cordtz in 2000.)

Quick Opinion

Our work has only gotten more difficult

The information shortage is far worse than suspected. That is the only explanation of why radical extremists were swept into office in Pleasanton.

As watchdog, OpinionPleasanton, has much to do. Undaunted, OpinionPleasanton will forge ahead with an education program to enlighten Pleasanton voters who, we are confident, are more conservative than their voting records indicate.

The lunatic fringe is politically savvy and has been able to exploit busy voters-voters who have succumbed to million dollar mortgages and two full-time wage earners and no time to participate in a participatory representative democracy.

Guest Opinion

Dear editor:

There is a long-standing faction in Pleasanton that would like our town to be a gated community from border to border. One voter, who wrote on July 26, 2002, said that “affordable housing draws riff-raff who, in this upscale town, could deal drugs and park old cars on the lawn.” He stated that, “Pleasanton does not need more subsidized or affordable housing mixed with homes of people who’s intellect and work ethic enables them to live here. If those people [I suspect seniors were included] cannot pull their own weight, let them live elsewhere. Pleasanton is already overcrowded.”

I hope that this person is okay and didn’t move on to the great affordable housing tract in the sky. He must be overjoyed that his first cousins in spirit now hold a four-seat majority on our new City Council and a continuing three-seat majority on the mayor’s primary tool, the Planning Commission.

An elected majority rules, we accept it, and are thankful for democracy. However, that doesn’t stop one from wondering how this group will act in the future--for the whole of Pleasanton, or for geographic groups. Within a reasonable time, if Mayor Pico doesn’t stop catering to individual neighborhoods, to the detriment of the rest, we should adopt a proposed name change for our city to “NIMBYVILLE.” A letter writer suggested this September 23, 2002. Motion seconded.

The scary thing is that if crystal balls were useful, we might predict what could happen to us during the new administration.

The new majority

Mayor Pico’s dream.---The West Las Positas interchange, which is still sorely needed, will be removed from the General Plan, thus satisfying one neighborhood, not all. It could be built safely. There are many intersections, stop lighted or not, that may be dangerous to school kids, but are served by rossing guards, bless them, who volunteer for this purpose.

Next, the extension of Stoneridge to El Charro road will be consulted and studied to death. El Charro will not extend to Stanley. Another neighborhood mollified but negative for Pleasanton overall. By the way, this mayor realized a long time ago that a good way to get elected was to divide and conquer.

The Council

Certain environmental measures are laudable but should not be mandated as the old council did for commercial projects of more than 20,000 square feet. Green building guidelines are enough. If business wants to locate or expand here, they would accept our guidelines, as have Applied BioScience and PeopleSoft. If they didn’t want to cooperate they wouldn’t get approval. Let’s not chase away tax base income possibilities. DANGER, this mandate will next filter down to projects less than 20,000 square feet and then to residential upgrades. Where first we had the “House Paint Police” we would now have the "Green Building Police” who would direct how we flush our toilets, heat our homes and replace our windows, etc., etc. The mayor’s protégé, our new council member and “Queen of Green” Jennifer Hosterman will lead this charge to environmental nirvana.

Steve Brozosky. One feels and hopes he has a mind of his own and will not just be a knee-jerk rubber stamp for the group. However, he most likely will negate, where possible, any more reasonable housing, raise his livestock and wait for the 20 acres on Vineyard Road to appreciate.

Kay Ayala.-An independent soul? A loose cannon on our community ship of state? In any case, a dedicated no/slow growther. Only she, however, has a clue as to what she will do from day to day.

The Planning Commission.

Matt Sullivan.-Working with the Green Police, it is possible that he as a continuing career enhancement move, would want to become Pleasanton’s Energy Tsar. In this position, he would seek to establish our own electrical grid and generation facilities at untold future cost and debt. Solar panels on my roof would be nice but I wouldn’t want to be told that I had to do it.

Brian Arkin.-This person will be assigned to write new measures and referendum after costly referendum to vote down whatever is unacceptable to the new regime.

The third member of this triumvirate is Mary Roberts who, to her credit was against CAPP, but who wrote on February 25, 2000, about no more housing on Bernal. Stating that thousands would live there and drive thousands of vehicles. They obviously would not be restricted from sending their children to schools of filing the parks which have to be provided for them and which are, incidentally provided as amenities for the rest of Pleasanton residents. It follow then, that the future parks will be built for the privileged few of us who are grandfathered in. We wish her well on he Vineyard Corridor acreage.

The accumulation of assets is admirable and wise. Each property owner wants to see property values on the rise, especially those more recent residents who pay increasingly elevated prices for homes on postage stamp size lots. But let’s fact it, because of past administration practices, P. Town has become exclusionary to those less fortunate. Even those who used to be known as the middle class can’t afford to live here. Are we going to become even more avaricious in the future? I hope not. The incoming administration must remember that perceptions and attitudes change over time and in certain cases should. If a business, or even a city government rejects the needs and desires of 40% of its’ customers or constituents over time, it will ultimately be bankrupt.

Listen up Mr. Mayor.

Gerry Brunken

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