Build the Interstate by-pass road

When it comes to the U. S. House of Representatives, Pleasanton is bi-polar. Lefty Fortney H. “Pete” Stark represents probably the most conservative parts of Pleasanton. Righty Richard Pombo represents the most liberal parts of Pleasanton.

Mr. Pombo, our representative since January, has done more for Pleasanton’s traffic gridlock solutions in six weeks than Mr. Stark, former representative Ellen Tauscher or Mayor Tom Pico have in years and years of public service.

Mr. Pombo’s House Bill 619 will study an alternative highway to I-580 over the Altamont Pass. The highway would begin in San Joaquin County at the intersection of
I-580 and I-5 and run west 25 miles to San Jose and the Silicon Valley.

There is no reason to believe that this six-lane Interstate highway will ever happen. Environmental extremists will line up to bash the idea (they will sue if the idea makes it to another planning stage.) Ranchers, owners of most of the land through which a highway must run, will join forces with environmentalists to try to keep their property in tact (or to drive-up the price the feds must eventually pay.) Finally, we are in Northern California as well. That means years and years of study. Remember it took ten years to make the necessary freeway fixes after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The Northern California House delegation is virtually all Democrat and that is the kiss of death for anything Mr. Pombo has to offer. He is a Republican and a conservative one at that. Local politicians are also mostly liberal and without their support a highway connecting the growing Central Valley to Silicon Valley where the jobs are will be a non-starter.

It will be interesting to see how Mr. Pico, Livermore Mayor Marshall Kamena, Dublin Mayor Janet Lockhart, and Fremont Mayor Gus Morrison will react to the proposed study. The cities they represent have the most to gain by diverting Central Valley vehicle traffic off of I-205 and I-580. Cut through traffic will be drastically reduced and air will get cleaner with cars running at speed and not idling in gridlock. Such a highway, however, will not be favored by the environmentalists who favor them with campaign contributions.

Alameda County Supervisor, a strong supporter of the ACE commuter train from Stockton to San Jose, will also have much to gain by getting more commuters off I-580. But he must also deal with many of those environmental extremists who support the local policy makers.

It would be way too much to expect Liz Figueroa and Ellen Corbett our liberal State Senate and Assembly representatives to pressure their Valley and Santa Clara colleagues to support such a study.

If the project involves social engineering and a bloated bureaucracy to oversee it, you can count Mr. Stark in. Ms. Tauscher, who was generously given only Livermore in the Tri-Valley in the recent redistricting, will hold a wet finger into the wind. If the agenda-driven environmentalists are out in force, Ms. Tauscher will head for the hills even though her Livermore constituents could use some relief on I-580, I-680, and on city streets connecting to Highway 84 that connects to I-680 at Sunol.

Bravo to Mr. Pombo and bravisimo to the Tri Valley Herald for its immediate support of the Interstate freeway study and for its strong case for beginning today.

News Opinion

What got Matt Sullivan’s panties in a bunch?

Tim Hunt of the Tri-Valley Herald is correct about Pleasanton’s direction. The frog people are in control and the rest of us be damned. And, as if on cue, Pleasanton Planning Commissioner Matt Sullivan takes issue with Mr. Hunt’s assessment.

All that can be said of Mr. Sullivan is that the more he writes to the valley editors the more he sounds like a Socialist. His February 9, 2003 letter to the Herald is further proof. He says that Tom Pico and Ben Tarver are more…” responsive to the needs of the community…” and the others cater to the “narrow financial interests of a few? Mr. Hunt and his business constituency…”

Mr. Sullivan, please. These are sophomoric observations. Mr. Hunt is a newspaper editor not a politician. He has readers. Pleasanton streets and surrounding freeways are at gridlock. They got that way in the last twelve years—the years that Mr. Pico and Mr. Tarver were leading the Dream Teams. IKEA’s million dollars in sales tax revenue would benefit the community and the mayor and his cadre of do-nothing, no growth commissioners, committee members and task force clones, and, of course, the like-minded bureaucrats at City Hall chased away the windfall we could use today. (A side benefit of IKEA would have been that our long-planned and approved road and street network on Staples Ranch could have been economically completed to reduce the aforementioned gridlock.)

Affordable and workforce housing, once again, is subsidized housing. Mr. Sullivan claims that Mr. Hunt’s business constituency is not serious about subsidized housing. If they were, Mr. Sullivan continues, “...they should be willing to discuss the issue of a living wage for the large number of minimum wage earners that commute to Pleasanton.”
Say what? That is quite a jump. For Mr. Sullivan it was quite easy to jump from subsidized housing for Pleasanton’s needy to subsidized housing for commuters. He loves those socialist ideas. OpinionPleasanton is quite amused that Mr. Sullivan took us seriously in our VII, N 6 issue, Feature Opinion. Under the affordable housing sub headline in our Programs for the mayor and new council article, we, with tongue firmly in cheek, offered the living wage suggestion. It is our intention to ridicule the idea and anyone who embraces it. Living wage is an idea that could only take root in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz. Or, so it seemed. With such an openly socialist local leader as Mr. Sullivan we cannot be so sure that the living wage will not join rent control in Pleasanton’s leftward lurch. OpinionPleasanton feels that the only needy people in line for community charity in the form of subsidized housing are the fixed-income elderly and single-parent workers. We feel that the mayor and his hired bureaucrats should be straightforward with the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the State of California. They should tell them to go to hell. Social engineering is socialist and, if mandated, is communist. Instead of taking the direct route, Pleasanton’s bureaucrats choose the politically correct route. State and area socialist politicians wrote the primer on political correctness and will easily recognize Pleasanton’s feeble attempt to tell them to bug off. The only thing this in-fighting of comrades does is stall the inevitable—they will extort affordable housing out of us or they will sue us. The usually pugnacious mayor should go to fisticuffs and eliminate the tiresome, boring middle chapters.

In one regard, Mr. Sullivan is correct. Pleasanton, in the seventies and eighties, was affordable housing for Walnut Creek and Concord. Hem? Tracy and Lathrop are affordable for Pleasanton today? A closer look at the housing approved and built in the last twelve years shows a clear trend toward the large, more expensive homes. With no approvals for more modest homes, one would suspect that affordability would be shipped over the hill to Tracy. Mr. Sullivan’s dig at past mayors—Ken Mercer, Frank Brandes and Bob Philcox—was misplaced. They presided over Hacienda Business Park and the Stoneridge Mall and a few modestly priced subdivisions. It was Mr. Pico and Mr. Tarver who stopped the growth in that segment of housing stock—to them subdivisions were ipso fact bad. They approved “communities” in the best liberal tradition. Their communities, gated or not, are what has caused Pleasanton to become the exclusive place that is has become. In becoming exclusive, Pleasanton has ceased being affordable. It should also be noted that wasted motion and money have also caused Pleasanton to be up-scale. Exorbitant city fees and environmental extortion have added thousands to the cost of housing taking it from affordability to exclusivity. Hem? Mr. Sullivan sits on one of the commissions that passes on Pleasanton’s development. Is it Mr. Sullivan who has helped advance the agenda that he now decries?

Quick Opinion

Jeb to Sunne—can’t we all get along?

Mayor Tom Pico, usually the picture of composure, got in the face of Sunne McPeak of the Bay Area Council if Jeb Bing’s editorial photograph is any indication. They sure look like “fightin’ words,” in Mr. Bing’s Pleasanton Weekly of February 7.

Mr. Bing’s photo aside, the editorial is one more example of how touchy feely has spread like cancer from educators to bureaucrats to the media.

Mr. Bing has apparently forgotten that Mr. Pico and before him Mayor Ben Tarver are in- your-face politicians. They did not make nice to former Vice Mayor Becky Dennis when they slit her throat for straying off the do-nothing, no-growth reservation and sent her remains down the arroyo where they knew evil developers would try to resuscitate her.

Mr. Bing also probably forgot how our mayors extorted money from business owners for the privilege of gaining entry to the planning and building labyrinth down at the outdated and soon to be replaced City Hall.

In short, Mr. Pico and Mr. Tarver are not the touchy feely mayors they want us to believe they are. They bring guns to a knife fight. That is the way it should be. Only in Pleasanton touchy feely is the norm. Bill Eastman, Jerry Thorne, and Bob Wright laid it to them good only to be rebuked by voters who elected counselors Steve Brozosky and Jennifer Hosterman who are the epitome of in-your-face for their agenda—frogs over people.

If you are scratching your head, OpinionPleasanton cannot blame you. Community of Character is a simple-minded slogan. It might have meaning at our elementary schools where unruly, undisciplined children need direction. But at the school district’s boardroom and the city council’s chamber, it is a concession to political correctness. Telling us what to say and how to say it is the stuff of despots and tyrants. The simple fact is that tempers flare. Ideas clash.

In Ms. McPeak’s case, she had the gall to use the same tactics on the Measure V supporters and the Brozosky, Hosterman, and Pico supporters that has been dished out for a dozen years. The business council would do well to adopt the tactics of the environmental extremists to make their points. Making nice to extremists has only gotten us to where we cannot speak our minds for fear of alienating people we need to do business. It used to be that we could have spirited debate, strongly disagree, and then move on. When extremists took over local government, things changed. You now must either agree with them or be so humble (have plenty of extortion money in your project’s budget) that they cannot abuse you too much or too often. Rest assured, however, you will be abused. After the politicians you have their bureaucracy and that can be even tougher.
Mr. Bing is usually on the money. In his editorial, Friday February 7, 2003, Business Council needs some character, he is so far off base that even Chuck Knoblock could pick him off.

What is more, Ms. McPeak is also off base. If her views are those of the Bay Area Council, then the council is also off base. Affordable housing became inclusionary housing and is becoming workforce housing right before our eyes. We are going from subsidizing those in most need in our community to providing for those in their prime earning years, earning respectable wages—respectable enough to buy market-rate housing just over the hill in Lathrop and Tracy or back up in Walnut Creek and Concord.

Pleasanton has become elitist. Subsidizing housing is charity. And, to whom we give our charity seems to be a matter to be decided at the local level and not at the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) or at the state in General Plan “Housing Elements,” which is nothing more than social engineering. Framed that way OpinionPleasanton is certain that Measure V, no housing on Bernal, would not have passed. People just do not have time to study the issues in their entirety and make the emotional decision rather than the intellectual one.

So to Ms. McPeak we say bravo. It is about time that extremists get a dose of their own medicine. To Mr. Bing we say sometimes government and civic involvement is not nice and people strongly disagree. To have it any other way is vanilla and giving in to the terrorists.

Guest Opinion

OpinionPleasanton’s feelings are not hurt because we receive very few letters. We know it is quite a leap from signing onto to what is run on these pages to agreeing with it in public. We realize the fear of lost business for local businessmen who take a point of view contrary to the City Fathers. We realize the fear of being hung with a label or a negative stereotype. Finally, we know that you are busy. Consequently we will continue to give you ammunition and we hope the courage to give your inner writer a boost.

Ray Winther’s letter to the editor, Valley Times, February 12, 2003 is a perfect example of laying the wood to them.

Mr. Winther is correct when he says he …”never realized how negatively the actions of my local political and civic leaders could impact my life, until recently.” Mr. Winther is talking about the city’s “Flawed plan” to build subsidized housing. Mr. Winther criticizes the City of Pleasanton’s draft version of the Housing Element for the General Plan because of its “…slathering of ‘possibly able to,’ encouraged to’ and ‘could be considered’ ideas of how to best address Pleasanton’s future housing needs.” What Mr. Winther is referring to is bureaucratese for--we do not have a clue as to how to meet your impossible “goals” we find intrusive and onerous on top of it all. The bobbing and weaving is disingenuous because the city usually shares the liberal, left leaning views of the social engineers up the food chain of government but cannot accommodate them on subsidized housing—that would interfere with their plans to maintain Pleasanton as an exclusive bedroom for elitists.

Mr. Winther’s letter might be the inspiration to those with their “Eyes Wide Shut.”

Counselor Jennifer Hosterman must have made some people really, really mad because she is writing letters to the editor explaining her council votes and action. In her Traffic Metering letter, in the Pleasanton Weekly, Friday, February 28, 2003, Ms. Hosterman says “Of course the solution is not a perfect one. Surrounding neighborhoods will certainly be negatively affected, at least initially. But the very real possibility exists that eventually the traffic flow will reach equilibrium (within weeks), resulting in fewer cut-through vehicles, and returning neighborhoods to pre-experiment conditions…” She voted against the metering plan because she wants written assurances from Caltrans that meters can be switched off just as she did on Sunol Boulevard if there is too much hoopla. She says, “…the people of Pleasanton will not be hog-tied forever by the whims of the state…” To this we say Ms. Hosterman has taken herself too seriously in her city volunteer committee work. She speaks perfect bureaucratese in just six council meetings. Very real possibilities…eventually…equilibrium (within weeks)…Hog-tied? Finally whims of the state? California is run by nuts who have spent us into tomorrow and regulate our lives at all levels. They are Ms. Hosterman’s kind of comrades and she calls them whimsical? Shame, shame, but at least she was socially eloquent.

-30-