Home Depot should be built along with Stoneridge Drive

The Stop Pleasanton Gridlock people are to be commended for their efforts to extend Stoneridge Drive to El Charro Road. However, they destroy their credibility by opposing The Home Depot development. To some, it looks as though this is another NIMBY group trying to get traffic relief for themselves and pulling up the moat bridge in the process.

Commerce and development are good for Pleasanton. It pays for many of our amenities including road improvements. The sales tax dollars commerce generates will be especially needed when we have reached buildout and there are no more developers from which to extort road and park funds.

A better approach by Stop Pleasanton Gridlock would be to support El Charro Road be extended to Stanley Boulevard, the long-promised ACE train station be built on Bernal property as the centerpiece of a mass transit hub, and Highway 84 be straightened and widened to accommodate commuters heading to I-680 southbound. Throw in BART to Livermore and beyond and better connectivity to BART and ACE by Wheels and County Connection and you have solutions to traffic problems and not simply improving traffic flow in a single area of town.

We will continue to support Stop Pleasanton Gridlock for their Stoneridge Drive efforts because Stoneridge Drive to El Charro is the fastest way to begin traffic relief.

 

News Opinion

 

Nothing will change on the school board

Juanita Haugen’s death will only mean that Jill Buck will finally get her appointment to the Pleasanton Unified School District’s Board of Trustees and the board will suffer because Ms. Haugen’s stature and institutional memory cannot be replaced.

Ms. Buck will bring about as much to the table as anyone but she will have to gain her sea legs before she will have an impact on the board. We are not sure of her impact on education.

We did not expect many changes at the PUSD when Chris Grant was recently appointed to the Board of Trustees and now there will be fewer. His educational claim to fame is serving on the Excellence Committee which, among other things, recommended more money to improve Pleasanton’s school performance (look out for the parcel tax). He also thinks that the board members, including the two who were unopposed in the last election, are doing a good job.

If you support mediocrity from our schools, Mr. Grant is probably your man.

If you demand educational excellence for our students, you might want to look for candidates to challenge the conventional wisdom that we already have great schools that could be made better if we only had more money.

Power not consensus is the name of the game

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is dead wrong about building consensus in Washington D.C. How can you when the Democrats are not looking for consensus they are looking for power. Maybe the governor thinks that by adopting the Democrats positions (just like in California) on any number of issues amounts to consensus.

Consensus in California? Not really. Most Republicans are not a part of the governor’s coalition of two—he and his wife Maria. Democrats and the governor and his wife doth not a consensus make.

With about 20% of the Democrat senators running for president, do not count on consensus in the Senate. The anti-American, anti-Republican rhetoric will only heat up.

That being the case, only the House of Representatives can the provide consensus. Not.
The house leadership is also anti-American, anti-Republican. Their aim is be re-elected themselves (Democrats have the self preservation that Republican do not) and to vilify the president and the Republicans enough to capture the White House.
To reach the consensus the governor proposes pretty much requires Republicans to abandon their own principles and positions and to adopt those of their Democrat colleagues.

Republicans are caught between a rock and a hard place in Washington and California. They do not wish to capitulate and surrender to the Democrats and the governor in California. They need Arnold’s star power to attract campaign funds. Likewise, in Washington congressional leaders cannot afford to disregard President Bush’s fund raising abilities and the power of the presidency

 

We all drink the same water, breathe the same air

We can all agree that we should be good stewards of the earth—that is today’s actual environmental consensus. The causes and solutions for pollution and climate change are very much in play.

What is galling, however, is that the environmental whackos have gained the political advantage and have put true conservationists on the defensive. If you are not green, you are evil. If you do not drive a Prius, you are evil. What is worse, today you cannot even question the eco-extremists. If you do, you are anti-green and evil. Carbon footprints and trading pollution credits are a diversion from real solutions to real problems—just what the socialists want to gain and hold political power.

Environmental zealots are a threat to our democracy because, like Animal Farm and 1984, four legs good, two legs bad and Big Brother is here to help—bad air and water notwithstanding.

 

Guest Opinion

 

Here is a perfect example of why war discussion better in D.C.

Paulette Kenyon is back at it and she is at her finest. Like many in the hate America crowd, she is disingenuous at best. She says that discussing the Iraq war at the City Council was going to simply be a support the troops and veterans discussion. Piffle.

She concluded her letter to the Valley Times editor on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 “…It is unfortunate that the wonderful community ideas that [Mayor Jennifer] Hosterman has are being scuttled by this myopic, vengeful ‘tyranny of the few’.”

On the other hand, Mark Priscaro in a letter to the Pleasanton Weekly editor on Friday, February 23, 2007, says that there are many more important things for the City Council to be doing including, “finalizing the General Plan, dealing with ongoing planning issues/disputes, working on solving traffic an housing issues, etc.”

He also asks, “what next? A discussion on abortion? How about Social Security and other U.S. entitlement programs…”

Mr. Priscaro concludes with “stop wasting my and other city taxpayers’ local tax dollars.”

Mitch Fidziura in his march 2, 2007 letter to the Pleasanton Weekly concludes that the an American withdrawal would make the Middle East and the world “a much more dangerous place, with our liability increasing proportionately. I’m sure that Mayor Hosterman and Fred Norman have a strategic game plan to address these problems, but as far as I know, they would be the only people that do.”

Finally, Mike Duarte in his Independent letter to the editor on March 1, 2007 says that Mayor Hosterman and counselor Matt Sullivan “stated that they only wanted to encourage a community discussion about the war, but I do not believe that for one moment.”

Neither do we. Their divisiveness must stop or they will risk what civility we have left in this community of character.

 

 

 

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