Triple bogey sinks Happy Valley Golf Course annexation

Three more yes votes and the city fathers would be on their way to rescuing the $3 million they have invested in the Happy Valley Golf Course. Their triple bogey, in a one-hole playoff, will now have the mayor and council hoping they can now make a chip shot of a couple of hundred acres to reach the green.

As a developer, Pleasanton stinks.

It should be clear to the environmentalist extremists on the council that the bureaucratic maze, established by environmental extremists, has sunk the grand Happy Valley golf scheme. Fish and Wildlife and others were extorting too much land for the Red Legged Frog. The "land for riparian habitat" peace process took so long that the momentum built for the golf course dissipated. For Mayor Tom Pico, five years to get permits for acres of open space is being hoisted on his own petard. It was Mr. Pico's scheme to build a golf course to "prevent development" and to create a natural southern boundary. That plan killed two birds with one stone. Pleasanton golfers would be happy and the Sierra Club would be happy.

Not so. Give environmental extremists a San Joaquin Kit Fox habitat and they'll take that and up the ante for an Alameda Whipsnake habitat and a Red-Legged Frog habitat. Four hundred acres of open space is just not good enough any more.

It is too bad that Mr. Pico and his council colleagues did not put on a full court press for the course like they are doing for Bernal's Lithia Park. Their casual approach with the 212 eligible Happy Valley voters was probably mistaken for arrogance. It is too bad that Counselor Kay Ayala was not collecting golf course votes door to door like she is out collecting ballot initiative signatures. The council was so sure that those hayseeds in Happy Valley would take the "we're so great" bait that they forgot to campaign. Without passion and with their characteristic elitist attitude, they perturbed a few people. You just cannot perturb a rural voter; they can turn on you.

Oh, for the promise of a bypass road (see IKEA in News Opinion.)

News Opinion

Campbell caves on Bernal initiative, does an about farce

Counselor Matt Campbell, who only weeks ago, reasoned that the city council should do its job on Bernal before sending their findings to the people, did an about face that left many people wondering "who is this masked man."

At the council's last March meeting, Campbell, in strong terms, condemned a proposed ballot measure for this November's election saying that he was philosophically opposed to a ballot measure. "I think the public has spoken in selecting the council as their representatives. If they do not like what we do, they can collect signatures and put it on the ballot." He also reasoned quite rightly that the appointed committees and the council should complete their tasks before asking voters for a thumbs up.

However, at the April 16 meeting it was Mr. Campbell who moved for a November ballot measure. Counselor Sharrell Michelotti was dumbstruck at Mr. Campbell's motion and appeared to be trying to embarrass him into withdrawing it before the vote was taken. Like the cat that ate the canary, Mayor Tom Pico looked gleeful at buffaloing Mr. Campbell into making his motion and could not wait to get to the vote. The motion carried and Mr. Campbell succeeded in pulling off one of his most bone-headed moves since joining the council a year and a half ago. Again, Mr. Campbell is consistently inconsistent.

What has Mr. Campbell's ballot proposal wrought? Now more than ever, the council looks like a ship without a course. One week Bernal is to have lighted sports fields, a 4-H complex, a train station and a theater. The next it was to be two parks. Finally it is one big park with a few unspecified proposed uses—none of which includes subsidized housing for the elderly or anyone else for that matter. Like the Pedro's Restaurant issue and the McDonalds issue, the council has had to revisit their own decisions.

Though a vocal minority on the Bernal Avenue Property Task Force backs a ballot measure, the entire committee hasn't taken a formal position. To ask for a formal task force position might mean a ballot measure denial, as many committee members, working in good faith, have other views on civic uses including subsidized housing for seniors. Mr. Campbell's ballot proposal means that no vote must be taken at the task force level and some members have been hung out to dry a second time. (The first time they were scolded for not carrying Litha Park placards to council and task force meetings and sent back to the drawing board to develop a park plan the council could support.)

Mr. Campbell's ballot proposal also means that it is possible that two Bernal ballot measures could appear on the same ballot. Planning Commissioner Brian Arkin and Bernal task force member Steve Brozosky have been circulating initiative petitions asking for the ban of any more housing—subsidized or not—on Bernal. Two measures are sure to be confusing. It will most certainly be divisive—pitting environmental extremists on one side and subsidized housing advocates on the other. The two are usually blood brothers on most Pleasanton issues.

There are a couple of ways to remedy this tragic council decision. A citizen can step forward and appeal the council decision on the basis of Mr. Campbell's diminished capacity. Or, Mr. Campbell could plead diminished capacity and ask that the issue be revisited at the next council meeting. In either case, the council should reconsider this issue since so much is at stake for the entire community.

In 1975, a Pleasanton city council candidate declared, "what this city needs is the lack of good planning." We have finally arrived. We are governed by whim and fiat and comedy and tragedy. We have no course. We have no leader. What we have are agenda politicians with excellent political instincts and Mr. Campbell, their ace in the hole.

Oh, for the want of a road. City chases away IKEA
and $1 million in sales tax revenue

The IKEA project on Staples Ranch has hit the skids as predicted by OpinionPleasanton in the September 26, 2001 issue (see archives.) The city corporate culture, from the mayor and the city manager down to the mid-level professional staff, is to stop all development except the kind with which they approve—mostly elite $1 million homes.

Pleasanton City Manager, Debra Acosta-McKeehan, has publicly stated that "we take a little longer to make decisions in Pleasanton." That is correct but at what price? In the recent past, it has only cost us endless hours of committee meetings, countless hours of staff time, a surely surprising amount for consultants and a few lost opportunities. IKEA is the latest proposal now at risk because of our city's aversion to development.

IKEA, however, is an income opportunity that the city will not likely ever see again. Estimates have the city realizing $1 million a year in sales tax revenue. Since some inside city hall seem hell-bent to fund a grandiose park, a very expensive golf course (that should already be built), and subsidized housing for those who are in their prime earning years, you would think that they should be looking for new sources of revenue to pay for their lofty ideas. (The loss of sales tax revenue in the fourth quarter of 2001 was $600,000.) IKEA seems the perfect mechanism to replace lost sales tax as well as adding to our retail business base. When the mayor offhandedly says, "whatever goes into that corner is probably going to generate significant revenue for the city of Pleasanton," he means that IKEA is a goner and do not count on anything happening soon.

Initial press reports, devoid of any substantive comment from Mayor Tom Pico, indicate that roads are roadblocking the IKEA plan (see Happy Valley story in Feature Opinion.) Roads are in the General Plan for Staples Ranch and with the dry season rapidly approaching, they could be rapidly built to further the IKEA project. The reluctance to build already approved roads shows a reckless disregard for a sales tax windfall—a move that maintains the city's anti-business-anti- developer policies and weakens our economic outlook in 2004 and beyond.

There is no citizen committee studying IKEA. Were there a committee, they could, at the direction of the council, just study the plan to death as they usually do. Absent the ever-present committee to hide behind like cowards, the council must sit on their hands in public or they must intervene to accommodate the IKEA development that is proposed on appropriately zoned land as specified in our General Plan. If they intervene on the side of IKEA, they must direct their staff to extend Stoneridge Drive yesterday (and not in the usual, council and city manager fashion of years down the road. The Stoneridge extension is in the General Plan.

However, that would not be the end of it and this is probably why IKEA is looking to Dublin for their Tri-Valley project. Were the mayor to lose on a council vote to speed up the process, it would only take a wink and a nod from Mr. Pico to rally his obstructionist army to demand that the IKEA proposal be placed on the ballot. Going to the ballot is another cowardly and costly maneuver Mr. Pico and environmental extremists use to avoid making the tough decisions and to kill development projects they do not like. To prove otherwise, the council should amend the General Plan to exclude commercial development on Staples Ranch and get on with their agenda to protect the Red Legged Frog and the San Joaquin Kit Fox.

Environmental committee II is back and it is
more expensive that before

The election of Jennifer Hosterman, chair of the Bernal Property Task Force, to the city council this November will cost the city money. She asserted in her candidacy announcement that she will urge the council to establish an environmental committee to make recommendations regarding water, air quality, use of pesticides, use of native species when replanting, greenbuilding guidelines. The committee and Ms. Hosterman were rejected by the voters in the last council election 16 months ago.

Such a committee would be redundant. The professional staff—and other boards-- already perform these functions, or they should. A trip through the planning and building bureaucracy will demonstrate that native plants are recommended for landscape plans for new projects. A brochure on the counter of the building department shows building-permit applicants how greenbuilding can be accomplished. The fact that there is a brochure indicates the city policy of strong-arming applicants to comply with these "suggestions." The federal government and the state already regulate pesticide use. Water quality is already in the forefront at Zone 7. Monitoring for MTBE in the city-owned drinking water wells is already being done. (MTBE is the gasoline additive that environmentalists insisted go into the gasoline to clean the air and now insist come out of the gasoline to clean our water supply.) Even before monitoring for MTBE, the water board kept a close eye on the drinking water wells. We already know that we have a few days in the year that we exceed air quality minimum standards. A committee to report to the mayor and the council would be redundant. Solutions, recommended by environmentalists, are to build more Sierra Club lanes (High Occupancy Vehicle—HOV—lanes) on the Interstate freeways and to not build roads in town. We already know this and the opposite viewpoint would not be represented on a committee that would surely be packed with environmentalists appointed by the Mayor Tom Pico, Counselor Kay Ayala and, of course, Ms. Hosterman.

An environmental committee, were it appointed, would be as costly as other redundant city committees and task forces. The city staff would have to attend meetings to advise committee members, prepare agendas, minutes and staff reports and provide research. It is inevitable that the committee would have to have a consultant.

An environmental committee would have no mission. It would simply be a feel good committee. It would be another of the bodies that provides environmental extremists for future appointments to the planning and parks and recreation commissions and to groom candidates for the city council. Ms. Hosterman fits the latter category.

The functions of such a committee, as outlined by Ms. Hosterman, are already in the job descriptions of city council members and their management staff. Consequently, if the council, the city manager, and her professional staff are not providing environmental direction, they should be fired.

This is a tired idea and it is purely political. It should be rejected by the voters as should Ms. Hosterman for running it up the flagpole a second time.

Quick Opinion

 
Send in Leprechauns

O'Brian, Sweeney and Callahan, the get-it-done guys who built Hacienda Business Park and other high-profile projects, are now needed more than ever for the development of the Bernal property. OpinionPleasanton suspects that they have not been
asked to help.

Help, they can.

They know how to think outside the box. They know how to attract development partners. They know finance. They, like most for-profit developers, know how to do quality work on the run.

How would developers (usually shunned by our current council) benefit the city in its quest to develop civic uses for Bernal? First, they would know where to look for development partners for a mass transit center and ACE train station. They would know how to build subsidized housing as a part of a civic center that can also include a new city hall (in the planning stages) a new library and a performing arts and conference center. Moreover, they would have the ideas needed to meet the city council's goal of doing all of this in a "park-like" setting.

The city now knows, first hand, how it is to be a developer. City fathers, trying to develop a golf course in Happy Valley, have invested $3 million in the project and now do not have the land, contiguous to the city limit, to develop because Happy Valley residents turned down annexation (see Feature Opinion.) More importantly, their dealings with bureaucrats, who stalled the project for several years, probably cost them the annexation election. The early enthusiasm for the golf course died with every day that Pleasanton had to find affordable housing for the Red-Legged Frog.

Armed with this knowledge, the city should go to those who develop for a living.

Guest Opinion

Bordrbuny e-mails…"It's my opinion that the city should quickly reach build out and we fire all the excess baggage. That will cut some big bills. Ya baby!"

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