Stakeholders is the new word in government

At government meetings, at all levels, you need a dictionary to follow the discussions. Here is OpinionPleasanton’s guide to what they are really saying here in Pleasanton.

Stakeholder. Stakeholder is a bureaucrat’s way of describing a favored special interest group member. Bureaucrats are liberal and have adopted stakeholder for a less pejorative word than special interest. Special interest is reserved for right-of-center people who are to be mistrusted or despised. The bureaucracy should operate for the benefit of all the people. That being the case, all of the people would be stakeholders. If all of the people are stakeholders, then why not just people, citizens, voters or taxpayers? Therefore, when you see or hear stakeholder, think about to which liberal special interest group the bureaucracy is kowtowing.

Folk. Folk is a particularly Pleasanton word. Here it means the hoi polloi-the people who moved here in the 70’s and 80’s, are two-income adults living in modest homes, and have too many weekend activities to follow local government. Its use has grown since ex-Mayor Ben Tarver and current Mayor Tom Pico have headed local government. In those 12 years, no modest price homes have been built. The non-folk are then those who live in the $ million-plus homes that Mr. Tarver and Mr. Pico approved. When you hear folk next time, substitute little people or helpless (victims who need government assistance on this or that. For instance, Mr. Pico fights for the neighborhoods-victims of some sinister outside forces ready to destroy them.)

Affordable Housing. Substitute subsidized housing. Affordable housing advocates are usually those who feel that the city has a proper role in assuring Pleasanton senior citizens with lower-cost home ownership. Some affordable housing advocates also wish to provide less-than-market-rate housing for others. This is their way of assuaging their guilt feelings for being able to purchase Pleasanton’s stock of $ million-plus homes while other folk must seek housing in cities where price meets budget. Brentwood, Oakley and Tracy come to mind.

Process. Read procedure here. Bureaucrats and politicians love the process of government even more than government itself. Process is another way of telling the folk that the business of government is extremely complicated and that they need the bureaucracy to provide the roadmap to solving all of their problems. Complication works to improve the status and importance of the bureaucrats and politicians.

Sustainability. Constancy is more precise. As is applies to energy, sustainability is only an issue when we run out of it or when eco-extremists feel that its production will destroy the earth. When it comes to government, sustainability, as the word is being used today, is redundant. Local government has always been charged with handing over a thoughtful, stable system to future generations.

Partner. When it comes to government social programs, partner means the entity with the money. Taxpayers are usually the biggest partners but never mentioned as such. Marketing and advertising folk turned partner from a noun into a verb. Government now wants to partner with agencies and departments who have largesse to distribute and regulations to avoid. For instance, the City of Pleasanton just partnered with the California Fish and Game Department to provide alternative habitat for the Red-Legged Frog in place of the acreage identified for a golf course in Happy Valley. The city received permits for the course (regulatory relief.) and Fish and Game received habitat (which takes private property off the tax rolls.) Although taxpayers are the real partners, they do not know it or receive the credit and the city and Fish and Game get the strokes.

Community. Community stands for special interest group. It usually is the second word in a two-word phrase. For instance, the environmental community. It has come into use because special interest groups (in their formative years) felt that homeless, environmentalist(s), etc. were too harsh as stand-alone words. Now it does not matter for many special interest groups to have community as an appendage. Environmentalists have made their extremist causes mainstream through the media, indoctrination in the schools and intense ideological lobbying in the halls of government. So mainstream is the environmental extremism, that these organizations now prefer to shed the small, local image that community implies in favor of a more global identity. Earth First, Greenpeace, Greenbelt Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club have replaced environmental community and environmentalists.

Habitat. Habitat, as it applies to humans, means home or surroundings. When applied to animals, habitat is environment. When applied to government, habitat means confiscation of private property under the guise of “saving” the environment. Stakeholders in the land are the folk who take it in the shorts. The stakholder’s partners are the next losers because confiscated land usually comes off the tax rolls after being confiscated by government stakeholders seeking habitat sustainability. It is doubtful that the amphibian community benefits from the land transfer.

Diversity. Diversity’s word origin is from divide. Today, it is a touch-feely word used to indicate unification as if being different is bad. Once used to address many disparate cultures, liberals now use it for just about any cause: environmental extremism, and a left-leaning social agenda just two. So much abused is diversity that it is beginning to revert to its original roots-division.

News Opinion

We are still waiting for the HOV/CMA meeting

The Pleasanton City Council, at its June 4, 2002 meeting, seemed interested in Mayor Tom Pico’s comments regarding HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes vis-à-vis diverting Highway 84 improvement construction funds to I-580 diamond lanes. They asked for more council discussion at a future meeting. Nothing appeared on the June 18, 2002 council agenda. If the past is any indication, the interest in Mr. Pico’s report will wane and matter will disappear.

Mr. Pico felt the heat and was obliged to report to the council that he was not speaking at the CMA (Alameda County Congestion Management Agency) meeting on a policy level. In bureaucratese, that means that it is only a matter of time before the notion of moving Highway 84 improvement construction funds to HOV lanes for an extremely short distance on I-580 becomes a serious policy discussion. The proposed lanes would run between Santa Rita Road and Vasco Road in Livermore.

Typical of environmental extremists, a committee on traffic congestion is being turned into a forum for air quality. The car-pool lane suggestion neither improves traffic nor helps air quality. That is the issue. It cannot be disputed that cars idling on the freeway do spew pollution. It is also true that cars running at speed emit less pollution. It seems clear that the traffic committee should focus on getting freeway traffic moving rather than jamming it further by granting exclusive rights to one of the lanes to a favored group.

HOV lanes increase the number of solo driver vehicles. These are the vehicles that once used parallel routes to their destinations. When Sierra Club lanes are added, these vehicles find it faster to use the freeway (in non-HOV lanes) than using their normal parallel route. Consequently, the non-commute lanes jam up to their former levels or worse. That the HOV lanes move quickly there is also no doubt. It is possible because they are virtually unused.

Mr. Pico would do well to get freeway traffic moving and to put in roads to move cross-town and cut-through traffic. Do this and Mr. Pico has a twofer-no gridlock and less air pollution.

Quick Opinion

 
How slow is too slow?

In the Bernal Property Task Force meeting minutes of April 29, 2002 published at the May 13 task force meeting, read on page four, agenda item four, paragraph two: “Bob Cordtz requested that staff determine the actual useable acreage for Phase II Specific Plan area. Wayne Rasmussen indicated that he would provide a response to Mr. Cordtz’s request by the end of the week.” After a couple of prodding calls from Mr. Cordtz, Mr. Rasmussen finally responded by telephone with a string of numbers associated with possible uses.

As this issue goes to press, June 19, 2002, Mr. Cordtz is still waiting for Mr. Rasmussen’s written response with just one number-the total useable acres. The delays give new meaning to City Manager Deborah Acosta McKeenan’s “we do things a little slowly in Pleasanton.”

What has going slowly cost Pleasanton?

We have apparently lost IKEA to Dublin because we could not figure out the road network for Staples Ranch. Stoneridge Drive pushing through to El Charro has been on the books for 20 years. With the major arterial in place, what can take so long to complete the rest of the circulation plan? Politics.

Mayor Tom Pico and other environmental extremists simply do not want any development on Staples Ranch. Stalling and stonewalling on the traffic plan chased IKEA away and leaves the property in grassland for that many more months. Staving off IKEA development has also given the “anti” citizens time to formulate initiative language to place Stoneridge Drive and Staples Ranch before the voters. Mr. Pico’s line at his Chamber of Commerce state of the city luncheon, Stoneridge will “ultimately be decided by the voters,” was the equivalent to a wink to activists to crank up the word processors developing initiative petitions. The interim cost is about $1 million in lost sales tax revenue. Things, except initiatives and petitions, do move slowly in Pleasanton.

The other costs, though not as dramatic, have greater impact on city finances. IKEAS’s $1 million sales tax revenue potential was just that, potential. The other costs associated with “doing things slowly” are real and they are large. These costs are made up of staff costs and consultant contracts for various citizen committees and task forces. If the goal was to move forward with city planning, then these costs could be rationalized. But because of anti development, do-nothing eco-politics, the costs are egregious. Pouring over city budgets for the last few years has produced no definitive staff and consultant costs (they are cleverly hidden.) We are hoping the final, final number will be an integral part of the council and mayoral campaigns.

Renege?

Mayor tom Pico argues that the November Bernal ballot initiative is justified because the City Council would renege on its no-housing agreements for the portions of the land given to the city for civic uses. So much in agreement is Mr. Pico that he supported the initiative while scuttling all of the work his task force accomplished over 17 months. He wanted a nail in the coffin of any building. Moreover, there were no such agreements (if there were to be market-rate houses, KB would build them or share in the profits with the city.)

The idea of subsidized housing was gaining so much velocity in the task force and with housing advocates (usually liberal like Mr. Pico) that Mr. Pico would be forced to declare himself against senior and single working mothers. Enter a lady with a Lithia Park (Ashland, Oregon) poster. That was all that Mr. Pico needed to make his move. No one would disapprove of a park and senior and working poor advocates would just go away.

When they did not, Mr. Pico presented his thinly veiled wink to Planning Commissioner Brian Arkin and to council hopeful Steve Brozosky. Forty seven hundred signatures later, Mr. Pico had stopped subsidized housing and the completion of the task force agenda-ironically established by Mr. Pico and the council.

With so much distrust on the council, is it any wonder that opponents of the Bernal initiative pleaded against the ballot measure to avoid dividing the community?

City Hall

It is apparent by the lack of conversation about our new City Hall that city officials would prefer to keep the project under the radar screen.

As it now stands, the new City Hall complex is to be built around our library. The architect (read that consultant) is at work to see how our new “campus” (new buzzword for grouping of buildings to give the impression of an institution of higher learning) can be “footprinted” (bureaucrat word for plotted.)

Opinion Pleasanton’s questions are these: who decided that it would be downtown? Who decided on an out-of-town architect? Who decided to keep the entire project out of the spotlight? Oh sure, there are many more questions. These questions, however, get to the heart of the matter.

The land that the City Hall is on is worth upwards of $2 million per acre. As a part of downtown expansion and beautification, this land can be used for a much-needed parking facility. The facility can be apart of a retail project that expands downtown to Bernal and over Old Bernal, near the Fairgrounds. With development such as that, the land could be well worth $35 million, plus.

This very significant amount of money would go a long way toward building a more comprehensive City Hall complex on the Bernal property set aside specifically for civic uses, including a mass transit center incorporating the ACE train station, senior subsidized housing and a cultural arts/conference complex all in a high-density center surrounded by parkland, paths, trails and promenades. There are several local architects who could tackle this project and who would be full of hometown pride to be a part of such a far-reaching, progressive, business-friendly civic project. We need look no farther than the downtown association for such a firm.

The land upon which our civic center rests is worth more to Pleasanton as a logical and much needed extension of downtown. The complex described above would come with funding from alternative sources because of the nature of the project. Mass transportation facilities will grab the attention of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and Congressman Pombo. Subsidized senior housing will grab the attention of state and federal housing authorities. The cultural art/conference complex would grab the attention of local corporate headquarters. Those funding sources plus the gain from the eight plus acres we currently own would make a huge dent in the complexes’ total cost.

Frosting? Cake? Such a complex can be hidden in a beautiful park.

Guest Opinion

 

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