Here is a free-market solution to speed up the planning and building permit process that costs builders and city money

Counselor Jerry Thorne, in each of his runs for the city council, promised to speed up Pleasanton’s planning and building permit process. To date, he has presented nothing. The process takes as long as ever.

City Manager Nelson Fialho has recently tinkered by consolidating departments. This mostly window-dressing-move will not budge the bureaucrats.
What will, however, is a financial incentive. Notice how bridge and road builders beat their deadlines if bonuses are involved. Well, planning and building department personnel should share in the fees paid for development if they meet deadlines. For instance, if a project gets from the counter to the Planning Commission in 90 days and to the City Council in 180 days, the city staff receives 25 percent of the city fees to divvy up among the entire staff. If it is 180 and 270, the bonus is 10 percent.

The will be a penalty to the staff if a project takes more than a year from counter to council presentation. If a project takes more than a year, a 10 percent penalty will assessed and subtracted from a 25 percent reserve fund established to award the bonuses.
We know this will put city bureaucrats at odds with their no-growth agenda but it will put them in line with the wishes of the business community—the lifeblood of our economy.

This idea is free to anyone on the council. Let us see who on the council is for a free-market approach to this bedeviling problem. We can infer from those who do not speak up that they are for the status quo and the gridlock in City Hall and the resulting expensive projects that eventually ending up being expensive dinners, expensive mom and pop specialty stores, expensive apartment rentals, and very expensive homes.

News Opinion

 

Just what is a negative visual impact? Who decides?

Ex Vice Mayor Kay Ayala’s hillside ordinance will loose someone to determine “negative visual impacts.” Just who will that be? Larry Cannon? If it does not have a clock tower will it have a negative visual impact? If it does not meet the needs of the busybody Downtown Heritage Committee will it have a negative visual impact? Who decides is almost as important as what is a negative visual impact. I am sure Scot Adams large house on a smallish size lot might have a negative visual impact to some—just like a motor home in a backyard. Mr. Adams probably thinks his house looks fine where it is and the motor home owner probably thinks that his motor home looks just fine in his side yard. Who decides then? A new committee? Just what we need.

Left keeps tipping off whom they really are

In a bash Rush Limbaugh session, the women on The View recently declared Mr. Limbaugh to be cruel and un-American for what they interpreted as racist and sexist remarks about senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They concluded the segment by asserting, “We have three great candidates.” However, they tipped off how they REALLY feel by adding, “Mommy, daddy and grandpa.” John McCain the grandpa? A little less equal than the others? Hem???? A little Republican-a-phobic? A little ageism?

More damning, however, are the mommy, daddy remarks. This motley crew of know-nothings is promoting the socialist state. We need mommies and daddies to take care of us? Socialists think so. Of course, grandpas cannot be included unconditionally in the mommy and daddy state because they are past their prime—unless they are former Klansman Senator Robert F. Byrd or International diplomat ex-president Jimmy Carter. Just wait for the Democrat’s socialized medicine. John McCain will not be approved for Melanoma surgery because he has outlived his usefulness and there are more deserving candidates for medical care—Democrats, Ted Kennedy, and young people?

We report, you decide.

The General Plan update is now in its sixth year. Incompetence? Indifference? Business as usual?
Former City manager Deborah Acosta McKeehan said often that things move just a little bit slowly in Pleasanton. She of course meant that things are done right because they are done slowly. That is not so, so what is the real reason why things just are not done?
Agenda politics is the most obvious answer. “Move slowly and nothing will happen” is the strategy of the bloated City Hall bureaucracy, the NIMBYs, and the eco extremists.

The committee-happy city government this time chose not to involve citizens in the General Plan review process because it would take too long. Oh, really?
Place a substantial state fine for failing to meet a general plan deadline and watch how much more rapidly things will be completed.

Guest Opinion

 

Pleasanton Weekly bloggers are pretty much fed-up with illegal immigration policies and those who bray about xenophobia

We are heartened to see that some Pleasanton residents get it.

Of course, we are a country of laws. Unfortunately, we are also a country that refuses to enforce those laws. It appears, however, that usually uber-tolerant Pleasanton residents are beginning to realize that not all immigration is good and that illegal immigration is destructive to the fabric of our society.

Thorne missed the point of Proposition 98

We could not disagree more with Vice Mayor Jerry Thorne’s assessment of propositions 98 and 99. He said in a May 30 letter to the Pleasanton Weekly “Proposition 99 is eminent domain reform with no hidden agendas.” There was, of course, a hidden agenda in Proposition 99 and that is: it is no reform at all. It is a vanilla measure that does nothing more than the current eminent domain law. In short, it was designed only to thwart Proposition 98. Sad that politics has sunk to such lows. Sad also that Mr. Thorne has joined the looney left including the League of Women Voters California, environmental groups, and city and county government bureaucrats to perpetuate bad laws, bad public policy.

Better listen to Robert Allen about BART

In a March 13 letter to The Independent, Robert S. Allen addresses BART to Livermore costs for ballasted double track line at grade and suggests that they are far less than were reported in the Herald and the Valley Times articles of February 6. If Mr. Allen is correct, $12.6 million per mile, we had better review I-580 HOV plans before the freeway median is taken up with Sierra Club lanes that cause aggravation and air pollution and do little, if anything, for mass transit.

Some people just do not get it

Global hunger cannot and will not be ended by the United States of America, the United Nations, or anyone else for that matter. This year or ever. Margie McLaughlin, in her Pleasanton Weekly letter of February 1, suggests that our election this November should be about ending global hunger as well as the economy and the war against terror.

This is akin to Miss Congeniality wanting world peace.

While eradicating hunger is an admirable goal, it is naïve to think that we effect it now or even in the foreseeable future. Anyone who believes that it can is living in a fantasyland. Ms. McLaughlin said “Every three seconds, a child dies from extreme poverty.” One answer is to stop having children if you cannot provide for them and that is more likely to prevent children from dying.

Look in the mirror for the energy crisis culprit

Anthony Gentile of Pleasanton hit the nail right on the head in his April 25 letter to the Valley Times. He said, “For years, we as voters have supported legislators who have stymied attempts to drill at certain U.S. coastal areas and Alaska where vast oil deposits have been located.” He did not say but it is certain that he also feels that those we elect have also blocked nuclear power plants—that produce safe, non-polluting energy.
So, when you are watching the digits flip over rapidly on your gasoline pumps, remember to look in the mirror for the reason why.

 

 

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