There is no Traffic Problem in Walnut Creek

There are no “significant” traffic impacts caused by the glut of new high-density housing planned and already approved in downtown Walnut Creek.  And the City Council has the numbers to prove it.  Of course, the way the Council has decided to quantify traffic impacts has a lot to do with this conclusion.

Rewriting the General Plan

Walnut Creek’s latest General Plan was adopted in April of 2006 after a two-year long process of public input and review.  The Plan was intended to provide a vision of what the City would be like in 2025.  We’re not even halfway there and much of the plan has been abandoned.  The same goes for various Specific Plans that were intended to cover smaller areas of the downtown in much greater detail.

The City Council has been happy to clear the way for developers of projects that call for raising the General Plan height limits and totally rewriting land use designations.  Other projects sail through the City Commissions with no apparent regard for previously established planning or design principles.

Five former mayors ...

 A major kerfuffle has arisen at City Hall over which City employees knew about, and should have reported to the police, (or were obligated by law to report) alleged incidents of sexual misconduct at the Lesher Center.  Four employees were placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the City Manager.  The employees were apparently about to be cleared, when a question was raised as to whether the City Manager himself knew about, and didn’t report, the incident.

The suspension of the employees, the besmirching of the City Manager’s reputation and the leaking of the whole sorry story to the press (but apparently not the alleged sexual misconduct) was so upsetting to former City mayors Rainey, Skrel, Hicks, Regalia and Abrams that they published a letter chastising the City Council for their handling of the situation.