Why we need to Preserve Measure A

Measure A, the Building Height Freeze was passed by Voter Initiative in 1985.  It requires a  a vote of the electorate before the City Council can approve projects that exceed the height limits in place at that time.  

Height limits are also specified in the City’s General Plan.  Sometimes they match the Measure A limit, sometimes they are lower.  Measure A was a quickly thrown-together and imperfectly written citizen’s backlash in response to the City raising height limits to approve 10-story office buildings north of the BART station.  The General Plan, on the other hand, was developed over several years with a lot of thought and citizen input going into it.  The General Plan is the City’s vision of what it should become.  Measure A was more of a reflexive swipe by the voters against a 1985 City Council that went too far ... but it matters, because nothing much has changed since then.

Our Lost Heritage

Have you noticed the Heritage Walk signs that have been popping up on downtown lamp posts?  On the sidewalk side of the posts are pictures of historic buildings with instructions for calling in to a cellphone-based tour for more information.  But in most cases, the picture of the old historic building is all there is to see.  Site after site has been demolished to make way for new development.  There’s almost nothing left of the town I grew up in.  Our heritage is that we have none.

Watching your lawn slowly die …

At a recent “Conversations with the Mayor”,  a resident asked why we are still developing when we are in a drought, and where the water is going to come from.  Mayor Bob responded that the water districts have not asked the City Council to stop developing.

While that may be true, EBMUD has declared a Stage 4 critical drought and set a community-wide goal to reduce water use 20% compared to 2013.  The Contra Costa Water District Board of Directors set a water conservation requirement of 25% compared to 2013.

There are currently 1,525 new units approved or already under construction in just eight major projects downtown.  That represents almost a 5% increase in the City’s housing stock over 2013.

Think about it as you watch your lawn slowly die.

Moratorium Mirror ...

At their March 17th, 2015 meeting, the City Council considered passing an interim urgency ordinance to prohibit the issuance of conditional use permits (CUPs) for multifamily residential development in commercial land use and zoning districts.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the proposal failed - after all, it is the City Council themselves who are ultimately responsible for this most recent development trend.

The New Definition of Charitable Giving

The Walnut Creek Library Foundation, the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation, the Diablo Regional Arts Association and other similar “friends” groups are all well-intentioned, publicly-minded volunteers banding together to raise money from benevolent donors who support their cause.  Right?   That may not be the whole story.

Cindy Silva’s Puppet Show

With Mayor Kristina Lawson’s announcement that she will not seek re-election this November, the first new Walnut Creek City Council hopeful has stepped forward… Rich Carlston.  His qualifications: a career at the Regalia law firm, past chairmanship of the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce, and past campaign manager for Cindy Silva.  In other words … someone who can be counted upon to put the interests of the business and development community ahead of the neighborhoods, and someone who will vote the way Cindy tells him to.

Damn the Torpedoes ...

Much of what lead to the recent resignation of City Attorney Bryan Wenter has been disclosed in the Contra Costa Times.  Council member Bob Simmons and Mayor Cindy Silva have admitted that they met with Attorney Wenter and told him they wanted "closure" of his investigation ... like maybe it should be ended by a specific date.  That would seem to indicate that an end was desired, whether the facts were in or not.  "Closure" or "Derail the Investigation" - I guess it's just a matter of semantics.

In case you missed it ...

An interesting tidbit appeared in the Staff Report for this Tuesday’s City Council hearing on the City’s Arts programs …

“The majority of performing and visual arts programs utilize City-owned and -operated facilities”…(blah, blah) …”and actors are housed at property located on Glenhaven Rd.”

Is the City running a bed and breakfast for actors??

Setting Fiscal Policy through Public Un-Hearings

Should new development pay for itself?  In a time when the City’s programs and services are being scaled back due to lack of funds, you’d think that the City Council would be concerned about not digging the hole any deeper.  But maybe not…

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.

Just the facts ...

The Walnut Creek City Council certified that the Environmental Impact Report for the BART Transit Village was complete when clearly it wasn’t.  The study should have evaluated traffic impacts at the Cole/California intersection.   But Cindy Silva and the rest of the Council were only interested hearing “facts” that supported their pro-growth agenda.  

Just because we hear you …

Thursday night I attended a Planning Commission “Study Session” on the BART Transit Village.  OK, I know that only wackos who like to hear themselves talk into a microphone go to Public Meetings, but I don’t sing well enough to try karaoke.

I’m fortunate - I can walk to the Walnut Creek BART station.  But I feel sorry for all of those BART riders and freeway commuters who drive up and down Ygnacio Valley Road every weekday.

Construction of the BART Transit Village will make their lives miserable for years to come.  When the new garage is being constructed, the 225 parking spaces on the southwest corner of the BART lot will be unavailable – patrons will have to park somewhere blocks away.  And I’ve never seen a construction project yet that doesn’t block sidewalks, and sometimes a lane or two of traffic.  Construction companies love to send flagmen out into the roadway to halt everything while large trucks pull on and off the site.  And the roads around the BART station are already a mess

All in favor, say aye ...

The members of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee to the West Downtown Specific Plan have been announced.  A solid majority of the members, seven of the thirteen, have close ties to the City Council.  Three are current or former City Council members (Simmons, Skrel, Abrams), and four are current or former City Commission appointees (Darling, Fotheringham, Lucas, Gorny).  For a process which advertises broad-based community involvement, this certainly sounds a lot like Politburo-style central planning.

A taxing situation ...

If the City’s hotel owners got together and agreed to all raise their rates by $2.00 per night - that might be viewed as collusion and price fixing.  It’s apparently a different matter altogether when they all agree to be taxed $2.00 per night.

Investing in the future ...

A San Francisco firm called BRE Properties contributed $15,000 to the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce PAC in order to get an incumbent Council woman and a Chamber-backed newcomer elected. After their candidates were elected (but before they were seated), BRE appeared at a public hearing to share their plans for a huge "transit village" project at the Walnut Creek BART station ...

Public Art at the Library

I’m not a big fan of public art to start with.  But I wonder about the folks who selected the “art” for the library. Is anyone inspired by old bottles hanging over the stairwell?  And then, there’s the two story high mosaic by the parking lot entrance.  It was a great idea.  You fill bookshelves with books of different colored spines, and when you stand back far enough a pixelated image of a librarian urging you to be quiet appears.  The problem is - you can’t stand back far enough to actually SEE the image.    At least it photographs nicely.

Unfortunately, the City Council decided to raid the City’s rainy day reserves to pay for library construction, just as the country was entering into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  Now they’re cutting programs and services.  It will be interesting to see how they keep the library open.