Plan Bay Area Meeting Tonight (Wednesday, June 12) 6-8 PM

Hi Aubrey, Les, and All,

I planned to attend the Oakland meeting tomorrow, Friday 14th, but I am flaking out of it. The agenda for the meeting indicated that there would be a summary of all the public concerns presented thus far, and recommendations resulting from those concerns. That sounded interesting. However, upon my regular perusal of the Plan Bay Area website, I found and read the summary and recommendations, and find that most of the recommendations are to keep the current plan pretty much intact. Also, it seems that the concerns do not express any vehement opposition to the Plan, but only mild grumbling of some of its parts.

I also found on the Plan Bay Area website a transcript of all the comments made at the meeting a lot of us attended. I found Aubrey, Phil, and my comments. Starchild, Dan, and Wiston (the latter 2 from the Ron Paul Group) also attended, but I did not readily find their comments. BTW, some of you expressed interest when we mentioned how good Phil's comment was; here is a chance to find out what he said.

I think this is a link to the Plan Bay Area where the comments are.

http://onebayarea.org/regional-initiatives/plan-bay-area/meetings-events/What-We-Heard.html

Marcy

Sorry, I forgot two things:

1. Here is a link to the "recommendations"

http://apps.mtc.ca.gov/events/agendaView.akt?p=2070

2. All the comments at the meeting I mentioned previously are interesting; but if any of you are interested in the comments of our group, they are on pages 14, 15, and 16, of the San Francisco Town Hall reporter's transcript.

Marcy

Hi Marcy! Thanks for your thoughts. I am going tomorrow morning and putting my public comments on the record again, even though of course it's a foregone conclusion that they will adopt the plan, essentially unchanged, next month. We knew that all along, but it was and still is worth fighting. I'm about half way through reading the 56-page document they released and this gem is included in there:
"At the meeting on June 14, staff will review the themes in Attachment 4 in preparation for your discussion of potential revisions to the Draft Plan under agenda item 5(b). A full evaluation of the Plan’s public engagement process will be conducted after the Plan’s adoption."
Note "after the Plan's adoption." In my mind's eye, they're ivory tower monsters. I've given comment several times before, and I try to find something different to talk about each time. Will work on it for maybe another hour or so and then I have to get some sleep. I did enjoy reading the public comments from the April 11 hearing we attended, and I also read the written comments from you and Starchild (even though he didn't put his name down, it was so obvious who wrote the comment) demanding to know the salaries of the bureaucrats. Yes, Phil's comments were even better when you read them--and I'm sure the bureaucrats had absolutely no idea what he was talking about! I also read the public comments of Contra Costa County, where there was considerably more opposition to the plan.

I did attend the lefty meeting last night, by the way, and enjoyed hearing that there was a surprising amount of opposition to the plan there. Most of the panelists weren't too bad--I think I liked the lady from Chinatown the most talking about how Chinatown is already very dense and sustainable, so why do they need to come in there and displace everyone. However, when it turned to the audience, folks started ranting about other favorite issues like rent control, unions, and the like, and I got totally turned off. Bless his little heart, Terence Falkner was there and made unfavorable public comments about the ABAG bureaucrats, and though he got no applause like some of the statists, at least they didn't throw tomatoes at him!

Thanks!
Aubrey