Pico gavels rowdy meeting to a close Pico gavels rowdy meeting to a close (March 12, 2004)

Mayor angered by disruptive protest over traffic issues
by Jeb Bing

Angered by a booing and shouting crowd at a public workshop Tuesday evening on whether to build the West Las Positas interchange at I-680 or to extend Stoneridge Drive east to El Charro Road, Mayor Tim Pico gaveled the meeting to an abrupt close, emptying a packed City Hall of protestors.

Pico said it's the first time he has ever closed a meeting because of an unruly crowd.

The action came halfway into the joint meeting of the City Council and Planning Commission, one in a series being held to hear comments from residents on changes being considered as officials update the city's 1996 General Plan. The crowd, many of them wearing red shirts in support of their insistence that the council act now to cancel both roadway projects, applauded loudly after each of the first 14 speakers objected to the interchange plan, and even more noisily when speakers asked that the Stoneridge extension proposal be taken out of the new General Plan.

The 15th speaker was Dave Bouchard, executive director of the Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce. He presented the chamber's position paper that called for continued studies of both projects to determine how building - or not building - the West Las Positas interchange or an extension of Stoneridge would affect residential traffic and business commuters locally.

"I think we should let city staff proceed with these studies and present its recommendations from a bigger-picture point of view instead of letting an advocacy group make the decision," Bouchard said, as the crowd started booing. Few heard his final comment: "I think that is critical to the overall development and future of Pleasanton."

"I was really surprised and shocked by the response," Pico said Wednesday. "It was disappointing. The crowd got out of hand and it was not the kind of meeting we want to have in Pleasanton. There was just no use continuing in that hostile atmosphere. Any other speakers who might have disagreed with their views would have been pretty intimidated by these actions and wouldn't have wanted to speak."

Pico, who has been a longtime advocate of taking the West Las Positas interchange out of the new General Plan, and who has called for a delay in any action to extend Stoneridge until improvements can be made on I-580, said both sides of those arguments should have a right to speak and be heard.

"Not even wanting to hear another side to an issue is not the way we do business in this community," he added. "This was an angry crowd."

Most of the meeting's speakers, before Bouchard, talked against extending Stoneridge Drive. One said Pleasanton's need for more affordable housing would be realized by the depressed value of homes along an extended Stoneridge, which would be packed with cut-through traffic. Another said parents would have difficulty picking up their children at the nearby Mohr Elementary School. Others said more than 50 percent of those who would drive on Stoneridge, if it connected to El Charro on one end and to I-680 on the other, as it does now, would come from Livermore, Dublin, Tracy and beyond.

Not all of the speakers were from the Mohr-Martin neighborhood. Several talked against a proposed housing development in Kottinger Hills, above Kottinger Ranch, which would add traffic to Hearst Drive and other neighborhood streets where they live.

Kurt Kummer, who heads the Bernal Block Party Committee, also wore a red shirt in support of the crowd. He showed planners a map he had prepared to put sports fields on some of the vacant land that has been saved for the West Las Positas interchange.

"We all know that no one wants that interchange and that it's not going to be built," he said.

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