|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Pleasanton’s current planning leaders are coming together next week to start their attempt to tackle a puzzle that perplexed predecessor after predecessor.
Will they be the first in the 21st century to finally answer the east side development quandary? I don’t know. But they are getting their chance.
The City Council and Planning Commission have an opening public workshop on Tuesday afternoon where city staff will ask key questions to level-set the scope and direction of the new, so-called East Pleasanton Planning Framework process.
The effort pertains to the swath of land near the border of Pleasanton and Livermore by the Chain of Lakes, garbage transfer station and gravel quarries, in the areas of Valley Avenue, Stanley Boulevard, Busch Road and El Charro Road.
At its widest definition, it’s a tangled web of jurisdictions (city of Pleasanton, unincorporated Alameda County and city of Livermore), with mostly private landowners. The city is largely focused on the section in the corner southwest of Lake I and Cope Lake where it has the most influence, but the whole area of context matters.
“This process will update local policies to reflect today’s community values — supporting thoughtful growth, protecting open space, and considering appropriate land uses, such as potential areas for jobs and industry,” city officials wrote in their September newsletter publicizing Tuesday’s joint session.
These questions have festered my whole tenure here. I remember vividly our coverage of the East Pleasanton Specific Plan Task Force being disbanded in 2015, followed by other efforts to start and stop planning projects in the area, holistic and piecemeal.
It got to the point that fed-up property owner SteelWave and its longtime representative Steve Dunn splintered off its 26.6-acre parcel from city deliberations and advanced on a development application with Alameda County.
Funnily enough, the environmental impact report for that Arroyo Lago project in unincorporated Pleasanton (with 194 single-family homes, plus 49 accessory dwelling units) is on the Alameda County Planning Commission’s agenda for its meeting Monday evening (Sept. 15) in Hayward.
If you remember, at the direction of this City Council, city staff are also in talks with Dunn and team on a separate version of Arroyo Lago (at 189 houses) as part of a potential pre-annexation and development agreement. A bit confusing I know.
That southwest portion I mentioned has four key plots of relevance to the city: Arroyo Lago, Seefried’s Villages at the Quarry (412 housing units overall) already approved by the city, SteelWave’s East Lakes site with preliminary proposal for 330 houses and 367 multi-family units, and the parcel eyed by Amazon for a 640,000-square-foot warehouse.
Other properties are at play too. And major undetermined issues that will be the focus of the conversation driven by city staff: city boundaries, land-uses, open space and recreation, public service facilities, and infrastructure and circulation.
That’s a lot to digest. Here’s to hoping the councilmembers and commissioners get through a productive workshop, which is scheduled to start at 4 p.m. Tuesday (Sept. 16) in the council chamber.
I’m not sure if the group is hard-capped at two hours, but the council has a closed session on the calendar to begin at 6 p.m. – with an item of intrigue itself, discussion with legal counsel on undisclosed anticipated litigation.
Then a loaded agenda for the regular council meeting at 7 p.m.
Citywide emergency preparedness update, recommended changes to the utility billing discount program for low-income folks and income-qualified senior residents, and the new assessment fee for the downtown business district are the main public hearing items. Approval of the city’s Urban Forest Master Plan and $500,000 for emergency sewer repairs on Denker Drive lead the 14-item consent calendar.
The crowded council slate closes a busy public meeting week for Pleasanton.
With results pending when this column was due for print, the city’s Planning Commission was poised for a hearing Wednesday night on the kind of neighborhood dispute that just screams Tri-Valley drama: a disagreement over lights for a backyard tennis court on Martin Avenue.
Then on Thursday night, the Pleasanton Unified School District Board of Trustees was set to have a critical debate over what to do in the aftermath of the major budget snafu that put its cash flow in the negative from this month until the local property tax share hits its books in December.
PUSD is looking to borrow up to $15 million from the Alameda County Treasurer’s Office to stay operationally afloat.Â
I still haven’t seen the full story revealed from PUSD about how and why the specific budgeting error occurred; I presume officials were going to put it all out on the table for the public at this meeting. Our reporter Christian Trujano will let you know next week.
Either way, I have to think it won’t be too much longer until the resident critics who hounded the city government over its financial record-keeping during the past year turn their eagle eyes north to the school district headquarters on West Las Positas.Â
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the associate publisher and editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
