City Council members tried to pin down the School District’s Board of Trustees on where it’d like to see the city put the last 1,100 housing units before reaching build-out during the joint City Council/School Board meeting Monday night, but the overwhelming response was, “it depends.”
The council currently has two land use plans on the table, a “dispersed residential development” plan that would result in a mixture of high- and low-density housing scattered across the city and a “concentrated residential development” that would result in high-density housing located close to the existing BART station and future West Dublin/Pleasanton BART station or possibly in the Hacienda Business Park. When Council member Steve Brozosky asked Superintendent John Casey which of these options he’d prefer, Casey said the district would need more concrete information from the council about what kind of housing units it would build and if new housing projects would include amenities, such as parks, that would attract families.
According to the district’s annual demographer’s report, small and medium single family lots yield more students, so if the remaining buildings were these types of homes, the impact to the elementary schools could be great. The combination of an increase of younger families, district elementary school enrollment caps and state-mandated teacher-student ratios means that the current elementary schools may not be able to accommodate an influx of students, Casey said.
Under the dispersed model, 350 housing units would potentially be built around the new BART site and on the East side property owned by Hanson Aggregates and Kiewit, along with 300 in the Hacienda Business Park and 100 in the downtown area, for a total of 1,100 units, reaching the city’s build-out, said City Manager Nelson Fialho. Fialho explained that, although the city is about 1,600 units away from the voter-approved building cap of 29,000, the council decided to set aside 500 units for future use. However, the council has yet to decide whether the senior assisted housing proposed for Staples Ranch will count toward the build-out number.
Regardless of where the buildings are placed, the district will most likely have to change the elementary school attendance areas, Casey said, and there may even need to be a tenth elementary school in an area other than the current site of the halted Neal Elementary School project.
“It’s almost a ‘catch 22’ with the East side property,” said Trustee Kris Weaver. “Even if you only allow 300 units, if those units have a student generation of one per household, where are those extra 300 students going to go? Then we’ll have to look at the Busch property. You want to know what we’re doing with it, but we need to know what you’re doing with the East side property before we can decide.” The district has an option to purchase the Busch property, but has yet to decide if it will and, if it does, what will go on the site. The option expires in a couple years and if the district passes the council could purchase the property for residential use.
Trustee Pat Kernan was the only board member to support the high-density option at the Hacienda Business Park, a plan where all the remaining housing units would be built in that area to form a “village” centered on public transportation. It is still unclear whether this development, if approved, would be geared toward single adults or young families looking for affordable homes. In the latter situation, a tenth elementary school would have to be built in the area to accommodate the huge influx of young students.
“It’s the city’s call where we grow, and it’s the job of the school board to accommodate that growth,” he said.
The Planning Commission and City Council are scheduled to meet April 11, at which point they will narrow down the development options and then run models on what the student population could potentially be in each scenario, Fialho said.
“There are so many variables now that if we could get it narrowed down, then we could say what the impact will be to the elementary, middle and high schools,” Casey said.
