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It seems like schools, traffic and housing are always top issues for most of us in Pleasanton, and especially to Realtors and their associates whose livelihood depends on selling our community to those thinking of moving here.
So, members of the Valley Real Estate Network paid close attention last week as Mayor Jerry Thorne talked about their concerns at a jam-packed meeting at Inklings Coffee House on Main Street.
Introduced by VREN’s president Jim Walker of Legacy Real Estate and interviewed by Adina Erridge of Bay Equity Home Loans, Thorne pointed out that there is an intersecting relationship between all those issues that Realtors tell him are among the first questions people ask when they are considering moving to a new community.
On schools, he reminded the VREN gathering that the school district is an entirely separate entity from the city government, with its own elected board of trustees and policy-making groups. That said, however, the city has a long history of successful partnerships and collaborations with the school district where it legally can as a separate taxing enterprise.
“You’re all aware of the recent changes in the district’s office of superintendent,” Thorne said. “Changes in leadership can be bumpy — just look at the Oval Office. But even in the face of transition, the school district remains one of the best districts in the Bay Area. In fact, recently, the school district came in as one of the top 10 best public schools in the state.”
Even though separate, Pleasanton’s city government and the school district work closely together, with the city paying for school resource officers, crossing guards and for joint-use programs such as middle school gymnasiums, tennis courts and sports field maintenance. There’s even a joint liaison committee that meets monthly to discuss mutual concerns and opportunities.
As for traffic, Thorne said it’s a regional problem that requires regional solutions. Highway 84 is currently being widened to four lanes to the top of Pigeon Pass and an environmental review will soon start to complete the widening to its junction with I-680, making the highway an expressway between the two freeways by 2023, substantially reducing cut-through traffic on Pleasanton streets.
Increased federal funding help should come as a result of lobbying efforts by Thorne and the mayors of Danville, Dublin, Livermore and San Ramon during their recent annual trip to Washington, D.C., where they met with transportation agency leaders and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
“These meetings by five mayors are unique in Washington,” Thorne said. “We met with Sen. Feinstein for more than an hour. She’s been a mayor herself and understands the challenges cities face.”
Thorne said the I-580 express/toll lanes opened to great fanfare and success this past year, and the latest numbers indicate that travel time along this 11-mile stretch has improved considerably during peak travel hours, with over 600,000 recorded trips in those lanes. Also, with an eye on a regional solution, the Tri-Valley cities have created the Regional Rail Working Group to keep the conversation moving forward on connecting BART to ACE.
Thorne also explained that the current spate of high-density apartment and condo housing construction stems from the ill-advised 1996 voter-approved Measure GG housing cap ordinance, which imposed a permanent cap of 29,000 total housing units. A regional affordable housing coalition, joined by the state, successfully sued, arguing that the ordinance would keep the city from meeting its state-imposed housing requirements.
Because of the court order, the city rezoned available land to allow construction of some 2,000 multi-family units and catch-up with current requirements through at least 2023, when new state requirements will be issued.
Statewide, Thorne said, housing needs continue to outpace demand, averaging less than 80,000 new homes annually over the past decade with a projected need of 180,000 more homes each year.
Editor’s note: Jeb Bing is editor emeritus for the Pleasanton Weekly. His “Around Pleasanton” columns run on the second and fourth Fridays of every month.
Mayor Thorne I am so glad you addressed the traffic on 580 and 84, But what about your own city and the complete lack of planning when adding these large housing plans such as the apartments on Bernal near Stanley. Great you added one light. That is going to help so much…NOT! Now the City is going to add more housing on the Irby property which will add more traffic on the already over crowded Stanley, so the solution is to force the traffic elsewhere and increase the cut through traffic through residential streets. But everything is great because at least we now know how successful the 580 toll road is. Something we all should be very proud of.
The developers are leading the city down that ” yellow brick road” who cares what’s behind that curtain, certainly not the city council and the planning commission, how could anything possibly go wrong? All that traffic will sort itself out, we could get a bond passed and have the citizens pay for new schools, and fix up the existing schools, not really fair to the developers if we have them build our schools or infrastructure they need to keep raking in the big bucks to buy up more property to get rezoned to residential, maybe we could narrow down some more streets for them, really helps when you put too many units on a piece of land.
Our Mayor and current council has taken a position that they have an obligation to approve housing, but No responsibility for planning and supporting building schools. Mayor Thorne is absolving himself and the council of any responsibility of school overcrowding responsibility. Yet schools are a major piece of infrastructure planning for a city and responsibility is supported by planning law.
Mayor Thorne seems to feel the cities responsibility ends with crossing guards, most of the joint cooperation that he takes credit for, such as school gyms, happened long before his leadership and there have been no new schools during his leadership. The liaison and joint city/PUSD have accomplished little more that a bike rally in recent years, lots of houses, no schools.
In the past schools were able to get schools built because of the joint cooperation of city/PUSD. It is past time for that effort to begin again.
Julie Testa
State law requires coordination between cities and school districts related to planning for school siting, long range master planning for school sites. Government code 65302 and 65350.
Our Pleasanton General Plan is the City planning constitution. It is meant to be a “comprehensive, long-term” plan. It is important that the City coordinate with the School District. “The current target is 600 students per elementary school, 1,000 students at each middle school, and 2,000 students at each comprehensive high school, with a 10 percent contingency planned for each site…”
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=gov&group=65001-66000&file=65300-65303.4
65302. The general plan shall consist of a statement of development policies and shall include a diagram or diagrams and text setting forth objectives, principles, standards, and plan proposals. The plan shall include the following elements:
(a) A land use element that designates… education, public buildings, and grounds,…
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=gov&group=65001-66000&file=65350-65362
GOVERNMENT CODE SECTION 65350-65362
65352.2. (a) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this section to foster improved communication and coordination between cities, counties, and school districts related to planning for school siting.
(b) …coordinating planning,design, and construction of new school facilities and schoolsites in coordination with the existing or planned infrastructure, general plan, and zoning designations …(1) Methods of coordinating planning, design, and construction of new school facilities and schoolsites in coordination with the existing or planned infrastructure, general plan, and zoning designations of the city and county.
(2) Options for the siting of new schools and whether or not the local city or counties existing land use element appropriately reflects the demand for public school facilities, and ensures that new planned development reserves location for public schools in the most appropriate locations.…
(5) Opportunities for financial assistance which the local government may make available to assist the school district with site acquisition, planning, or preparation costs.
(6) Review all possible methods of coordinating planning, design, and construction of new school facilities and schoolsites or major additions to existing school facilities and recreation and park facilities and programs in the community.
The school issues will never be resolved since the Chamber of Commerce, which supports unregulated development, also finances our council members. It is sad but easy to say the chamber has been attempting to destroy our city.
The city does not to support the major infrastructure of schools. That is why there should be a moratorium on rezoning public and institutional land uses. That is removing locations where a school can go. Not just by the zoning but the increase in cost of land when rezoned for residential makes it impossible for the school district to afford. Rezoning is essentially a gift to the property owner.
The school district is just as much of a fault to the overcrowding since they do not send official correspondence to the city indicating they need the city to not rezone the public use zoning and need help in getting the space and money to support the additional school resources needed. The general plan does state we are to have neighborhood schools and why it is important to our city but neither the city or school district is doing anything. With the city officials and school officials saying nothing, they are saying that neighborhood schools are not important to the school district and cramming more students into portables is not degrading our most important infrastructure in Pleasanton; our schools.
We have met all our RHNA requirements. There should be NO MORE REZONING or construction of residential until we have a plan for the schools. We have time to think about this and plan for this now.
Agree with every point from Concerned.
The district holds the greatest responsibility for the enrollment crisis.
When the developer agreement was changed, the City agreed to step out of oversight of developer fees, and the contract was changed to allow the district to use the funds for non-capital uses. Since then the capital dollars have been not been used for growth mitigation. Without the commitment of joint oversight and cooperation, our kids lose and our community resources are lost.
“We have met all our RHNA requirements. There should be NO MORE REZONING or construction of residential until we have a plan for the schools. We have time to think about this and plan for this now.”
Agree!
Sadly, our City’s government is in the pocket of ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments). Thorne and the City Council are just puppets to this heavily funded organization. The City of Pleasanton will just keep adding MORE High-density housing and NARROW MORE of our streets, Owens Drive is just the beginning! Although some will claim the ABAG organization and the Council of Goverments is all mumbo-jumbo, I think it’s becoming quite evident just in our own City alone, that there is some sort of change going on, you can read about the organization here http://globalizationofcalifornia.com/?page_id=2807
We can’t be naive and quiet and let this happen to our City.
“Thorne also explained that the current spate of high-density apartment and condo housing construction stems from the ill-advised 1996 voter-approved Measure GG housing cap ordinance, which imposed a permanent cap of 29,000 total housing units. A regional affordable housing coalition, joined by the state, successfully sued, arguing that the ordinance would keep the city from meeting its state-imposed housing requirements.”
This is a cop-out explanation from our Mayor. The board want’s more building in our city, and just using State mandate as something to hide behind. If he really wanted to limit new building, he would not of approved the recent 84 housing over on Stanley…..until 2013, since they were not required by the State at this time. Yes, we all want to support Sunflower, but this is not the time….we do not even know the full impact of satisfying the current state mandate (ie. all units have not yet been completed).
You are right. If that development was really about helping Sunflower Hill, the council would have told the developer to come back when there are definitive plans to build the Sunflower Hill part of the project. I am disappointed at the whole council and this type of action shows why the city needs direct democracy for approving residential housing projects. Either that or a housing cap that conforms to RHNA requirements. The council is taking advantage of the community by having the voter-approved housing cap removed as an excuse to build where ever you can, as fast as possible. If this council really respected how the community feels, they would put an initiative on the ballot that restores the housing cap with exceptions to meet state-mandated requirements. That could be done without signatures. However, I encourage those with the knowledge to put together a new housing cap initiative and I will gladly sign and believe it will win by a HUGE amount. And if any elected officials try to slow down the signature process or campaign against it, I will gladly support a recall of them. They should not be forcing us to do their job.
Concerned, Take a look at the Housing Element of the General Plan. We already have a housing cap based on RHNA. Our Growth Management Plan is based on the current RHNA allocations. It restricts growth to 235 units per year which when multiplied by the number of years in the RHNA cycles is the RHNA allocation for this period.
By the way, growth beyond what was required by the law suit is far below our Growth Management numbers.
A housing Cap and Growth Management, although work together, are two different things. A Housing Cap is an absolute number of homes allowed in the city. Growth Management is the number of homes per year that can be built, and has exceptions to meet RHNA requirements. The issue is our infrastructure was designed upon our previous housing cap. As we add capacity beyond the voter-approved housing cap, we are exceeding the capability of our infrastructure. One just needs to look at traffic, water and school so see how us going over the housing cap is affecting our infrastructure.
We currently have no provision to “tie the hands of politicians” in approving new housing. You can look at the campaign finance disclosures and “follow the money” to see the developers and construction trade “invests” quite a bit of money in our politicians in order to get housing approved. A Housing Cap would “tie the hands” of the politicians with the side-affect of less construction trade “investments” in the politicians. This could put the power back into the hands of the residents of Pleasanton.