Good for this group of Tea Partiers! They undoubtedly saw how Pleasanton got hosed by the left-wing loons. An they are very rightly concerned that our lives are increasingly being determined by left-wing bureaucrats that want to impose their leftist viewpoints on all aspects our lives. Hopefully that gave Meatball Haggerty some grief - he is such a loser.

Good for them, showing up and making their opposition known.

"Mayor Green also mentioned the importance of BART going to San Jose and deep into Santa Clara County as well as to Livermore, saying the original BART planning was a mistake that needs to be corrected."

And now, on to the next mistake and experiment in 'social justice' and 'social re-engineering'. Good thing the best minds in the area are in charge of this process......

It comes as no or at least very little surprise that the PW and their esteemed journalist Ms. Fox-Ciardelli would sink to using the most polarizing and easily digestible term and simply define the “non-registered” attendees at the ABAG/MTC planning meeting as Tea Party members. If Ms. Fox-Ciardelli were to have perhaps asked a few simple questions of the attendants who were not allowed to register (simply because ALL nine of the events being held throughout the Bay Area had already been filled with their supporters and those sympathetic with the green cause) she would have been able to see that this was a mixed group of business and property owners, parents and teachers, farmers and civic employees and concerned residents of the Bay Area. Just because there happened to be an American Flag at the event does not make it a tea party.

Thank goodness that at least California State law prohibits such registration and exclusion of the general public from such meetings or these “Kabiki-like theater” dog and pony shows could have truly gone off with little or no public input or opposing viewpoint. But alas, Ms. F-C chose not to explore any of the deeper inner workings of ICLEI/ABAG and the groups and their handlers behind the entire Bay Area Plan. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the day of Woodward & Bernstein investigative journalism has long passed and we now are blessed with a viewpoint that any government official would be proud to lay their blessings upon.

There are numerous sites that even the simplest of Google searches would pull up a dozen or more references to the shady and veiled agenda of the groups involved in this scam and yes, some of these might be considered somewhat “right wing” by local standards but this goes way beyond a simple tag of “Tea Party, “Occupy” or ________________ (fill in the blank movement) This is a group of equally motivated, highly organized, one world oriented and yes, other-side-of-the-political-spectrum (aka. “left-wing”) individuals determined to undermine the rights of private property and business owners, make land use and the rights of imminent domain by local/state governments more easily enacted.

If this doesn’t begin to concern you, contained within the operational platform of ICLEI they adopt the United Nations own conclusions drawn from the Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I),Vancouver, BC, May 31 - June 11, 1976. Preamble to Agenda Item 10 of the Conference Report, which very ominously states…”Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interest of society as a whole. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable”

So before Cholo and the usual suspect crowd begins to rail against this as just another “right-wing” rant do all yourselves a big favor. Make Woodward & Bernstein proud and actually do some research and not just regurgitate the same old political pabulum.

I really support this effort to balance the public input and "change the game". For too long in the Bay Area special interest groups who support high density housing, urban infill and investing only in public transportation have had their say.

The press tries to portray the Tea Party as extremists when in fact they represent middle American values including most of California once you get our of the urban population centers.

Can anyone suggest a method for regional planning where politics and political name-calling are not the focus of the process?

Some of the public comments not reported:

- A student of the group from Oakland spoke at the dais expressing her concern that the plan is just a way to gentrify the neighborhoods. She looked at the same photos of modern urban multi-family residential housing that everyone else saw and sees it as rich people moving in and displacing the current residents.

- Some people from Livermore spoke to complain how BART is still not out to Livermore yet the second station got built in Pleasanton.

About this article:
- The original BART plan was in fact to have BART go all the way around the SF Bay. The mistake was Santa Clara and San Mateo counties rejecting BART. It's questionable whether BART's short hops between each station is the right design though. Our region needs something more like the Long Island Railroad. We need BART trains that don't stop at every station sometimes. The further out BART builds, the longer it takes to travel from end-to-end if the train stops at every single station in between. It already takes way longer to bart from Pleasanton to SFO than it does to drive.

About the meeting:
- I don't think the people putting on the meeting were fully prepared for it. It seemed too like some of them were uncomfortable. There was originally no opportunity for taking public comment on the agenda. Haggarty and Green turned the third "click-voting" station into a public comment session. I think they handled things very well. Democracy can be messy. Everyone should have the opportunity to speak.

Bowler,

Better local outreach and meeting design. They wanted to limit the attendance. If they don't want to make the process seem political, they should not have said there's an attendance limit. They can get a larger meeting space. They can keep public comment on the agenda and lay out some ground rules like no booing or clapping or interrupting another speaker. They can do a better job at reaching out. It's actually great they had the meeting in Dublin because usually anything Alameda County-related occurs over the hills in Oakland or Berkeley. They mentioned five big picture development strategies but then didn't say what they were up front. Supposedly they were going to talk about them in the third session that got replaced by public comment. I thought that's a terrible idea, that that kind of information needs to be given at the beginning when everyone is together. It's a drill-down approach. If you don't know what the five development strategies are, how can you then attend the public transit session and place tokens indicating what programs you think are priorities for funding?

The headline is right. The Tea Partiers were disruptive. I thought they were going to use the Delphi Technique.

What I really like here is the choice of words our "unbiased" media uses to describe Tea Party and Occupiers. Sleeping, littering and urinating in public parks and vandalizing businesses is a peaceful demonstration; verbal objections of government representative is disruption of public meeting.
Can somebody explain why the New American definition of freedom of speech is so similar to the one we had in USSR? That every individual has all the rights and can use whatever means including sometimes necessary violence to express their full support for the government and disgust and disapproval of every government-designated enemy of the state.

i was under the impression that the tea pary is over...

They are only Taxed Enough Already, not Partied Enough Already.

I call Shenanigans on you Stacy! The only "Tea Party" presence there was the solidarity that property owners might share with those objecting to excessive Federal taxation. This was NO tea party but if Heather wanted to I'm sure she could have made a much larger contingent in tow with her.

Regarding the Delphi Technique, if you did not try to (in a very calm and reasonable voice) raise a concern in the breakout groups only to told by a young, fairly attractive short black haired lady acting as a group facilitator (in a mocking and elitist tone btw) that your issues are not relevant to the topics being discussed tonight & then have her turn your own words around to make you into the obstacle of the objectives they are trying to achieve, then I guess we were at different meetings that night.

This was textbook Delphi being used Stacy and just because some of us & yours truly didn't represent ourselves as being associated with the opposition group & chose to blend in with the registered crowd (which I was) it was easier to play the middle ground & simply come off as an attendee who now just felt there were perhaps some other issues, concerns & even viewpoints that should be addressed. My registered attendant status not only allowed me to be privy to being able to speak with some of the attendees in a very open and candid fashion but also gave me a rather frightening insight into the mindset of these individuals & their utter disdain for & loathing of any viewpoint that differs from their ideology. I gotta say one thing about them though, I had a heck of a good Turkey & Avocado sando for dinner that night, gota give Eriks Deli Cafe` a good Yelp for that.

I wrote "they" in reference to the Tea Party. Most of the opposition did not use the Delphi Technique on the facilitator. Fight Delphi Technique with Delphi Technique to marginalize the facilitator (as detailed in one of the links someone posted on another thread). The opposition did a good job at marginalizing themselves by speaking out of turn and shouting. Individuals in the opposition are supposed to stand up and speak calmly and unemotionally and all say basically the same thing. Someone did speak calmly in one of the breakout sessions but he wasn't followed up by another individual speaking the same way.

So all Scott Haggarty got out of it was that people were frustrated...

Remember when planners use to come up with these futuristic plans for cities in the 1950's. Everyone would go oooh and haaaa!

Now when planners show their ideas to people its like holy #@!*.

How does Dolores Fox Cardelli know that the objectors were Tea Party members? Did they show her their membership card? The article makes a big assumption

Secondly, I think any honest citizen concerned about the future would protest the utter shallowness and pretense about a public hearing concerning the meeting that took place with the predictable questions seeking only scripted and therefore equally predictable and calculated answers.

Haggerty is just another example of someone wasting oxygen. He does not contribute one thing and takes a salary of 235,000 per year for what? nothing. He is the same as he was when he went to Washington High in Fremont, just a BS'er who lives off of everyone else.

"He does not contribute one thing and takes a salary of 235,000 per year...?" Is that his salary or the cost of his salary, benefits, and pension?

Such meetings are always an embarrassing reminder of how little the human race has progressed in terms of its social maturity.

Discuss rather than shout, and vote rather than disrupt, for goodness' sake.

Mike

you're right, mike. Those occupy protestors are an uncivilized lot, for sure.

Big Brother ABAG is a real and present danger to american freedoms. Soon the Bay Area wiil be just one look-alike magaopolis. A community reflecting the character of the residents will no longer exist. Everybody should find that alarming. Mandated subsidized housing is pure marxist central-planning and so anti-American. How is this AGAG steamroller being allowed to run over us all?
I know, I know.... crappy CA laws written by crappy DEM legislators who keep getting reelected.
Now that our East side is going to be destroyed with public housing, I want to know when will Stoneridge extension be finished....this Summer?

Fight integrated Pleasanton neighborhoods. Freedom can only be attained through segregation! Tea Party rocks!!!

What?

The $235,000 he gets per year is just his salary not including benefits, per diem, multiple offices, vehicle, gas allowance, staffs for the offices etc.

This guy is just a zero and contributes to our demise and nothing else. If California really was serious about reducing costs they would look at redundant offices like Haggerty's as well different boards he holds sway over like BAAQMD which is another redundant agency, CARB, etc. they all have huge budgets and staffs. Plenty of waste to cut and you do not hear our democratic or republican elected officials bringing them up do you?

The meeting was to cover a specific task, which was about trying to get MTC and others together to see if a smart-plan can be worked out to reduce smog. Over the last few weeks, didn't any of you noticed the bad air?

With emotional rants, is it any wonder why many of us don't take you seriously? I am surprised that Andrew, et al, didn't manage throw in gun rights...

"Over the last few weeks, didn't any of you noticed the bad air?" LOL..look outside now---problem solved.

"With emotional rants, is it any wonder why many of us don't take you seriously?" Really, we value your opinion, even though you don't reside in Pleasanton---really, we do......really. And we promise not to patronize you because it might hurt your feelings.

Isn't this the same group of politicians who are demanding that we build lots and lots more housing? I think the additional housing and the local traffic impacts will be more than anything they can do to protect the air quality. Instead they want more people and then have the existing people change our lives, and pay more, to handle the congestion they bring.

I also think the headline of this article is wrong. It should not be "Tea party members disrupt meeting to Plan Bay Area", it should be "Community contributes to meeting, disrupting the bureaucrats."

Those of you who attended this meeting, did the moderators give their age, birthplace, and where they attended college? Degree?

It seemed that a number of these individuals were younger then 35 and probably more influenced by their mentors then by actual experience. I may be biased, but I think California has been screwed up enough by East Coast politicians and their PAC contributors.

This type of urban planning has been tried on the East Coast with negative results. Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Buffalo, have all garnered hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies to turn these cities into transit orientated, high to moderately dense housing with results that can only be classified as disastrous.

I love the dialogue but it is so sad that folks in the tri valley can be som stupid and so misinformed. 1. Bay area anning needs to move forward despite if you are pro tea part or anti tea party. Right now tea party folks are only looking like occupy folks with jobs. It's like the tri valley version of occupy is the tea partiers
2. Opinions are valid and need to be heard for all over the county. One person wrote that this was not a meeting where the organizers of the meetif wanted to let people be heard. Really? The meeting was at night. The meeting had brazen out sessions and reporting back. The only thing I found disruptive was the antics of the tri valley occupiers. Oops. I mean tea partiers.
3. A county supervisor does not make 250k.
4. More meetings new to be scheduled

Well said, Winnie. Our freedoms are systematically being taken away from us by unelected left-wing-loon bureaucrats. It is also true that Haggerty is a meatball. It is also true that the PW consistently does a meatball job of reporting. If you don't agree with the left-wing loons, you are either a Tea Bagger (their lewd name for members of the Tea Party) or a racist. The mantra for the 2012 elections should be Oust the (left-wing)Loons. Your freedom depends on it!