The Pleasanton Weekly has always had a difficult time reporting the facts, but your June 2 editorial, “Voters want a Costco, so let’s move forward,” was stunning in its misrepresentation of events and a shameless attempt to promote the project.
For example:
* There is no council-appointed “Johnson Drive Task Force” planning the project. Unless you consider the city staff, Costco and project developer Nearon as the task force. There is certainly no public representation involved.
* It’s true that No on MM won by 62% last November. But from the many people I talked to during the campaign, there was a lot of confusion about what Yes or No meant. Does voting “No” mean no to Costco? I’m not so sure that the results represent resounding support for Costco.
* The city was conducting secret negotiations with Costco over taxpayer subsidies for the project prior to and throughout the election campaign and provided no information to the public. Do you think the results might have been different if it was widely known that the taxpayers would be footing the bill to the tune of tens of millions of dollars for the project infrastructure as was revealed by a public records request at the time?
* You characterize the taxpayer subsidies for Costco as “commonly used by cities around the country to finance such public infrastructure costs associated with development.” In my over 20 years of civic participation in Pleasanton, including eight years on the City Council and six years on the Planning Commission, this never occurred. Development was always required to pay its own way. In addition, experience has shown that taxpayer subsidies provided by cities for Costco and other big box stores usually ends up as a bad fiscal deal for those cities.
* Your simplistic example of how the subsides would work is laughable. An analysis performed by Pleasanton Citizens for Responsible Growth based on data obtained through the records request showed that the project wouldn’t break even for 20 years. That analysis was sent to the Pleasanton Weekly during the campaign, but of course you ignored it because it didn’t fit your chosen narrative.
* Finally, you are using the scare tactic that if we don’t permit Costco we will end up with more high density housing on the site. This is highly unlikely as the site was not rezoned for housing during the last Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) cycle and there is no need for additional rezoning until 2020 at the soonest. Fear-mongering by a newspaper to achieve a desired result on behalf of business is ethically reprehensible.
Based on the delays of the subsidy negotiations — still being conducted in secret — it appears that the city and Costco are having difficulty coming to a final agreement. We can only hope that the city staff is not willing to completely give away the store to a $80 billion corporation and is looking out for our best interests.
We should just be thankful that the Pleasanton Weekly is not negotiating this deal on our behalf!
* Editor’s note: Matt Sullivan served on the Pleasanton City Council from 2004 to 2012 and is a former Pleasanton Planning Commission member. He has been active in civic issues locally for more than 20 years.
