When the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) presented Concord City Council with two plans for the proposed reuse of the Concord Naval Weapons Station property, at the very first meeting there was very little deliberation by Council. Yet all five have declared support for the Villages concept without skipping a beat.
Unless something else is going on behind the curtain, it is unreasonable to expect that five “independent” representatives— exposed to a massive amount information with reports that were hundreds of pages in length as well new material supplied with the scattering of comments from 57 or so different speakers—would immediately and unaminously conclude ‘we are leaning towards the villages.’ What are the odds?
Ultimately though, in looking over the last two meetings the only sign of deliberation was by Helen Allen who declared that she was opposed to both plans because she wants single family homes throughout the area. Yet even with this, we in the audience and the city at large by extension have no details as to what criteria of measurement is being applied.
To put it in a simply, “What does it take for a Concord Councimember to change your vote from one plan to another?” By not sharing with us the clarity of thought in measurement of a choice of Plan A over Plan B there is a disservice to the community and the legislative function, and to yourselves in making this one decision in which each of you has said is the most critical issue for Concord.
Both the plans provided are certified by the CAC and staff as complying with exactly the 5 criteria that Council required: most notably both are financially feasible and sustainable. Other than that, the Council has not been forthcoming with its measurement for choice. This is not a matter of selecting the color for the drapes in the Council Chambers where a simple: ‘Well I like blue better than red and I don’t know why and Lucy don’t need splain nuthin.’
The choice Council has is a 2-3 Billion dollar project that will determine the course of this City’s development over the next 5 generations. Without an understanding of the factors that make a decision of one over the other the Council leaves the body politic at large to wonder what unknown, unseen constituency and persuasive influence pressure-point group exists that we citizens were not party to?
Additionally as a matter of procedure, protocol—or simply put: the way we want ‘Concord to Roll’—if the citizens are removed from knowing the measures by which a decision of such a magnitude is to be made there is a great weakening of faith in the system. Finally, should it happen that we as a city are to face such a situation in the future, what changes will the Council pledge to make to avoid this current problem from repeating itself?
I would love to have answers from Council so as to be able to direct the public comment period to a more effective choice before the Council. Barring that, one can only gather a shot gun approach, trying different routes from those taken before because, ‘We do not know what it is going to take to change your mind.’ … But Concord and its citizens should.
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This evening (Jan. 9, 2009) the Concord City Council voted 5-0 in favor of the Village plan.
In explaining their votes there were no specifics given of why they chose one plan over the other except for Guy Bjerke who gave as his reasons:
1. There were more formal parks in the Villages than in the Open Space/Conservation
2. There was more of a financial cushion in the villages than the Conservation
3. He felt there was more access to the facilities in the villages than in the Conservation plan
While I disagree with him on the points:
1. the Conservation allows for greater formal parks potentially to be taken by the East Bay Regional Park district,
2. there is more to go horribly wrong with the greater development of the Villages than there is in the concentration, so the risk factors are much higher in the villages,
3. finally looking at the map there is no greater access to the facilities unless of course you happen to be in the villages;
nevertheless at least he detailed his thinking.
The most confused presentation was Helen Allen who stated that the Three Villages were going to be ‘like separate countries’, however she voted for it anyway.
There was also a great deal of Big Spin in operation on the entire issue of commitments. On the one hand there were plenty of references that they want to put this or that issue in the General Plan to protect it, however the public comment period was kicked off by a demonstration that the current General Plan is consistently calling upon decisions that would make the Conservation Plan the preferred plan, not the Villages. So the Council spun the story of putting things into the Plan to ‘protect the responsiveness of the neighborhood transitions to the Transit Oriented Development’ (a meaningless statement) they steadfastly ignored the existing plan and its specific calls of what to use in evaluation of choices. So if a Council ignores the current plan, what should we expect the future Council to do?
One of the Council members said that Politics is Compromise, and then they showed no aspect of compromise, I wonder if that means that what we saw was a decision made not by politics but by something else, which still remains a mystery.