Example letters

Example Letters to County Supervisor and Staff
 

 To :

Additional Housing

We believe in appropriate planning and that, as a community, we need to be prepared for more housing to be built in our town under the County’s new General Plan over the next twenty years.

We believe that County rezoning of Alamo for housing needs to be sustainable.

We believe that in and around our downtown is the right place for this to occur and that rezoning is not to be extended along Danville Blvd. beyond our downtown area which will negatively impact our community.

We believe that new housing should be built only when there is adequate infrastructure to support it, with no negative impacts on existing residents.

We believe that without proper and sustainable planning, our community will suffer from poor services, traffic congestion, public safety challenges and impacted schools.

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(OR)

For decades governmental agencies at the state and local level have “planned” for an Alamo that looks pretty much like it does today. The water, sanitary and other public utilities didn’t build their pipes, poles, wires and switching equipment for such high-density residential development and large increase in the number of residents.

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The sheriff, roads department, fire department, parks departments and school districts based their capital budgets and hiring upon the assumption (set forth in the County’s own General Plan) that Alamo would remain semi-rural, with low-rise single-family structures, low police response requirements, and minimum public infrastructure, schools would be severely impacted, and our downtown’s road system would simply be overwhelmed.

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Alamo’s downtown operates from a single street, Danville Blvd. If even half the potential number of units allowed by the GP designations (1,600 units) were developed, it doesn’t require a computer to know that it would produce a large concentration of trips and require significant enlargement of Danville Blvd.  It would be the opposite of what is trying to be done in our downtown now, which is to slow the traffic, reduce the scale and make it safer and more pedestrian-friendly.

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(OR)

Affordable housing is a good and necessary social goal. How you achieve it is the dilemma. Throwing out the rulebook and hoping that the private sector will come to the rescue is a mistake. Increasing land use densities favors those who currently own such land making their properties more valuable overnight. The economies of scale for residential development favor large projects, not small infill. Affordable housing is best suited for existing urban locations with sufficient public transportation, public and private amenities that provide for quality and sustainable growth. The County should use the funds it has available whether through impact fees, assessments, taxes, grants, or state subvention to directly subsidize truly affordable projects where the densities make sense for the available amenities and surrounding land uses even if the County must subsidize projects in existing cities.

(OR)

What policy makers at the state and local level appear to ignore is the critical infrastructure necessary to support the likely and appreciable increase in population that these measures will engender. The public fire, school, sanitary, storm drainage, flood control and water special districts which currently serve residents of the unincorporated areas have made multi-year master plans of personnel, facilities, and equipment to serve the County’s population based upon growth projections envisioned by current laws and policies. These special districts have made projections of the revenues necessary to maintain existing facilities and to amortize the capital costs of new and expanded facilities. Private utilities serving the County have similarly based the size and capacity of their respective facilities on the same growth projections. The roads and freeways have been designed and built based on estimates of traffic flows and intersectional capacities at levels that will be quickly exceeded by the population growth contemplated. This assumes that current infrastructure is sufficient for today’s demands. As we witnessed this fall in two Alamo locations at Valley Oaks Drive and Hemme Avenue, sixty-year-old water mains fail and need replacement. The same is true for all other public and private infrastructure, a significant portion of which may be at or beyond its design life.

(OR)

Substantially increasing land use densities in the unincorporated areas will result in higher land costs and values. High land use densities beyond the current carrying capacity of existing old and undersized infrastructure will cause increased public and private costs for such infrastructure deficits. Impact fees and taxes necessary to pay for these deficits make housing units more un-affordable. Small infill housing projects even at higher densities fail to achieve the economies of scale necessary to create true affordability. Housing would become more affordable when environmental and bureaucratic rules are relaxed, development fees and taxes are reduced or eliminated, and large tracts of land are available for urbanization…much as it was in the 1960’s. If the voters do not want to return to those days, then population and job growth should be directed toward less urbanized areas of the state.

We believe that County rezoning of Alamo for housing needs to be sustainable.ublic safety challenges an

Name

Address

Email

Phone

Who to send letters to

Candace Andersen – Supervisor District 2 309 Diablo Road, Danville, CA 94526 | (925) 655-2300 | supervisorandersen@bos.cccounty.us ·
Will Nelson - Principal Planner, Envision 2040 30 Muir Rd. Martinez, CA 94553 | (925) 655-2898 | Will.Nelson@dcd.cccounty.us ·
Daniel Barrios - Principal Planner, Envision 2040 30 Muir Rd. Martinez, CA 94553 | (925) 655-2901 | Daniel.Barrios@dcd.cccounty.us ·
John Kopchik – Director of Dept. of Conservation and Development (DCD) 30 Muir Road Martinez, CA 94553 | (925) 655-2780 | John.Kopchik@dcd.cccounty.us ·
Gavin Newsom, Governor 1303 10th Street, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814 | (916) 445-2841