3/28/2007 - Notes from Planning Commission Meeting

Post date: Mar 23, 2013 8:57:38 PM

Premeeting:

There is a Planning Commission meeting tonight to approve the rezoning of the site at the north side of Montague Expressway, adjacent east of the Guadalupe River.

I will not be able to attend the meeting, but I feel a very specific question needs to be asked. If someone who is going would ask the following question, I would appreciate it.

"In Chapter 3 of the North San Jose development policy, item 8 in the Residential Uses section requires that Master Planning to identify sites for parks, schools, and other public facilities for each of the 7 residential areas be completed prior to ANY conversion within that area.

Where is the Master Plan for the WHOLE residential area that this site is in?"

If you do not get a satisfactory answer, please formally object that the policy is not being followed.

Mike Bertram Vice President River Oaks Neighborhood Association

Postmeeting:

Jean Marlowe, Robert Vitiello, Erik Kaeding, Jim Foran, and I (Mike Bertram) were at the meeting.

Robert, Eric, and I spoke. Robert spoke to some general issues such as ensuring the proper park size. Erik spoke to how this proposal was more suited for NSJ than the proposals located next to us. I spoke to the incomplete Master Planning process. None of us objected to the project itself, except for the park space issue. We were really there to make the initial arguments that will be relevant to the site adjacent to us. I think we made our points and now the Planning Commission is aware of some of our major concerns. The city planners told the commission that they know planning work has yet to be done in our area and they are committed to working with the community.

The proposal passed as we expected it to.

The process made me realize that we can not wait until the planning meeting to get our issues addressed. By the time it gets there it is too late, unless the issue is so significant that we could show up at the meeting with a large community group, on the order of dozens, to speak against the proposal.

We continue to work as a community to get our issues resolved and, in general, the city is at least talking to us. If it does get to the point were we have to draw a line and say something is unacceptable (the height of the Cadence project comes to mind), we need to draw that line before the commission meeting happens. The threat of going to the council meeting with a couple dozen organized speakers has the ability to force change if they think we can actually do it. An action like that would illustrate to the council that the planners have not properly worked the issue with the community. Having to actually put up a fight at the commission would not be a good thing. We should get our needs resolved before then.

Here are something that are going on towards that goal.

RONA board members are meeting with city council people. We have met with Councilman Williams already and have more meetings scheduled. This is primarily to educate and to get them to press the planners to be responsive to unmet demands.

There are some community meetings coming up, hosted by the city. Official notice has not gone out, but should early next week. I received this information verbally from the city.

April 14 and 23 there will be community workshops with the Parks department to help them understand what our desires are for parks. I gave a heads up on this a month or two ago. There is a document in the parks part of the files section of the group website.

April 14th there will also be a meeting with the consultant (company) who has been hired to do the new Residential Development Guidelines for NSJ. That consultant will also be working some Master Planning issues. The consultant has already started working with the developers, but has not taken any community input yet. This effort is key to working the height and density issues for adjacent properties because the issue of new setbacks has been tasked to this effort.

Jean is working to set up a forum with the two candidates for District Four. This is a chance to educate them and to get some commitments in support of our issues.

Please stay tied into community effort for the next few months. By mid-summer the Sony and Cadence sites will probably be approved. Any significant changes need to happen between now and then.

Mike Bertram VP River Oaks Neighborhood Association