This community opinion was contributed by John Wrobel. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. Lea este artículo en español aquí.
I am very disappointed in this planning process. There are three major issues that are included with no plans to deal with them. One of the many topics I hear over and over is the need to develop additional housing because the state says we have to. Great, more and more people need more and more housing. But as this is a “plan” to guide us into 2040, where is the foresight to deal with the multitude of infrastructure issues that come with the increase in population?
Another major concern that I hear about and see on a daily basis is traffic. From my
perspective the traffic issue just might be a result of a lack of foresight in previous plans in the fact that there was no planning for increased infrastructure to deal with the current population that was “planned” for 20 years ago.
So what about the traffic? The first question is why…..obviously folks are driving north for living wage jobs because for the most part, they don’t exist here. What was done to provide for those jobs in the previous plans? Well, they set some ground around the airport aside for business development, but what did they do to entice the big San Jose companies and those farther away to actually land here…it appears nothing because
they don’t exist.
Now for a third major concern, global warming. What is being planned for to reduce the
process? Well, they have included some fluff, such as, people will drive electric cars in the future because the state tells the manufacturers they have to make less polluting cars. But who is buying them? I hear the electric car market is cold. Yes, there are some but not anywhere enough.
Oh and they are going to use LED streetlights, and try to convince us to have all electric
appliances etc. But this doesn’t address the really big one: I have heard that our cars are
producing 60% of the greenhouse gasses that are a major part of the problem and how much time do we spend in our cars every day stuck in traffic with our cars spewing greenhouse gasses because it takes 2+ hours to go somewhere that it should only take 45 minutes to an hour to get there.
What is the solution? I think maybe local living wage jobs (LWJ) would be a good start but I
see nothing in the new general plan to encourage this, it looks to me like business as usual which will lead to all the folks in all the new housing in the next 20 years on the same limited roads. (Yes, they are widening 25 and 156, which will most likely be overwhelmed with traffic by the time they are completed and doesn’t do much for the 101).
So where is the planning to increase the number of jobs in our community to the tune of at least 2 living wage jobs for every new household which will maintain traffic at the current levels, or even better 3 LWJ for every household to actually have an effect on reducing traffic?
Where is the planning to increase local LWJ?
I brought all this up during the writing of the new general plan meetings and planning
commission meeting where they approved the new 2040 general plan to go forth to City
Council for approval, and their response was that jobs planning is not in their area of concern.
How is this possible… they are the planners.
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