From Email InBox:Stop the BIG BOX Town Center

Pahw...

Read a little blurb in the blog this afternoon to which perhaps the city council, city PlanningCommission, or the city staff have overlooked. One of the main points to any Specific Plan, is that once approved and adopted, that is it. There cannot be further revisions, nor pretty plans nor pictures madeup to please a client, the council, nor a customer.For once it is approved that section of the town is legally cut out from the Adopted General plan, and then as per shown boundaries, the Specific plan takesover.

Whatever date the council adopts the plan, that essentially stops further work. Those cute little pictures being shown here and there cannot alter what is written into the original set of rules as outlined by the city council.

Finished. About the only thing which can be done is minor in nature. Perhaps the client wants a blue building instead of a brown one. Or, there can also be some law passed in Sacramento to which was recent, and not addressed in the documents.

Now, this is a serious thing here too, for about the only next thing that can be discussed is just WHO is going to occupy the property, when construction and financing is going to happen too. Discussing anything otherwise would be inviolation of an adopted specific plan.

The city council, nor the planning department, nor the RDA can alter an adopted Specific Plan. The people's representatives, the city council have spoken, and finished the trail.

The only real way to alter the Specific Plan is to go through the whole process once again, about from the beginning. The applicant (theRDA) has to take it before Planning Commission, through Public Hearings, and then on to the council.

The only thing to be discussed with the City council at this point should be one of the three above noted items. Who to occupy, when on construction, and who to financing.

It is time for the city staff or the RDA to cough up and show us the contracts. They then have to name names, as to these three items, otherwise there isn't anything to discuss. Alterations via pictures etc. where to have been finished, completed, long before the council or the P.C. saw it. Not now.

This is pretty common with all cities I have dealt with. I think the City Attorney needs to dig into the case history behind any specific plan, for any community or county, and let the council know these agreements are not flexible, in any such way.

Now, big stink here too. For it was mentioned the Outdoor Activity Center (OAC). Once that City Council approves and adopts any specific plan, it is cast in concrete. There are dollars being spent elsewhere by other developers being based upon the information in one of those contracts.

Unlike you or me, wanting to build a whole bunch of houses in a tract, we are not obligatied to one design, for we do not enter into anagreement with the city staff to create a specific plan.

If anyone at the City staff had read all the documentation going on with the new G.T. high school,they would have read that the Colton School Districtis holding to the outlines within the duly adopted Specific Plan for the OAC. They are not holding to any discussion or funny papers, but fully intend to connect their storm sewer system into the lake ascreated, outlined and engineered in the OAC documents.

For if the city council sluffs off the idea of the ponds, and does not build them, without some other suitable implement, I smell a delay in the high school construction, I then smell some sort of litigation or agreement coming along.

This of course alters the Specific Plan, much as the freeway off-ramp thought did. They got talked into TWO specific plans and only have dollars for one.

Now, as an example of one recent case to which I am familiar with was over in the City of Corona. There over a period of about 10 months study after study was made of the older streets, and irrigation canals for the hillside areas in the southeast quarter of the community mainly in the citrus grove areas.

There, the situation was where exactly should new roads be built, what are their alignments, and how would they impact the adjacent residents. The city staff took the work seriously, and submitted a sixteen page set of plans to council.

The residents complained about increased traffic etc, but that was not the point of them. For this was serious matters here. The older roads were very angular, and followed the contours of the hillside, for they each had irrigation canals in mindand beside them. The old roads were not designed fornormal surface street drainage nor higher speed traffic. Our firm got ahold of every single civilengineering firm within the city or doing businesswithin the city.

They also invited all of the major housing developers into confirence. Out of this quite a few changes were noted, for often times the swing of the roads meant taking more property from one owner than from one on the other side of the new street. And after ten months, the sixteen sheets were taken to council, yet more people speaking about traffic, how it was going to ruin the (dead) groves.

The only exception to any alignment, was when one developerowned "both" sides of a road, between two intesections. Over this stretch, he then could either adopt the plan or come up with another. Now jump forward two years, and many of the complaining developers have sold their speculative interests toanother company.

Sort of like buying a used car. Then the yelling began once again, for to give away acouple square feet of land, more than the guy on the other side of the street did, seemed unfair. Ever buy a used car that went through a flood. It looks shiney on the outside and mud under the carpets. "Well, I didn't have time to look into everything"Much as the city staff.

The G.T. council did not lookinto the impacts of their specific plans. For now agood year or so later, the local developers (Colton Schools) have come in and agreed to what they saw, liking it or not, and have had a simple conversation with the city staff, and then spent thousands of dollars in engineering to work around the obsticals. The also took advantage of what was planned out too.One biggie being the drainage ponds. For all the stormwater runoff coming down Pico and Van Buren is expected to terminate in those holding ponds. The old original water course ran across the freeway over into Colton and down the creek near the Pinacle Peak restaurant.

The city knew this wasn't going to happen any more, and thus the ponds, and an overflow into thelittle concrete channel which runs near the powerplant. It is all shown in the original and adopted OACenvironmental report. The council adopted it, theymust hold to it, for the Colton School District isexpecting them to. And thus, while everyone if looking at the newshopping center along Barton Road, it is the old OAC which is going to require city funds very soon, forthe Colton school district is going out for bid. When the city council sat upon their hands, and didn't askas to where all the funding was coming from, in my thought they doomed the Barton center. For what comes first gets funded first. I would like to see where the funds for the Barton center are coming from now?

That is the real question which ought to be asked of the council. If we have funds for the Barton center, then we must already have them for the adopted OAC. Kind of like going to the store and finding they have all these different things on sale at a ridicously low price, saying "I'll buy this, and this, and this... "They realising you only have two dollars in your pocket. Correct?