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negotiating with potential tenants for the offsets of tax advantages that are part of any deal of this size? I ask you as community leaders to please reconsider this idea of a big box retailer on Johnson Drive, be reasonable, be leaders, please understand what is being proposed and then do the right thing for our community. Thank you. Carrie Cox: Tonight I will be brief. When I look up Pleasanton on Wikipedia, two descriptions caught my attention. First and I quote: "Pleasanton continues to maintain a small town flavor and second, was ranked #4 in 2014 by USA Today as America's Best Cities to Live In." I ask you in two years, in 2018, will Pleasanton still be described as having a small town flavor? Will it even be ranked in the top 50 of America's best cities to live in? The citizens of Pleasanton have entrusted you with maintaining their quality of life, small town flavor, one of America's best cities to live in. Will your decision about Costco be about tax dollars or about the will of the people? On February 24th a customer of ours summed it up best: "Our representative should not allow this. I hope the Council takes our side." On March 4th a customer said, "This is crazy. Do we have a say? I want to vote." Yesterday, a customer said, "Thank you. Please help us fight this." Nearon says it is a done deal. I say no way. The citizens will have a voice. It's not a done deal. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Bill Wheeler: Good evening Planning Commission, members and staff. I'm Bill Wheeler, owner of Black Tie Transportation at the corner of Commerce and Johnson Drives here in Pleasanton. I hope by now that you know my issue and that of many of the citizens of Pleasanton and the surrounding communities. It is the Johnson Drive Economic Development Zone and especially the plan to add a big box store or Costco to the area. I've been appearing before you for the past several weeks and months to make my concerns and those of others known, but you and the City Council seem to be pursuing a same path you initially introduced without explanation and now with continuous extensions. At this point since it seems we really aren't being heard, we've decided to take action. Today, the Citizens for Planning Growth of which I'm a member has sent to the City Attorney an Initiative regarding the Johnson Drive Economic Development Zone that we asked to be placed on the ballot for the November 8th general election. The simple goal of this initiative is to let the citizens of Pleasanton decide if they want to have a big box store like Costco in the JDEDZ. It is an attempt to make the process more straight forward. This kind of large scale input resulting in a well- informed decision will guarantee all of us an outcome that won't be second guessed or challenged after the citizens have had their chance to vote. Thank you for allowing me this platform over the past few months. I look forward to working with you on getting the very best solution for the JDEDZ and the citizens of Pleasanton. Thank you. Weinstein: There are no major updates. We are in the throes of reviewing the Response to Comments on the Draft Supplemental EIR and another big document which is the economic study that was prepared for the EDZ, and I just wanted to emphasize as well that it is not a done deal at this point. Again, we're in the midst of studying the Economic Development Zone. The plan is to take it to a joint City Council /Planning Commission workshop in early April. Before that, we'll publish the Response to Comments document and the economic study so people will have many weeks to review those documents PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, March 9, 2016 Page 3 of 25