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THE CITY OF East Pleasanton Specific Plan _ __,_� Public Comments pLEASANTONO From: Anne Fox Sent: Monday, December 02, 2019 8:38 PM To: Mayor and City Council <citycouncil@cityofpleasantonca.gov> Subject: Oppose Ponderosa lead role in East Side Specific Plan - Measure B "Evergreen Initiative" Hello, Please oppose the turning over of the Planning Process of the East Side of Pleasanton to Ponderosa. The Planning Process in Pleasanton should belong to the residents, not Ponderosa that has in recent years has gone to extreme lengths to circumvent planning processe and CEQA regulations and avoid paying traffic mitigation fees and roadway improvements as it did last year in the South Bay. In addition, it put forth a General Plan amendment via a ballot box initiative embedded in the Evergreen Initiative in San Jose to allow residential senior housing to be built in all areas of San Jose that are currently commercially zoned. By handing over the reins to Ponderosa in the East Side Specific Plan, residents in Pleasanton - many who commute to San Jose daily - are wondering why given the controversy last year in Measure B vs Measure C, why Pleasanton elected officials would ever want to do such a thing. Several residents have asked me quite frankly whether the Pleasanton City Council and the city manager are completely oblivious to what Ponderosa did last year in the South Bay. I do not know the answer, but I am wondering myself whether this is the case. Residents also wonder whether the city manager is aware of the controversy and failed to inform the Pleasanton City Council concerning what occurred. I would suggest that if this is the case, the city council should find a few minutes to Google last year's Measure B in San Jose. Obviously, in the past it is well known that Ponderosa filed a lawsuit against the City of San Ramon over a dispute over traffic mitigation fees. However to so blatantly put on a ballot measure that the developer would not be responsible for roadway improvements as was done in San Jose in the fine print was extraordinarily surprising to the elected officials in San Jose. The city council was so outraged that they put a countermeasure on the ballot as well. Similar to what Pardee did in Livermore a decade ago, Ponderosa and a billionaire landowner last year collected signatures for a development in the San Jose Foothills to bypass environmental review, allow the developer to not pay for any road improvements, as well as modify the affordable housing regulations in San Jose in order for Ponderosa to get a development approved bypassing CEQA called "Evergreen." This was basically an extremely large gated community (think of Ironwood in Pleasanton but larger) they touted would be affordable for seniors, with a preference for veterans, even though the actual ballot language made no references whatsoever to veterans. It was all a PR move. It also had a rider in the ballot measure that would affect the entire city of San Jose to create an overlay - - - that existing commercial land not built out to its maximum capacity, including low-rise office buildings, strip Provided to City Council for the February 18, 2020, Meeting