23 - Laserfiche WebLink

ATTACHMENT 4 PLEASANTON VILLAGE MiSOCIA nON APPEAL OF PLANNING DEP ARTMENT APPROVAL OF THE PROPOSED MODIFICA nON TO ST. ELIZABETH SETON CHURCH OF NOVEMBER 29, 2006 DEe 1 1 2006 CASE NUMBER PDR-56I/PV-158 RECEIVED CITY OF PLEASANTON PLANNING DEPT. The Board of Directors of the Pleasanton Village Association would like to appeal the Planning Commission's decision of November 29,2006, to approve the proposed modification to St. Elizabeth Seton Church. The Pleasanton Village Association is a 196 unit homeowner association, consisting of 113 single family homes and 83 townhomes, located immediately to the south of St. Elizabeth Seton Church. Weare asking for the City Council to review the Planning Department's decision, as we are very concerned about the following items associated with the church's plan: · Traffic and Parking: The proposed gymnasium would be located close to Rheem Drive and people using the facility will be parking on our Association's streets, Rheem, Alexander Way and Bowen in particular. We know this to be true as churchgoers already park on our streets in large numbers when the church holds services. Our community is approximately 20 years old and many of our townhome garages were built with I-car garages. This means that a large majority of our residents do not have adequate garage parking and must park vehicles on the street on Alexander, Rheem and Bowen. Parking is always an issue for our residents. In fact, it is one of the most frequent complaints the Board receives from our residents. Our community does not need to compete for parking with people who are using the church's facilities. We believe that the church should provide its own parking for those people utilizing its facilities. We do not have our residents park their vehicles on church property and we do not believe our streets should be used for overflow parking by people using the church facilities. It is our understanding that the Church is attempting to enter into some sort of arrangement with the commercial buildings across the street on Rheem to use their parking lot for parking. This would require young children and parents to cross the street on Rheem to access the building. The streets are very dark, there are no stop signs or cross walks and we are concerned that someone will be hit by a car in this process. Vehicles travel down Rheem at excessive amounts of speed already. The Association has been trying to work with the City Transportation Department to reduce the speed in this area and have been promised that the City will restripe Rheem to make it less attractive for speeding. This promise was made in May 2006 and we have yet to be advised of a date for this painting, even after repeated inquiries. The true tragedy would be for someone to be injured, or killed, crossing the street to use the church's building because the church did not find it prudent to provide safe parking for its people. One person being injured is one person too many - and is definitely avoidable. · Noise: The residents of Pleasanton Village Association are very concerned about the additional noise that will be generated by the use of the new building. We anticipate an increase in traffic noise, noise from people walking to and from their vehicles as well as from the building itself. Many of our homes back up to church property and these residents, in particular, will have to deal with noise from the church on a daily basis. We do not believe that this is something our residents should have to deal with - especially since there is no benefit to any of our residents for this inconvenience.