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ATTACHMENT I pLEASANTON@ January 17,2007 David Cortese, President of the Executive Board Association of Bay Area Governments P.O. Box 2050 Oakland, CA 94604-2050 Re: 2007 - 2014 Regional Housing Needs Allocation Process Dear Mr. Gardner: At our meeting of January 16,2007, the Pleasanton City Council reviewed the Draft Regional Housing Needs Allocation (Draft Methodology) and the Housing Methodology Committee's recommendation of January 4,2007 pertaining to regional income allocations. This letter summarizes the Council's response to the above information. As you are aware, I was a member of the ABAG Housing Methodology Committee (HMC) and support the work of ABAG staff and the HMC members. However, the City Council requests the Executive Board incorporate a number of changes to the Draft Methodology as noted below. First, while the City Council sees the logic and requirement for incorporating factors related to the jobslhousing balance, in many situations, it is more appropriate to allocate employment and employment growth on a sub-regional basis rather than on a city-by-city basis as outlined in the Draft Methodology. Utilizing this approach would accurately reflect the fact that while employment may occur in a specific city which has traditionally been a job center, the responsibility for meeting the jobslhousing balance falls not just with the "home city", but with surrounding communities that benefit and, in fact, rely on this job growth for their economic and social well-being. Incorporating this change in the RHNA allocation is not only fair but most accurately reflects a true jobslhousing balance goal of assuring that housing is in close proximity to jobs. Secondly, while the City Council understands and supports Smart Growth concepts including transit- oriented development, we remain concerned about new housing adjacent to transportation corridors that regularly experience gridlock. As a result, I previously requested that traffic gridlocJs: be included as an allocation factor. While ABAG staff did not support this concept, we would encourage the Executive Board to consider the alternative allocation methodology presented to the Housing Methodology Committee at its meeting of January 4,2007, that removes transit as a factor. Doing this not only addresses the City's concern regarding gridlock but also reflects the fact that transit impacts are already include in the analysis for the development of ABAG's Projections. MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL 123 Main Street P. O. Box 520, Pleasanton, CA 94566-0802 (925) 931-5001 Fax: 931-5482