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He felt this was encouraging, but unfortunate that some political decisions were made as far as the Triangle Study is concerned, and felt the decision came at a time when they had a real opportunity to pull the entire community together under one decision. And, what the decision did was create dissention and some polarization between cities and between regions and he was very distressed that this happened. However, he felt we must work with regional partners and begin a healing process with them, as well. Over the last few years, it has become abundantly clear to him that we can accomplish much more by working as partners and working as a team, particularly in Sacramento and Washington to start the healing process. Regarding the core issue tonight, Councilmember Thorne said his objective was as the Mayor's has been, to provide this community with a circulation plan that best benefits the greater majority of the city and equitably distributes the traffic burden throughout the community. In order to provide a balanced and equitable circulation plan for the community, it is important we maintain a high level of flexibility in the general plan that allows them to respond to the changing environment around us, felt it would continue to change over the period of this General Plan and perhaps, future General Plans. He said he thought of a number of ways we might use to provide us with solutions to the polarization issues, regional issues, and a solution that provides for a General Plan that is flexible enough to provide us and future city councils with the flexibility needed to deal with future challenges. He first thought about putting in restrictions in the General Plan which minimizes the Council's ability to respond to challenges in the future, and also ties the hands of future councils in dealing with that. He has heard on occasion and on other issues the statement that we want to be able to restrict the ability of 3 Councilmembers to make a decision that is going to change something. He has a problem with that, in that the Council is 5 people elected by the city's population, 3 people are a majority of the Council and this is our system of government. He believes in this form of government, was not interested in trying to restrict a body elected by a future population, by an action on a ballot taken by the population today. In 2003, he was presented with some data that indicated that 50% of our population had lived here less than 5.3 years. So we would basically restrict a population that 50% of us will not be in 5 years from now. Secondly, he thought about putting together a strategy or policy statement that clearly states we want to be a part of the regional solution. We want to be a team player with our regional partners. He felt this might be where we end up this evening; to basically make the statement clear that the people of Pleasanton feel that State Route 84 is very, very important to our future and this will be a major consideration in whether or not we ever move forward in actually building Stoneridge Drive. He said he has mentioned the term, flexible, and he wanted to expand on it and talk about some of the external forces that could change the direction of this Council and perhaps future Councils. Many Councilmembers participate on a number of boards, commissions and committees where we are constantly exposed to this kind of information and the assumption might be that residents know about it as well. He believes that the ability of local government, to make land use decisions, is under siege. He believes there will be more and more challenges in the future in the Council's ability to make land use decisions. He said last November there was Proposition 90 on the ballot which was crafted to sound like an eminent domain initiative, but the reality of it was totally different; the individual who City Council Minutes 17 May 1, 2007