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PUBLIC FACILITIES The presence of adequate public facilities - parks, schools, community buildings, sewer, water, and storm drainage systems, and transportation facilities - is necessary for an area to be a desirable place to live. Residential growth puts~a strain on many public facilities and, if too severe, can adversely affect the quality of life sought by new residents in coming to a new community as well as that enjoyed by the current residents. Pleasanton during its years of rapid growth came perilously close to destroying the very thing which had attracted the new residents -- good neighborhood schools, ample parks and recreation programs, re- liable utilities,uncongested streets, and its small town flavor. While the worst appears to be over, the city still lags in the provision of necessary public facilities. Neighborhood parks are undeveloped or partially developed and are forced into being used for unplanned pur- poses because of undeveloped major parks; public buildings are still largely on the drawing board; sewer lines are ferry-rigged because of missing segments; commercial facilities must rely on expensive holding tanks for sewerage service; water lines provide service in long dead-end routes, awaiting their safer completion as loop systems; some residents must live in fear of flood damage 'to their homes while awaiting storm drainage projects; and residents traverse the city's street system in fits and starts as congestion threatens portions of every major thoroughfare in the city. New residential development, properly timed and located; can improve some existing public facilities and go hand-in-hand with the city's efforts to upgrade all public facilities. Goal 6: To provide adequate public facilities to meet the existing needs of the community and to ensure that future facilities keep pace with community growth. Goal 7: To promote a balanced, unconyested transportation system within the planning area. The "leapfrog" pattern of past development has left many areas served with incomplete or partially completed utility and facility systems. These systems would operate better, safer and often with less mainten- ance required if they were completed. Often the completion of a por- tion of a utility or facility system awaits the development of a "passed over" parcel of land since existing policies would require the needed completion as a normal part of developer-installed utilities and facilities. When snch land is developed and such systems completed - eg. water line linkages, sewer line linkages, dedications and im- provements of portions of major thoroughfares - tkie community as a whole benefits. Because so much of Pleasanton is served by incomplete utility and facility systems, in-fill development which provides such "public benefit" in its normal development is preferable to new devel- opment which merely extends utilities and facilities to its site, even when such extension is wholly developer-financed. -16-