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sad and disheartening that the community is focused on the housing aspect of this. He would hope that the City Council has the wisdom to rise above the fray of "affordable housing" and can look at the bigger picture. It is great that we have engaged in the discussion and have started dialogue about affordable housing. He felt privileged to sit on the Council and listen to the debate and to ultimately make the decision. He did not want everyone to be too focused on affordable housing. It did not have to be the sole focus. He supported Option Two because he wanted to support the process and for this to be as democratic as possible. We are being as democratic as possible and he wanted to go through the commissions and have as many hands get on this before it gets to the voters. He said he would hope that everyone, including the commissioners, would put their personal bias aside and do what is right for the community. If a commissioner cannot do that then they should have the integrity to say so. Ms. Ayala said the initiative that the citizens have put on the ballot has nothing to do with affordable housing. It has to do with housing. The initiative says housing. It goes back to the very essence of Measure I. Staff recognized that housing was an issue months ago and said, "Let's address it." Ms. Michelotti expressed her disagreement, saying it is about having something for the future. It's about reserving something for the people who have children in high school. Mayor Pico said he was not disheartened. He felt that this is the process and a commitment has been made to the people of Pleasanton that is going to be followed. He felt he had been very instrumental in the process in reducing the number of housing units on the property over the last nine and one-half years, from 3300 housing units down to 581 units. There were some tough negotiations, we made some big compromises, and affordability was included in the project. We made commitments to the people. The biggest commitment made was that we would ultimately give them the right to vote. He thought, as did the people who put the Citizen's Initiative together, that the Council was going to reneg on that promise. That would be the worse thing Council could do at this point, to reneg on commitments already made to the people. He does not think this is dividing the community. It is a healthy dialogue in the community about affordable housing and about what the community wants to see happen on the Bemal Property. Many controversial subjects have come up in the community and the community has been strengthened by the public dialogue and discussions that have taken place. He supported putting a counter initiative on the ballot that would have the issue of whether we would want to have housing on the Bemal Property and he supports the Citizen's Initiative. The next five to six months will be healthy for the community because we are going to learn a lot more about what it is the citizens of this community really want. The election will reveal a lot and we will find out many things about how the community feels about this property. There are many different viewpoints in this community and we are going to find out what they are during the election period. He felt it extremely important that we continue the process and take this plan through all of the commissions and committees and have the joint meetings and joint hearings to ultimately get it to the City Council so that the Council can come up with a Master Plan that the people of Pleasanton Pleasanton City Council 22 06/04/02 Minutes