CCMIN092705 - Laserfiche WebLink

listed for a separate workshop have a fair amount of substance and it was not felt that the process should be rushed without full discussion. The Staples Ranch and Hacienda Business Park topics will include presentations from people outside of city staff. Staff is open to suggestions and if Council and the Commission prefer more streamlining, then some topics could be combined. Brian Arkin indicated the Commissioners visited most of the elementary schools in the city and gathered information from the community. He did not see how the input had been incorporated in the staff reports. It appeared to him that the process was starting over. He wanted staff to show what a compressed plan would look like in order to see what would be lost, then an informed decision could be made on what process to be followed. It also appeared that there are meetings where applicants would be making presentations of projects. He felt it was better for Council and the Commission to make a decision on where it wants houses or commercial developments, and then hear presentations from applicants. Mayor Hosterman acknowledged the Planning Commission received a lot of public input a long time ago and staff has indicated that will be integrated in the process. The process is not starting over. She believed Staples Ranch and Hacienda Business Park are two huge pieces of property with a great potential impact on the City of Pleasanton. Just because a decision is made on a certain type of development, if there is no developer who wants to build it, there is nothing to talk about anyway. Because of that, she felt it was important to have the discussion with the County of Alameda regarding the Staples Ranch property and with the Hacienda business owners regarding their ideas for the area. Mr. Arkin wanted to see if the process could be finished in a year instead of two years. Mayor Hosterman felt it was more appropriate to talk about that at workshop 4. By then, the basic land uses in town would have been discussed and at that point, a decision could be made on whether to compress future workshops. Ms. Maas agreed with Mr. Arkin. At the beginning, she believed the Planning Commission was to be the lead agency to start the process. Now, there are just a lot of joint workshops. She was also concerned that by spring of next year there will be changes in the membership of the Planning Commissioners and possibly Councilmembers. Jennifer Pearce acknowledged she was new to this process but she felt the plan proposed by staff is a good one. Mr. Arkin said two of the Planning Commissioners will be termed out and there is an election for Council in late 2006. He did not want to have new people coming on board and causing the process to start all over again. He wanted to complete the General Plan Update with the same people who started it. Ms. Fox also felt it was inappropriate for applicants to make presentations. She wanted to keep this a General Plan review and not to delve into specific areas during the process. That way they are not going into specific details for specific development projects. She Joint Workshop City Council/Planning Commission 3 09/27/05