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back because the Council is following its General Plan. She asked the Council to deny the EIR <br />and then put on the ballot for the people a Ridgeland Protection ordinance just like the <br />Pleasanton Ridge. <br />Jerry Pentin said he supported open space, felt the project was great, said he worked on the <br />Callippe project for 10 years, and supported the project. <br />Brian Arkin believed a loophole exists in the current planning process, asked to modify the <br />development agreement to delay vesting of this project until the City obtains title to the 497 <br />acres. The current plan is to approve the project and have it vest in 6 weeks, locking in the City <br />forever. However, the City is not locked into accepting the land. The problem is that the final <br />map could be in two years and a new and different City Council could decide not to accept the <br />497 acres for a variety of legitimate reasons and then we would lose the major mitigation of this <br />project. <br />Martin Inderbitzen said in 1996 the citizens of Pleasanton, by a vote of the entire community, <br />drew a line around the community identifying the urban growth limitations for the City. Inside <br />that line development was allowed; outside it was not. The Oak Grove property is inside the line. <br />He noted a number of issues that have been raised about the General Plan and read items from <br />the 1996 General Plan which he sat on the committee for. <br />He said the General Plan designates much of south Pleasanton as Public Health and Safety <br />and wild lands overlay with no development capacity of a single family home on existing private <br />lots of record. Other close and hilly areas are designated as rural density residential to <br />encourage the clustering of large lot custom homes suitable to this terrain. The General Plan, in <br />identifying public health and safety lands outside the urban growth boundary and rural density <br />residential lands inside the urban growth boundary clearly took into consideration the lands that <br />were to be preserved as open space and the lands that were to be transition lands, but allow for <br />development inside the urban growth boundary. Consideration should be given to preserving <br />large, open space acreage in south Pleasanton by a combination of private open space and a <br />public park system. Trail rights-of-way and land should be acquired of developer dedications as <br />well as by bond measures. This is precisely what they are doing with Oak Grove. <br />He believed the process has been challenged and that it was important to state that the process <br />they are required to follow does not include a mandate to go out and meet with residents of a <br />neighborhood or any citizen who calls you on the phone, meet with them day or night, weekend <br />or weekday as he has done for four years. He has not refused to meet with a single individual <br />who has called him. He has offered to meet with individuals who have not bothered to call back <br />and his view is that they do not like the answer they get so they go elsewhere. He felt the <br />process has been a fabulously successful one, they have gone 4 years through it, this is the 9th <br />public hearing that has been noticed, they need to look back in those hearings, all emails, letters <br />and phone calls and remember all of the support that has been there, broad-base and diverse, <br />for this project. He said there is no doubt that the project is an imposition on the residents of <br />Kottinger Ranch, but there is no doubt that it was anticipated for development when that project <br />was built and before the first resident moved in. They are doing their best to reduce what is their <br />entitlement on this property in order to offset some of those impacts. He thinks it would be a <br />terrible mistake to somehow throw the process out. The process that the city staff has helped <br />them engage in was one that broadened public awareness of the project. It is always the case <br />that when you get down to the final decision point, new people get re-engaged and they want to <br />re-plow old ground. <br />He said the City has a professional staff of planning and legal, traffic, biological, visual <br />consultants all of whom are independent, directly under contract with the city or under contract <br />City Council Minutes 17 October 2, 2007 <br />