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John Carroll said he felt the workshops and additional data was important, said he was strongly <br />opposed to the project due to the added traffic, effect to small businesses, revenues, and felt <br />the resulting cost benefit ratios were not worth approving the project and asked to keep <br />Pleasanton a small town community. <br />Steve War said he agrees with everyone's comments and was opposed to the project, <br />Ronald Malovich said he is a 35 year resident, said he lives within one quarter mile of the <br />project and has attended every meeting and workshop, felt the data confirms the project is a <br />good one, said revenue is a plus, traffic could be a non-issue if Stoneridge Drive could be done, <br />said he worked for Howard Johnson's for 25 years and each time a new restaurant opened they <br />took a hit, but they continued to maintain, improve and provide a good service, which the small <br />businesses will have to do. He said his side of town has been the poor sister for years and said <br />the project will provide services to residents they have never had and hoped the Council will <br />approve the project. <br />Mayor Hosterman confirmed with Mr. Knoelder he was available for information. She said the <br />Council would not take action tonight, but was scheduled to take action on January 15, 2008. <br />Councilmember Sullivan thanked staff for the additional workshops to explore issues further, <br />cited many people's praise of City staff, thanked the community for participating, said every now <br />and then a project comes along that needs to have extra work and analysis, that seems to not <br />be a good project for Pleasanton, and he felt this project fit that bill. Regarding traffic, he felt this <br />was probably the worst part of town where a big box retail development should be built. There <br />are countless issues to be discussed towards the City's build out, circulation plan, toward <br />regional build out and improvements, and all will affect the long term traffic at this intersection <br />and for the Council to make a decision without having those discussions first is premature. He <br />said the City was getting ready to go into an eastside specific plan after the general plan to look <br />at eastside properties, which includes issues of extending EI Charro, land uses there, and this <br />must be a part of the discussion. <br />Councilmember Sullivan said the traffic engineer has done an excellent job of dissecting <br />information but he felt the bottom line was that traffic is bad now and it will get worse. The truck <br />delivery schedule will add to it and he was glad that staff changed its recommendations on it. <br />Regarding the traffic analysis itself, he believed it needs to include a build out analysis. It should <br />identify the triggers that could result in a Stoneridge extension. Regarding code enforcement <br />issues, this was not discussed much, a lot of information was received about code enforcement <br />problems with other Home Depot stores, enforcement of issues, he questioned if the mitigations <br />were sufficient. Regarding economic and fiscal issues, he thanked Ms. Wagner for presenting <br />the information. He spent a lot of time with staff going through the numbers. It is clear this is a <br />bail-out plan for Home Depot, who would lose business to Lowe's, they are ahead of the game <br />by 22% and local businesses would suffer decreases of 16% and some might not have the <br />luxury to take that hit. He questioned if the Council should rather be talking about policies and <br />programs we can put in place to help our small businesses take the hit from Lowe's and better <br />improve their position. In the general plan update, the City talks a lot about environmental, <br />economic and fiscal sustainability and social equity and he believes that a diverse, local <br />economy with a mixture of large and small businesses is one of the elements of economic <br />sustainability. Regarding fiscal benefits, they are very small or a wash at best. He asked Stacy <br />Mitchell from the Institute for Local Self Reliance, who wrote a book about big boxes, to peer <br />review the study and did an analysis and she pointed out many of the assumptions called into <br />question from the PRC study and her conclusion was that the study may understate the impact <br />City Council Minutes 13 December 4, 2007 <br />