An Update on the Castro Valley Specific Plan Update

Alameda County
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On Tuesday January 6th, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors held their regular Planning Committee meeting.  One item on the agenda was a recap by Albert Lopez, Director of the Alameda County Planning Department on the status of the major initiatives of the Planning Department.

A large part of his recap included the status of updates on the many specific and area plans which cover the Unincorporated Areas.   Lopez reported that the Ashland/Cherryland Business District Specific Plan will be completed by November of 2015, and the Fairview Area Plan should be complete in 2016.

He also stated that the long awaited update to the 22 year old Castro Valley Downtown Specific Plan was not in the budget for the current fiscal year (which ends in July,) but work would begin before the end of 2015.  Lopez said that

“…there is a strong desire from the community, particularly the Castro Valley MAC members to get that plan updated.”

Supervisor Nate Miley also agreed, saying

“…it’s important to get that handled, because we’ve had conflicts there (about the specific plan) as well in the last few years and we want to make sure we cue that up for this next 2015 fiscal year.  …It will probably take two or more years to finish.  …All these plans have to be sequenced in, because we don’t have unlimited resources.  …The Downtown Specific Plan for Castro Valley is extremely important.”

Public comment included four Castro Valley residents all advocating for heightening the importance and urgency of revising the Downtown Specific plan due to its age and the remarkable changes in the Castro Valley population and overall planning strategies.   Chris Bazar, Director of the Alameda County Community Development Agency responded to the comments:

“I’m delighted that we really clearly have a new generation of Castro Valley residents who are very active and involved in this, and as a planner I couldn’t agree more with many of the things you’ve expressed.  …This specific plan is on this list because it is absolutely on our triage list of things to get to.  …We have to spread our resources throughout the unincorporated county so we very much have an exercise that we go through with very limited resources … where we really have to be fair to five or six distinct communities and we try to marshal our resources fairly to all of them.”

Supervisor Miley echoed that sentiment with some lively comments of his own.  Speaking about the fairness of planning resource distribution within the unincorporated area, he had this to say:

“Incorporate and control your destiny, but if you’re unincorporated than you’re competing with everybody else -and we can’t take away from the others…”

You can listen to Supervisor Miley’s full commentary here.  You can also hear the full audio recording of the meeting by clicking here for part one, and here for part two.

Michael,

I too attended the meeting but didn’t speak on this matter. Three questions for you: 1) one speaker (you?) asked the BOS if small amendments to the plan could be enacted. Specifically cited was the “Castro Valley tan” guidelines. I thought it was a great suggestion to make mini-steps that might better our plan while the whole update is stuck in limbo. No one from the Board addressed this request. Any plans to follow-up? 2) I sensed that Supervisor Miley was angry at the four of your presence. Perhaps angry is too strong and perturbed is closer to the mark. I very much appreciate your advocacy and felt as a group you were treated a little gruffly. Keep up the work specifically when your requests are so reasonable. ie please update our 22 year old 20 year plan. 3) At least one other Supervisor (Haggerty) followed Miley’s lead and suggested that Castro Valley was getting more than its share of the resources. He stated that other districts besides the 4th have large unincorporated populations and they are getting shortchanged at our benefit. Does anyone know the unincorporated population of each of the five districts? I have to believe the 4th district has the most, Specifically relatively dense urban areas needing planning and resources.

Wasn’t me, Dan. You’re thinking of Michael Kusiak. I was watching online from my office…

Thanks for your support Dan.

I and others with Castro Valley Matters will follow up with the Community Development Agency and Supervisor Miley to see how we might start the community conversation about central Castro Valley sooner.

A good resource about the different “Eden Area” communities can be found here: http://www.acgov.org/edenareavision/documents/EALICommunityProfile.pdf

Supervisor Miley commissioned this document during the start of EALI Phase II. It provides some really interesting details about the demographics of our communities, most of which are represented by Supervisor Miley (CV, Fairview, Cherryland and Ashland). San Lorenzo is represented by Wilma Chan.

From page 14 of the Community Profile, here is the population of the five unincorporated communities in 2010:

Castro Valley: 61,388
San Lorenzo: 23,452
Cherryland: 14,728
Fairview: 10,003
Ashland: 21,925

Eden Area: 131,496

Good information on the unincorporated populations in the EDEN area. Unfortunately that only covers a portion of two of the districts. Does anyone know the unincorporated population throughout Alameda county broken down by the five districts? I believe the 4th district (our’s and Nate’s) has the highest population so He shouldn’t feel defensive about requesting more resources for our area. And Haggerty shouldn’t necessarily feel deprived. Particularly since the areas you listed are primarily urban and in need of planning.

I admit to being rankled more by Haggerty’s comment about feeling “unappreciated”. What appreciation does an elected official need more than re-election?

He referenced specifically the redevelopment funds that were allocated to the unincorporated communities and the Castro Valley Library. I’d like to better understand how those funds supported CV projects along with the economic impacts.

It seemed odd to me that someone I didn’t even get to vote for was complaining about being “unappreciated.”

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