3B Public Hearing 2007 0904 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes Agenda No. 07-13 July 12, 2007 Page 60f8 parking. This is a noble City goal, far more environmentally correct than building apartments where BART parking should be. Coincidentally, on June 22, the day of the San Leandro presentation lunch, the Chronicle had an informal survey called "Long Term Wish List for BART." Two of the eight people interviewed, one-quarter of them, stressed today's BART parking problems. One man stated, "I have driven into the City after cruising several East Bay BART parking lots. I didn't want to." Don't promote this result. Benefit citizens who are trying to stay out of their cars. In planning for long-term development, the City should encourage - not discourage - BART ridership. Don't hamper and frustrate our workers and other citizens wishing and trying to use BART. Karen DiJulio, 1943 Trombas Avenue, San Leandro I also would like to speak on the BART parking issue, and the lack of public transportation. Instead of increasing, AC Transit is decreasing the amount of available stops in San Leandro, so if you don't live within a walking distance of BART, you pretty much have to drive your car. And I feel like we need more parking spaces, not less. And I'd to also propose that there should be - if AC Transit isn't willing to take on the financial burden of adding more lines, especially east-west (there's only one line that I know of, and it's not convenient for most of the people on this now) - maybe the developers can contribute toward a free transit system such as the Emery Go Round, that you can take all over San Leandro, and you wouldn't have to have a car to drive to the store or BART, because you have convenient transportation. Lindsay Imai, Urban Habitat, 436 - 14th Street, #1205, Oakland I work with an organization called Urban Habitat. We partner closely with community- based organizations like COR (the Congregations Organizing for Renewal) - a couple of members have just addressed you. We also work on a regional level with regional organizations, such as the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, to basically encourage the kind of development that you're trying to achieve with your Transit-Oriented Development plan. And we're looking at plans across the nine counties. We've been closely following the work that you're doing here in San Leandro. First, I would like to commend the work of the City. We see a lot of really wonderful aspects achieved here in the plan, such as the density, the pedestrian and bikeway connections, as well as the open space provisions, and just generally envisioning the downtown to be more walkable and livable. However, we do have some concerns and we feel like they're not being assessed sufficiently in the Draft EIR. And that does relate to the affordability provisions in the plan. As both Dan Martinez and Esperanza Alcantar discussed, there is potential for lack of affordable housing for extremely low, very low, and low income residents as well as future workers. Something that hasn't been discussed that much are all the jobs that are going to be created in the downtown, and many of those workers are not going to be able to afford market-rate housing. As we know, even though the build-out is going to take up to about 30 years, all the new housing in the TOD area represents almost half of all of San Leandro's new housing production over that time period. Therefore, it's essential to create housing that is affordable to all income levels. As Dan mentioned, San Leandro is already behind on its regional housing needs allocation, particularly for very low and low income families. And without providing sufficient affordable housing, you have a couple of different impacts on human health . . . and we're going to see mainly for-sale