California: Just Say NO to the One Bay Area Plan!

November 10, 2012 by ppjg

Heather Gass
_______________________________________________________

What MTC (Marxist Transportation Commission) and ABAG (Arrogant Bureaucrats and Goons) are planning for you and your communities …..

Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC)–two unelected, unaccountable regional government entities– through allocation of $277B of OUR OWN tax dollars—are going to force new zoning standards on ALL nine counties and 101 cities in the Bay Area. Those zoning standards, which are being developed with almost no public awareness or consent on the part of the citizenry, will:

-          Remove all ability of local cities and towns to carry out their constitutionally-protected role of making local planning decisions based on local conditions and doing so responsive to the needs and wishes of the citizens of that city

-          Force virtually all development of commercial and residential projects in the Bay Area FOR THE NEXT 30 YEARS into the 4% of the Bay Area land that is designated as “priority development areas” (PDAs) near mass transit

-          Effectively disallow development or redevelopment in the 96% of the land area of the Bay Area that is NOT in those PDAs

-          Require all development in the PDAs to be stack and pack mixed use multi-story apartments or condos on upper floors, and retail or office space on ground floor

-          Require massive subsidies to build all of these developments and redevelopments in the PDAs, as the limited market for stack and pack housing and commercial space in the Bay Area is already saturated due to the use of Redevelopment Agency dollars to build these in recent years—many of which are under-utilized or even completely empty, years after having been built

-          Involve a regulatory taking of property rights in the 96% of the Bay Area outside of those PDAs due to the dramatic reduction in the value of all land that can no longer be developed or redeveloped

-          Require every city and town to build significant quantities of heavily-subsidized low income housing in their town whether the town or city wants to or not

-          The PDA projects will have limited provision for parking spaces, wholly inadequate to the needs of the residents and commercial tenants, in order to “encourage” people to give up their cars
-          Cities/Counties will not be given funding for schools, churches and other services necessary to support the increase population within the PDAs

-          All of the PDA developments will receive CEQA waivers—that is, they will not be subject to environmental review—proving indisputably that this has nothing to do with the environment. Rather, this has everything to do with control of every aspect of our lives, down to the most minute of details, as well as a loss of our property rights, loss of our freedom to travel, and loss of our freedom to live and work where we choose. By design.

-          Redirect the bulk of gas tax revenues over the next 30 years from maintaining existing roads and bridges to additional subsidies to mass transit. This will lead to deterioration of existing road infrastructure, more accidents, longer commutes, and worse gas mileage–to which the Oz-like planners from ABAG and MTC will offer us toll lanes and vehicle mileage taxes in their endless pursuit of controlling every aspect of our lives, and charging us for the control grid they are placing us in.

Plus their plans to add more transit infrastructure when much of Bay Area mass transit is dramatically under-utilized will only have detrimental impacts on our economy, public finances, and the environment.

All this and much more will be coming our way. We MUST oppose these unelected regional bureaucrats now! We want local control! Not a dictatorial body of planners telling the citizens of the Bay Area how and where we will live over the next 30 years!