HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/6/2021 Item 6a, PinardDelgado, Adriana
From: Peg Pinard <
Sent: Monday, July 5, 2021 3:11 PM
To: E-mail Council Website
Subject: CITY COUNCIL AGENDA OF 7-6-2021, Item 6
(Please confirm that you received this email as I am not seeing any other agenda correspondence.)
J U LY 4, 2021
FOR THE CITY COUNCIL AGENDA OF 7-6-2021, Item 6
TO: The San Luis Obispo City Council,
As a former City Mayor and Councilmember, I have the following comments on the proposed update of THE PARKS AND
RECREATION PLAN AND GENERAL PLAN ELEMENT;
Protecting the City's open spaces, such as The Bishop Peak Natural Reserve and The Cerro San Luis Natural Reserve, is
extremely important to the citizens of SLO.
Therefore, the following past City Council actions have been very disappointing;
*** Protecting the City's open spaces was continuously a "Major Goal or Other Important Objective" of the City for
many years, until it was dropped as either, for the first time, by Council action in 2017.
*** For the first time also, a specific "open space protection" of the City's Open Space Ordinance was recently
weakened. "After hours" night use of the Cerro San Luis Natural Reserve was very controversially approved by a City
Council majority vote.
*** Last year, the citizens of SLO made protecting open space their highest surveyed funding priority for the renewal of
the City's Sales Tax measure. It was passed by voters, but the ballot language of the previous sales tax measure it was
replacing was disappointingly changed. "Preserving" open space" was moved from first on the list of the former
ballot's priorities to last in the 2020 ballot's language, and it was weakened to become only "maintenance" of open
space.
It is in this context that I respectfully request that your City Council ensure that what is stated multiple times throughout
the proposed PARKS AND RECREATION ELEMENT & PLAN becomes fact ---- that the adopted PARKS AND RECREATION
ELEMENT & PLAN "does not include uses, goals or policies for Open Space; The Conservation and Open Space Element of
the General Plan includes goals, policies, and programs specific to the City's Open Space".
Sincerely,
Peg Pinard