HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/19/2021 Item 7a, O'Niell
To: SLO City Council
From: Kathleen O’Neill of Pismo Beach
Re: Support of Item 7a on your 10/19/2021 agenda: Open Space Winter Evening Hours
of Use at Cerro San Luis Natural Reserve
Date: 10/16/2021
I am in support of your staff’s report on the open space winter evening hours of Cerro
San Luis and urge you to approve their recommended Ordinance and Resolution. While
I presently live in Pismo Beach, I have lived in the city of SLO for most of my life and
spent my career with SLO County government working in SLO. I have been hiking
Cerro San Luis for over 30 years weekly with friends after work. While I am retired now,
most of them still work; and we can only hike together in the evenings. We start around
5:30 PM and are typically off the mountain by 8 PM. This exercise together is not only
beneficial to our physical and mental health, but it is also a long-term bonding practice
of ours for many years.
My friends and I are law-abiding, professional, and mature adults. We have been good
stewards of the environment and have been sensitive to neighbors and wildlife. We
have never caused any trouble on the peak; nor have we ever needed a rescue. Unlike
Bishop Peak, the trail on Cerro San Luis is a wide, graded, safe road. Some of us have
been/are serious mountaineers who need to stay fit with uphill climbing all year long.
We come from many careers: veterinarian, Caltrans Executive, air quality specialist,
artist, cellist, microbiologist, chiropractor, author, teacher, health care administrator,
non-profit enrollment specialist, electrician, and sales representative, to name a few.
Motivated by both our friendship and our desire to maintain fitness all year long, we
have gladly participated in the last three years of your pilot program, obtaining permits
to hike in the winter evenings. We deeply appreciate your Council’s approval of our
continued evening hiking these last three years while your staff gathered data about the
impact on wildlife, neighbors, and the environment. The consultants you hired to study
the impact, Rincon Consultants, concluded with three years of data that “there is no
substantial evidence, in light of the whole of the record before the agency, that the
project may have a significant effect on the environment. Therefore, staff writes that a
“Negative Declaration is the appropriate environmental determination…”
My hiking group and I urge your continued approval of hiking during winter evenings.
We have especially appreciated the Council’s willingness to respectfully listen to all
opinions and then to make decisions that are reasonable based on facts. Thank you.
Kathleen O’Neill
Koneill555@gmail.com
805-550-5010
retired healthcare administrator